Heygate Estate Elephant and Castle to go forever

Glasspool is one of just 11 householders left on an estate of 1,260 dwellings completed in 1974, and an articulate critic of what he believes has been the unnecessary destruction of the Heygate.

The estate comprises half a dozen huge, grey, monolithic blocks confronting the busy roads around the Elephant and, between them, groups of three- and four-bedroomed maisonettes such as Glasspool's.

"Welcome to failed utopia," he says, when I eventually reach him. He's being ironic -- even its most ardent fans would be hard pressed to call the Heygate utopia, though now in its abandoned state you can hear birds twittering, and squirrels come scampering up to you looking for food. But nor does he think the estate deserves to die. "There's something beautifully simplistic about these blocks," he says.

"They're not very pretty and they have become unfashionable, but they're structurally sound and functional. Just because they're a bit grey doesn't mean people can't live here happily."

Southwark council has spent the past 10 years talking about regenerating the Heygate and the past three or four emptying the estate -- "decanting" to use the horrible developers' euphemism -- its residents, the great majority of them council tenants but with a smattering of leaseholders who exercised their right to buy.

Glasspool, who bought his flat here in 1997, argues that a tightly knit community, with many residents who had been here from the beginning in 1974, has been destroyed and scattered to distant parts of the borough. He says one elderly woman, long decanted, still comes back to walk her dog.

Glasspool calls the destruction of the Heygate an example of "environmental determinism". "It's part of the same discourse that was being bandied around in the 1960s," he argues. "Then it was said that the tenement buildings needed to be demolished because they didn't create an environment where people could live happily. It was precisely what is being said now." He believes the idea that the estate was "blighted" by crime and drugs was part invention -- the product of an excitable media and of film-makers who liked to use the Heygate as a set for gritty realist dramas -- and part self-fulfilling prophecy, as the council neglected maintenance and replaced long-term tenants with short-term licensees, who tended to be more disruptive.

"Suddenly the place was being labelled a problem estate," he says. "This is all part of this regeneration discourse. Because there's nothing wrong with the buildings, they have to find an excuse to regenerate the place, ie knock it down and replace it."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/housing

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• Heygate
• Estate
• Elephant
• and
• Castle
• to
• go
• forever

[tech4156]

that cow talking like she lived there but she lives outside london in a million pound mansion

[yenbadcito]

its a shame its all going away, really