Introduction

This chapter is a conversation between the editors and Anna Minton, a writer and journalist who has written extensively about urban regeneration, with a focus on the privatisation of public space. The conversation occurred in December 2012 and it provides an important reference for understanding sustainable development in London that is part of an anti-democratic, pro-market politics, encouraging the recapitalising of land for profit. There is nothing new about the pro-growth agenda of London's politics, but, for Minton, it is disingenuous for politicians to use the term ‘sustainable development’ to describe processes and outcomes that do not seem to be promoting much beyond social inequality, social polarisation and increasing consumption of environmental resources. As Minton suggests, the notion of sustainable development appears to be no more than a euphemism for property-led regeneration, and a smokescreen for politicians’ pursuit of an economic growth agenda with limited regard for the social and distributive consequences. Such consequences, for Minton, require much more scrutiny, and include the privatisation of places that are ostensibly about creating socially mixed communities that are, on closer inspection, far from mixed and far from inclusive. Instead, housing and planning policies in London are failing to provide sufficient low-cost dwellings, or places that enable people on a mix of incomes to be part of stable, affordable communities.

EDITORS: In your 2009 book, Ground control, you said that the London Docklands model of regeneration is deeply flawed and ineffective. Can you reflect on your arguments in light of current plans for Docklands that would double Canary Wharf's working population by 2025?

ANNA MINTON: When I was in the early stages of researching Ground control and the Docklands part of the book I remember reading about the etymology of the word ‘regeneration’ and how it really came into vogue from the late 1980s (before that ‘redevelopment’ was the term). It was seen to be a new way of doing things, the phoenix rising from the ashes.