This chapter examines the beginnings of regeneration including consultation. It briefly reviews the impetus for regeneration, and then goes on to analyse two examples of early-stage regeneration: the first is the long-running Canning Town/Custom House scheme in Newham, and the second is Northwold estate in Hackney. The consultation process is then examined in depth from the perspective of residents, followed by a briefer analysis of professionals’ perspectives. The final lengthy section teases out the complexities of residents’ responses to comprehensive redevelopment involving extensive demolition.

Introducing regeneration

Residents are by no means necessarily opposed to regeneration per se. Given that their homes and estates had been neglected, unsurprisingly many welcomed regeneration of some kind – at least initially, as noticeable at the NDC estates. The immediate impetus for regeneration has primarily originated with councils and housing associations in a topdown manner, either by responding to central government regeneration programmes (for example SRB, NDC, and so on), or by addressing their own regeneration agendas which have latterly involved ‘solving’ London's housing crisis via estate densification. Somewhat less often, regeneration has been prompted by bottom-up pressure as residents have lobbied the council to do something – anything – to improve the quality of their homes and estates other than merely reactive repairs. For example, in 2003 Carpenters residents formed a protest group called ‘Tower Block Action Group’ which staged a series of actions to highlight the problems they were having, including an infestation of ants, asbestos, poor repairs and lack of safety (Strauss, 2007). This protest helped to prompt the long-running and still unresolved regeneration scheme at this estate (Chapters 4 and 12). Another example is Bacton estate in Camden, where residents approached an architectural firm to improve their blocks (Wainwright, 2016; Karakusevic Carson Architects, 2017).

A statutory part of estate regeneration in England is consultation, which is theoretically supposed to give residents genuine input into what happens to their homes and neighbourhoods. Having any consultation can be considered as progressive given how regeneration can proceed without it in certain countries (Porter and Shaw, 2009; Morris, 2019). International studies have, however, critically noted that consultation regarding estate regeneration has tended to be tokenistic in nature, effectively operating at the lower end of Arnstein's ‘ladder of participation’ (Teernstra and Pinkster, 2015; Gustavsson and Elander, 2016).