How do the processes linked to the urban property markets influence the social, economic and geographical patterns of modern cities?

University Degree Architecture, Building and Planning

Alexis Taylor, Human Geography BSc.

The subject of this essay shall be, as stated above, an examination of the ways in which the urban property markets influence the patterns within cities. Such markets are not a naturally occurring laissez-faire phenomenon, but are manipulated and controlled in a variety of ways. Government, developers, powerful business persons, international (e.g. European) legislation and local pressure groups can all have an influence on the above markets.

It is important to note that housing is not merely a physical phenomenon, but is also a social and personal one. It is notably the individuals personal, private sphere within a busy, crowded city. In the context of housing this space is known as defensible space, which is defined as Newman as space in which“latent territoriality and sense of community in the inhabitants can be translated into responsibility for ensuring a safe, productive, and well maintained living space…” Such space is necessary for the individual to feel settled and secure.

Many processes are linked with the urban property markets. These include gentrification/developers, power struggles, the move from rented accommodation to owner occupation, gatekeepers, city politics e.g.the inclusion and exclusion of people, and residential segregation. The first one to be examined is the gentrification process.

Gentrification can be defined as “The renovation and renewal of run-down inner-city environments through an influx of more affluent persons such as middle class professionals. [It] Has lead to the displacement of poorer citizens”. (Urban Social Geography p407.) An example of this would be the purchase, for a cheap price, of run down inner city housing and derelict industrial buildings in a place like Wandswoth common, London. The cheap poor quality housing/industrial buildings are then demolished, and replaced by exclusive shops and pricey tourist attractions and executive homes that command very high prices when sold. “At the southern end of Wandsworth Common in South London is a street called Bellevue Road. Twenty years ago, it was quiet street lined with shops serving a long-established working class population…A stroll along Bellevue Road and its surrounding streets today offers a taste of a process which has been happening all over London since the 1960s. Gone are the working classes and the establishments that served them. Bellevue Road now has delicatessens, wine bars, picture galleries, 'alfresco' diners and three estate agencies with window displays chanting 'location, location, location'.” (Gentrification Web). This process leaves the previous tenants unable to stay in the area, so they are forced to move elsewhere to find new housing. The city council benefits from the new residents who are able to put more money into the area, and who pay higher taxes. Attractions (EG exclusive restaurants) which bring daily visitors to the area- thus valued revenue. The influence developers can have over the local government should not be underestimated, and they can wield considerable influence with the promise of increasing the reputation and revenue of an area.

Power held by members of the local elite within an urban property market has a great effect upon the influence of the social, economic and geographical patterns within cities. Due to the fact a city attracts such a wide variety of people (rich/poor, different social classes/ages/ethnic groups) a conflict of interests is usually present as each individual struggles to represent their interests. As many people consider their own views to be the ‘correct’ views, they consider anyone who thinks differently to them as being ‘wrong’. Power is not just be held by residents, but also national groups e.g. Reclaim The Streets. It can progressive, e.g. local community groups fighting for the good of the underprivileged locals, e.g. lobbying for day-care facilities so mothers can work, or regressive e.g. the voices of local elite’s who wish to maintain the status quo. When access to housing etc is disputed, and groups involved have to represent and defend their own interests, it is usually the middle/upper classes (bourgeoisie) who get their points heard, partly because the lower classes (proletariat) lack the time and money to fight their case. They cannot afford to take time off work to join a protest or hire legal representation, therefore can be railroaded by the wealthier opposition. E.g. Stockport County Council building a new tip and waste disposal plant in Adswood (1990) – a deprived and troubled district within the area- following complaints from other proposed sites with wealthier residents. The bourgeoisie does not always manage to dominate the social processes however, as Doreen Massey’s (1999) paper ‘Living in Wythenshawe’ shows. She highlights the way in which wealthy, historically significant families opposed the building of Wythenshawe council estate on the periphery of Manchester. She states “A pole taken of all three parishes central to the ‘local struggle’ showed 82% of the parishioners wanted to resist Manchester’s advances; yet nearly half of them worked there…Battles over space and place- that set of sometimes conflicting embedded socio-spatial practices- are always battles (usually complex) over spatialised social power”. While this example appears to demonstrate a case in which the middle/upper classes did not win their case, it may simply be that they were beaten, not by the working class, but by the superior council members and developers who possess yet more money and power than them. This implies that while positions of power, or relative power can influence the property market therefore can have an impact on the social and economic geographies of a city, it is not guaranteed whose morals/values shall be represented in the outcome. “Power in cities is built over time in various settled formations. It can be lost over night, permanence is an illusion.” (Unsettling Cities p182)

Another form of power held in the urban property market is that of the estate agents, and ‘gatekeepers’. Gatekeepers are so called because they are the people responsible for metaphorically ‘opening the gate’ to opportunities for those seeking accommodation e.g. housing associations, private landlords, estate agents, members of a shared house (coined by Palmer, 1955).

