11
votes
Isle of Dogs [area in London's Docklands] unilateral declaration of independence: a revolt, a joke, or a tactical stroke of genius
Link information
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- Title
- Isle of Dogs: an Independent State for 10 days - Poplar LDN
- Authors
- Jasdev Bhakar
- Published
- Apr 3 2023
- Word count
- 1208 words
Somewhat ironic that the very people who had protested for more development of the island were the ones that lost their community to gentrification that came about due to the development they pushed for. It's something I've thought about a decent bit, living in a neighborhood that's had three waves of gentrification in the decades I've lived here. When things become nicer, people with more money move in. When people with more money move in, it becomes nicer still. Etc, etc, etc. If not for rent control and relatively high rates of home ownership among the older, poorer residents, they would have all been entirely swept out of the area. That's something that was completely unavailable to the residents of the housing blocks on the Isle of Dogs.
Gentrification hit the community where I grew up, and it's heartbreaking to witness.
I think my biggest gentrification heartbreak has to be what happened to the social housing in my neighborhood. These were a large number of three-storey apartment buildings (former barracks associated with an adjoining former Naval airport) with rent prices adjusted for income, and they were overwhelmingly popular with recent immigrants and their families; there was something like a 5-year waiting list to get in. The apartments were quite nice (I got to see them a lot because many of my classmates lived in them), and there was enough green space around them that the residents had built communal vegetable gardens, flower gardens, and playgrounds for their kids. Over the decades, the residents had even managed to grow a large number of shade trees to maturity.
In fact, it was such a lovely community that all the residents were kicked out so the apartments could be replaced with expensive three-storey townhouses and sold to private buyers — meaning that for every three low-income families displaced, now only one high-income family could take their place.
The developers, of course, also bulldozed all the gardens, playgrounds, and trees that had made it such a lovely and desirable place to live in the first place.
The last time I saw them a few years ago, most of the townhouses seemed to be caught up in an endless spiral of buying and selling between house flippers. It's not clear to me that anyone actually wants to live in them anymore, yet the prices just keep soaring higher and higher.