Keys to paradise: Will the Isle of Dogs escape gentrification?

There are plenty of ideas proposed for the island’s reinvention, but with blurred lines between regeneration and gentrification, what can be done to ensure solutions are accessible to residents across the financial spectrum?

Though the island business hub has only been around since the 1980s, the vision behind Canary Wharf has already fallen behind the times. In the wake of COVID-19, more of us are working from home, and more businesses are reducing their office space. The Canary Wharf Group (CWG), developers and investors are knee-deep in rebranding the area as the kind of place you would live and take your friends out on the weekend. This is a reinvention of an area already regenerated by massive private investment in the 1980s, just forty years ago.

As we investigated in the previous article of this series, the 1980s dream for the island was not a dream to better the lives of Isle of Dogs residents, but rather to create a poster boy for the global financial industry. 

Now, we’re focusing on what regeneration means and whether it is any different from gentrification. To learn more about the pros and cons of different options for renewal, we’ll take a look at some communities around the world that have tackled similar issues.

No man’s land

Regeneration is based on the belief that a place is not what it should be. It could be modernised, made safer, cleaner and more prosperous. This implies that, until the area is improved, it is a wasted space, a blank slate, ripe for reimagining.

On the one hand, regeneration might seem exciting – especially in London, where most neighbourhoods feel too old and well-established to picture differently. Yet on the other this mindset has an uncomfortable colonial edge, rooted in the idea of ‘unclaimed’ land waiting for someone who knows better to come and ‘civilise’ it.

The line between regeneration and gentrification is blurry, but since developments on the island call themselves ‘regeneration projects’, we should make a distinction.  Dr Alice Earley, a researcher at the University of Glasgow, explains that gentrification creates new urban spaces ‘for progressively more affluent users’; essentially, the colonisation of working-class areas by the middle and upper classes.

Meanwhile, ‘regeneration’ enacts change to solve ‘urban problems’. As for the line between the two, Earley says:

‘Regeneration becomes gentrification when displacement or exclusion occurs’. 

In other words, when the presence of an existing community becomes one of the so-called ‘urban problems’ that a project is trying to solve.

‘Regeneration becomes gentrification when displacement or exclusion occurs’. 

dr alice earley

A community handbook for estate residents in London echoes this message:

‘Regeneration is gentrification when tenants and leaseholders of council estates have to move out of their homes and local communities to other areas in Greater London and beyond.’

One thing that sets the Isle of Dogs apart from other potential gentrification cases is its relatively small existing community. Rising prices are indeed a concern for the community, but the regeneration of the island is about invention as much as reinvention. 

There are pockets of land on which no one has lived since World War II and sites that have been business premises for decades. What this land is used for – and how much landowners charge for it – will affect the viability of existing residents being able to stay on the island. It will reveal who is prioritised in the London housing market and deemed worthy of taking up space near the city centre. 

Who mines the gold?

Regeneration has its own language – you don’t need to read many press releases about new apartment buildings to recognise the relentlessly optimistic tone. The way an area is promoted indicates the target market for the new and improved version – in other words, who mines the gold. 

The most inclusive urban renewal projects are those driven by and intended for the community that has occupied an area during its hard times. In the cases with happy endings, change derives from community action, because the people who live in an area are usually the ones most keenly aware of what it needs.

Private companies funding redevelopment, regardless of the good intentions of individual employees,  do not share that interest. When a private company announces it will build housing, its bottom line is to make a profit. 

One alternative is for governments to fund the changes required to improve the quality of life in deprived areas. For now, that seems unlikely.

Despite promising to boost housebuilding, the newly elected Chancellor Rachel Reeves has explicitly said that the government will rely on private developers rather than building homes themselves. Section 106 (S106) agreements are negotiated between councils and developers when developers purchase council land or request planning permission to build on that land. The agreement requires that developers build community infrastructure as part of their project. Community Infrastructure Levies (CILs) were introduced in 2010 to replace S106, setting out more specific financial obligations for developers. In 2022, the government proposed that an Infrastructure Levy would replace S106 and CILs. For now, you’ll often see the terms used interchangeably.