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An estate agent is officially “…responsible for a wide range of activities connected with the exchange and management of residential property. They find houses and sometimes arrange personal finance for buyers; they attract purchasers and transact paperwork for sellers. In addition, they may also be involved in surveying, valuation, property management and insurance.” (Urban Social Geography, p193). Unofficially, however, the estate agent participates in many less obvious activities. Palmer (1955) stated “People often try to get in higher class areas than they’ll be accepted in. We just don’t show them any houses in those areas. If they insist, we try and talk them out of it in one way or another. I’ve purposely lost many a sale doing just that. It pays in the long run. People in the community respect you for it and they put business your way”. Such discrimination commonly involves issues of race, ethnicity and class. As Burnley stated in 1967 “I would do my best to head off black buyers from a good suburban or new estate. In fact it would be my duty to do so in the interests of the community and for the sake of the people who have bought their houses in good faith”. Racist and economic stigmatism as illustrated here is the result of people’s (unnecessary) fears of the ‘other’. Ignorant or bigoted white residents may feel threatened by the presence of ethnic minorities in their neighbourhood, as stated in Urban Geography, p46 “Despite strong evidence to the contrary, meant residents believe that decline in house values is an inevitable result of the movement of a different ethnic group into a residential area. This perception is reinforced by estate agents eager for housing transactions to occur”, and can eventually result in the ‘tipping point’. This is a situation “when a new minority group migrating into a residential area becomes such a significant presence they provoke a sudden and rapid exit” (Urban Social Geography p431) of the residents belonging to the host society. This point “is approximately 10-15%” (Urban Geography, box 18:11). “The precise level is highly variable, but rarely do white households tolerate more than [10-15] per cent of minority residents...The process is reinforced by the self-fulfilling prophecy. When whites feel that their neighbourhood is about to change racially from white to black, they often decide to move. The move itself facilitates the change; that is, actual behaviour patterns produce the anticipated change, once residents believe it is inevitable”. (Urban Geography: a global perspective p46). Such behaviour by estate agents affects the ethnic geographies of urban areas, but their market intervention does not stop there. Gatekeepers deliberately control the housing market is through a process known as ‘blockbusting’. In order to encourage the movement of residents ‘blockbusters’ may adopt scare tactics to make the present residents of an estate feel a “bad element” is moving into the area, “Because the white residents of a targeted area can, and do distinguish between middle- and lower-class black families” (Urban Social Geography p194). They may use a variety of underhanded tactics including “telephone calls, door-to-door solicitations…the posting of bogus ‘for sale’ signs…[and] hiring outsiders to commit petty acts of vandalism or to pose as indolent ‘welfare cases’”. (Urban Social geography p194). The processes and tactics above are designed to encourage the flows of the property market and increase profits made by the gatekeepers. By perpetuating the ungrounded fears of an ignorant community, however, gatekeepers damage social cohesion and the relations within the social group.

The above factors can contribute to the establishment of problem estates, although these are often owned by the Local Authority. The difficult to house tenants are often placed here (e.g. criminals, the poorest members of society) hence the term ‘dump estates’. This is obviously disheartening for the residents, as “…an unmarried employed clerical worker…[from a ‘dump’ estate, stated]…There is a more positive outlook if you come from an upwardly mobile neighbourhood than you would here. In this type of neighbourhood all you hear are negative things and that can kind of bring you down when you’re trying to make it. So your neighbourhood definitely has something to do with it”. (The City Reader p114). Such estates breed social and economic problems like poor access to services, drug abuse and unemployment. As one “33 year old married mother from a very poor neighbourhood…(stated)…If you live in an area…where people don’t work, don’t have means of support, you know…who’re gonna break into your house to steal what you have, to sell…you cant…concentrate on getting ahead, you get work and have to worry if somebody’s breaking into your house…So, its best to try to move in a decent area, to live in a community with people that works”. (The City Reader p115). This pattern causes stigma and labelling of ‘problem estates’ affecting the housing market by setting a trap, through which the area becomes difficult to let and hard to escape, as nobody wants to buy a home there. Notorious estates (EG Moss Side in Manchester) can have a reputation which precedes them, so no newcomers to the area will be willing to seek housing there.

