The research and resulting book is informed by my ethical and political commitment to the social value of public housing. Since my youth, I have believed that public housing is an extremely positive feature of contemporary society which should be both preserved and expanded. This dates to when my family moved to a council estate on the outskirts of Halifax in West Yorkshire when I was 12. I am eternally grateful to the post-war welfare state that we were able to make this move at a time of need due to my dad's illness.

The book's academic roots lay in research that Mike Savage, Sara Arber and I undertook on Guildford council housing during the 1980s (Savage et al, 1990). This was followed up with research on Camden council housing during the 1990s (Watt, 1996), which was extended into a PhD – ‘The Dynamics of Social Class and Housing: A Study of Local Authority Tenants in the London Borough of Camden’ (Watt, 2001; see Watt, 2003, 2005, 2006). The book refers to this Camden research, and also draws upon (and updates) my various publications on specific London estates and on the city's housing generally:

• • Aylesbury estate – territorial stigmatisation and poor housing conditions (Watt, 2020c);

• • Carpenters estate – regeneration and the 2012 Olympic Games (Watt, 2013; see also Frediani et al, 2013); housing activism (Watt, 2016; Gillespie et al, 2018);

• • Clapham Park and Ocean estates – the NDC and stock transfers (Watt, 2009a, 2009c);

• • Northwold estate – regeneration (Watt and Allen, 2018);

• • West Hendon estate – displacement of temporary tenants (Watt, 2018a);

• • London housing crisis (Watt and Minton, 2016), housing activism (Watt, 2018c), and homelessness (Watt, 2018a, 2018b, 2020b).

My interest in regeneration developed out of the PhD research, but was spurred by my political involvement in a campaign against stock transfer in Buckinghamshire during the early 2000s (Watt, 2008). Subsequently I have acted in a scholar-activist capacity in various London housing and regeneration campaigns, the main ones being Demolition Watch London, Focus E15 and DCH (Watt, 2016; Gillespie et al, 2018). This scholar-activism crossed over into book-related fieldwork at the Carpenters estate (Watt, 2013; Gillespie et al, 2018), and to a lesser extent at the Aylesbury, Cressingham Gardens and Northumberland Park estates. In addition, I undertook the NES in liaison with the Save Northwold campaign (Chapter 4; Watt and Allen, 2018).