The developer Mount Anvil, who will regenerate Tiller Road’s Barkantine Estate near the centre of the island, has highlighted their commitment to residents by supporting community initiatives like the Cubitt Town Girls Group. However, they have not specified whether they intend to build public community spaces as part of the Tiller Road project. 

They have shown more support for low-income residents than other developers by promising not to use separate entrances or ‘poor doors’ for the affordable units of their developments. They are also one of the only developers to have shown public support for the GLA’s mandate that ballot voting must be used to determine whether or not an estate will be redeveloped. Being partly funded by the GLA, Mount Anvil has to follow the minimum affordable housing targets for the area, which is around 35 per cent,  according to the 2021-2026 London Plan. 

A case study across the pond

The city of Portland, Oregon in the US has achieved this, to an extent, largely through advocacy work by residents who have managed to get the government on their side. 

The Cully district of the city is one of its most diverse and historically under-resourced areas. It has lost a significant proportion of lower-income residents and residents of colour who have been priced out of the area. The non-profit Habitat for Humanity explained:

‘Despite brownfields, limited public transit, poor walkability, and a lack of open recreational space, among other challenges, housing prices in Cully have accelerated like the rest of the Portland market.’

London’s docklands have historically shared the same problems. The only difference would be that public transport has improved significantly in the last few years, meaning house prices have accelerated more rapidly. 

In the Cully district, local charity organisations have been the force that has compelled the local government to protect community interests. A group of seven non-profits worked with the city council to draft a plan that designated the area as a ‘Tax Increment Finance’ or ‘TIF’ district, similar to the GLA’s ‘Opportunity Areas’. Though TIF status has signalled gentrification in the past, a local plan for the Cully district is actively working to stop the displacement of local people. 

Thanks to the work of local charities, the plan for Cully explicitly states that the government money invested in the area will be used to prevent displacement of residents vulnerable to being priced out. The spending plan’s top priority is to stabilise existing businesses and residents. 

We have yet to see if the Cully plan will be successful, but it is one of the few completed urban renewal projects in countries similar to the UK that did not prioritise new higher-income residents. Local news outlet Oregon Live described it as an urban planning experiment that will try to improve the area and make it more environmentally sustainable without compromising affordability:

‘They’re [residents are] turning to urban renewal, the same mechanism responsible for decades of massive displacement in Portland. But unlike past urban renewals, this one shuns large infrastructure projects such as light rail expansion or street improvements and instead makes low-income families and people of colour the main beneficiaries.’ 

The Docklands dilemma

It’s hard to compare the regeneration of Isle of Dogs with other urban renewal schemes for deprived areas. The Isle of Dogs is unique in that the residential community has always been relatively small compared to the rest of Tower Hamlets. Whitechapel and Bethnal Green have dense neighbourhoods packed with social housing, small businesses, schools, places of worship and public parks. The island has a few housing estates, local shops and schools scattered between large empty plots of brownfield land. Though there are natural beauty spots like Millwall Park, the potentially beautiful area around the Millwall Docks, in the centre of the island, has been inaccessible. 

On the Isle of Dogs, there is less threat of developers bulldozing historic buildings or community hubs, but rather, covering the empty land with buildings designed to attract wealthy outsiders, rather than serve the local community. As planned regeneration schemes circle areas of deprivation, they have the potential to push out low-income households. 

Displacement is not always so explicit as kicking people out of a council estate. In the 1980s, social rent tenants were given the choice to buy property in Beckton instead of continuing to rent on the Isle of Dogs. People chose this option out of their own free will. But it’s a clear example of the dispersion of lower-income residents away from London’s city centre and therefore gentrification. 

The lack of visible history and the relatively small resident community make it much harder to identify gentrification on the island. New residential towers replace long abandoned industrial sites rather than family-owned businesses or historic buildings.

Nonetheless, they send the same message: We are transforming this area so that rich people will want to spend money here. We aren’t just transforming it to make life better for locals who need our help. And if locals are not displaced, they will probably find the new shops and businesses we open too expensive for them to enjoy.

Judging by the current plans for the island, its reinvention will largely benefit people who have never been here before.