During recent years there has been a switch in the trend from private renting and owner occupation. Throughout the twentieth century the percentage of rented properties has fallen from 90% to fewer than 9%. This change has been largely aided by the Thatcherite ‘right to buy’ policies of the 1980’s (where residents were given the opportunity to buy their council property for a very low cost), and revisions in the letting laws restricting the power of landlords. The new legislation was ‘inspired’ by corrupt landlords like ‘Ratchman’ from Notting Hill. He was notorious for quickly and dramatically increasing the rents payable on his properties to extortionate levels, then assaulting and violently evicting those unable to pay. The new legislation’s also stated landlords had a responsibility to keep properties in a good condition, with repairs being done immediately, resulting in relatively poor returns for landlords- making their vocation unpopular. Since the 1990’s the government has adopted a ‘home centred’ culture, the opposite to a ‘nanny state’ approach. It is avoiding becoming too involved with what it considers to be the individuals private business. This process has bought many more owner-occupiers into the property markets, furthering the polarisation of the wealthy and poor. As more people are helped onto the property ladder those left behind become relatively more financially disadvantaged.

Despite the fact cities vary in formation between areas, countries and cultures, all cities possess distinct geographical patterns. These patterns are not static but in change. Sjoberg’s idealised model of the social and geographical model of the pre-industrial city (Urban Social Geography p25 -see appendix) shows that the elitists of the time lived in the city centre. The middle classes were contained in a middle band of housing, followed by the working classes on the outskirts. While contemporary models show the reverse of this, with the working classes in the city centre, and the upper classes on the outskirts of the city it is possible that new gentrification programmes may lead us back to a model resembling Sjoberg’s, as the trend for exclusive inner city residences continues. This process is encouraged by the developers, estate agents and other gatekeepers who seek to continually lubricate the markets and ensure people are constantly moving in order to generate more profit, as well as general social trends in living, and changes in the job market/working hours. Either the market is in constant change regardless of processes relatively recently linked to it, or those processes are an inevitable part of the urban system.

It is true that the richer you are the more opportunities and facilities you are able to gain access to, and the more choice you will have. It is also the privileged members of society who tend to resist change, due to their wish to maintain the status quo- so they remain the people with the most money/resources. Recently this has gone so far as to start a trend for secure ‘gated communities’. These communities live barricaded behind walls, secure doors, CCTV and private security patrols. This style of living is encouraged by gatekeepers, who play on peoples fears and insecurities, ignorance and prejudices, yet is labelled ‘exclusive’. “The latest figures attest to the magnitude of the trend towards gated communities: There were 20,000…containing 3 million houses in the USA in 1997”. (Unsettling Cities p17). The opportunity to sell security equipment to scared and wealthy members of the public is not one any salesperson will pass up- showing how the capitalist system, and its proponents, can encourage social segregation and polarisation.

It is also important to remember, however, that the processes linked to the property markets are not wholly responsible for the social issues linked to them, like polarisation, segregation, sink estates. It seems rather that both are caught in a cyclical situation, e.g. ‘the poverty trap’. Being financially/socially disadvantaged strictly limits the housing options available to an individual, while renting or owning poor housing makes it increasingly difficult to get onto the property ladder, sell a property or obtain access to a wealthier area.

REFERENCES:

Allen, J, Massey, D & Pryke, M. (1999) Unsettling Cities, Routledge, London.

Boden, I., Kerr, J., Pivaro, A, & Rendell, J. (2000) The Unknown City, MIT Press, Cambridge.

Knox, P & Pinch, S. (2000) Urban Social Geography: An Introduction, Prentice Hall, London.

LeGates, R & Stout, F. (2000) The City Reader, Routledge, London.

Pacione, M. (2001) Urban Geography, A Global Perspective, Routledge, London.

Slater, T. (2002) Gentrification Web, Bristol University, Bristol.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Amin, A & Thrift, N. (2002) Cities: Reimagining the Urban, Blackwell, London.

Marshall, A. (2000) How Cities Work University of Texas Press, Austin.

Pile, S Brook, C & Mooney, G. (1999) Unruly Cities? Routledge, London.