Paul Watt: Council housing and gentrification

In Episode 104 of A is for Architecture, is a conversation with Paul Watt about his 2021 book, Estate Regeneration and Its Discontents: Public Housing, Place and Inequality in London, published by Bristol University Press in 2021. We discuss the story of council-supplied housing, and its transformation through various governments – not just Maggie’s Conservatives – from a common asset and social good, into an instrument of urban regeneration policy that has at its heart a very different image of the city, predicated a new model of the desired and desirable urban citizen. Estate Regeneration draws on Paul’s deep knowledge and experience and extensive fieldwork ‘in some of the capital’s most deprived areas’ and shows ‘the dramatic ways that estate regeneration is reshaping London, fuelling socio-spatial inequalities via state-led gentrification’. It’s an important work of deep scholarship, for sure. Paul is Visiting Professor at the London School of Economics, and can also be found on LinkedIn and Twitter/ X.    Thanks for listening. +  Music credits: Bruno Gillick