Ultimately this is in keeping with the Thatcherite vision for the Docklands. It’s a symbol of private enterprise and globalisation, where wealth is the tie that binds people across oceans. Emphasis on retail, restaurants, gyms, and paid activities highlights how this regeneration is about reinventing the capital’s centre of private enterprise, rather than breathing new life into the socialist project that began on the island in the wake of the war.

The damage is already done in that the council currently owns no more than 24 homes on the island, compared to owning nearly all of them in the late 1990s. They know and developers know that new projects will prioritise profit and whether or not they benefit locals, they can still claim to have significantly improved the area because swanky mixed-used developments and parks tend to look better than abandoned brownfield sites – even if none of the 28,000 on the council house waiting list live there. 

On the defensive

The next best thing is to prevent current residents from being priced out, and legally requiring developers to provide affordable housing and community resources. This is not always so straightforward, though. 

Private developments on the island have struggled to attract buyers in recent years, and building costs have increased, leading major developers like Ballymore to resubmit their planning proposals with lower percentages of affordable housing. If the developer is concerned about its profit margins, they can increase the total number of homes they build. Essentially, they can build more unaffordable homes to help pay for the affordable homes. This strains community infrastructure and resources.

The tug-of-war between private investment and community well-being is behind many of the delays that plague the island’s housing projects. The risk of holding out for developments that are more equitable and better for the community is that nothing gets built at all, and that will continue to pressure anyone who advocates for regeneration that serves the community. 

Nonetheless, if local communities are going to survive, they have to be on the alert whenever development enters the conversation. Luckily, Isle of Dogs residents are already familiar with these scenarios. Because private ownership already dominates the island, the most realistic solution is for residents to push for consultations that look more like negotiations, as the charity alliance Just Space puts it. 

One recommendation is for communities to set up land trusts or cooperative housing schemes. This involves the community itself having collective ownership of land – so everyone who lives there has a share in it, and therefore all shareholders have a vested interest in affordability. Since most of the Isle of Dogs is already in private ownership, this isn’t really an option. 

Island residents have done what they can. They have successfully created a Neighbourhood Plan that gives them a say in planning issues. They have taken it upon themselves to share development updates as widely as possible. Riverside and partner developers like Mount Anvil have played ball by running consultations with the residents. The key agreement of residents’ ‘right to return’ offers hope for the community because ultimately, preventing displacement is the baseline requirement for positive urban change. 

For regeneration to be ‘inclusive’, the community already occupying a given area must be in the driver’s seat. Community spaces that are actually public spaces and encourage participation in local decision-making processes and local democracy make regeneration more inclusive. 

The hope left behind

The Isle of Dogs could go down two different paths. There is the threat of displacement as in seen traditional gentrification scenarios. There is also the supposed fresh start of disused industrial land. Regeneration could maximise potential by maximising profit or it may implement the strategies we have seen in other communities that have reinvented themselves without gentrification. 

The island’s residents have risen to the challenge of making their voices heard, following guidelines to establish a strong Neighbourhood Planning Forum, alongside the Four Estates Forum, which continues to advocate for locals impacted by development. While the island is unlikely to see housing collectives like Poplar’s Glenkerry Estate, given that almost all of it is already in private ownership, the residents and the council have successfully challenged schemes with insufficient affordable housing.

And thanks to the work of the Four Estates Forum, social renters have secured the Right to Return to their estates post-redevelopment. A legal agreement should confirm this, similar to the laws requiring Portland’s Cully district schemes to prevent displacement of vulnerable residents. More public investment would be ideal, as the government is more accountable to local communities than private companies. 

We can hold qualified hopes about the percentages of affordable housing promised for new schemes, even as we acknowledge that affordable homes are still in the minority when it comes to what is being built on the island and social rent homes are a smaller minority still.

 Maybe no one expected anything different from somewhere as central and already high-flying as Canary Wharf, where the likelihood of inclusivity has been low since the LDDC laid out its capitalist vision for the area in the 1980s. Yet there is still a strong working-class community on the island and, if redevelopment respects community action and the dignity of this community, the island can still be a place for ordinary Londoners to call home.