Stop the Gentrification

by a gent Thu Apr 10, 2008 15:59

Threat of closure of the clubs and pubs on Stokes Croft (Clockwork, Lakota, Blue Mountain, Junction) - no strong feeling on this but maybe the music has had its day - trends change you know - you can't freeze contemporary music

* The threatened sell off of Castle Park to the developers - that's not gentrification - that's just captalist greed - they need slapping back

* The loss of playing fields and green spaces city-wide - again, hardly gentrification. However not all open spaces have the same value, but most are vital and need higher level protection

* The 'private streets' of Cabot Circus - what's your problem with this?

* The dispersion orders on College Green - my understanding was it wasn't for skate boarders, just for dodgey geezers. Mind you these dispersal orders don't seem to be very effective.

* The removal of the Bristol-Bath cycle path - again, not gentrification - just a very wrong-headed idea for a public transport route which would have meant losing a lot more than we gain.

* The loss of pubs and meeting spaces in our communities. Its sad about some pubs closing (some were piss holes anyway) maybe historic pubs like the Old Fox and the Palace Hotel should be listed in some way to preserve not just the building but the business as well.

Anyway - if I'd to chose between derelict tagged buildings and a bit of restoration of some historic parts of Bristol well it's no contest really.

by The Bristol Blogger - The Bristol Blogger Thu Apr 10, 2008 17:31 bristol_citizens at yahoo dot co dot uk

They're not confused at all. You're just being a bit picky about language.

Maybe the term gentrification isn't quite accurate as what this iabout s the privatisation of public space in Bristol.

Public spaces are increasingly being handed over to the private sector (or weird public/private hybrids) to manage and police. A consequence of this is that streets and spaces once accessible to everyone become off-limits to anyone deemed "undesirable" by the private interests running them.

Perhaps you're not in one of their target groups so you don't see what's happening?

by Truth Seeker Fri Apr 11, 2008 10:11

No, the "gent" is right. The green space protests (which are worthy) are being used as a cover by bitter class-war purveyors to suck in tolerant people and infect them with their hatred of young middle-class university graduates. This is what motivates those who rant against "gentrification". They long for the "good old days" when much of the city was derelict and grotty, and they could happily live in squalor without hearing posh accents in their local pubs.

by crofter Fri Apr 11, 2008 12:00

There is no confusion here at all. As far as I was aware Bristol City Council control developments by use of planning law. There is big pressure from the developers and property speculators because of the high property prices to take green spaces and buildings and turn them into the things that will make them money. This means flats, shops and offices and not pubs, playing spaces, clubs etc. This is the logic.

Bristol City Council should be protecting cultural and community assets like these for the people of Bristol. They are not doing this. Instead as the Bristol Blogger notes they are either letting developers change the nature of these community assets or handing them over to private concerns with little or no consultation with the users of these places. This is a one way process, once a playing field has been built on and a pub or club turned into flats then the chances of a reversal are minimal. State control (on behalf of the public) of such assets has been diminishing since the 1980s and so we are in a more dangerous position than ever before, as at least if the council 'owned' something we might have a say in its use. Privatised we have no say.

Gentrification is linked to privatisation as once the local council gives the legal right for these developments to happen then the nature of a community begins to change. The local population begins to be forced out by high rents and high prices in the wine bars and posh restaurants that follow the yuppie flats. This has been happening in city centres world wide.

The point about all this is that unless you show your opposition then the process will be irreversible and our only hope will be a massive economic recession (like in the late 80s early 90s) which sends the speculators running for cover. Popular opposition on the streets shows those in power that they may have a fight on their hands. In any case we should be deciding what gets done in our communities, right? After all we live there and use the pubs, clubs, playing fields or whatever. Perhaps the gent is a bit confused about popular democracy?

I don't understand why being against gentrification involves living in 'squalor or tagged up buildings'. If the council want to enhance the cultural and social aspects of an area for the people who live there then great! This means putting money into improving housing, local facilities and whatever the people who live there think is important. It means protecting the cultural assets the people who live there want like pubs, clubs, playing fields, parks, centres etc. It does not mean letting property developers run riot doing what they want to for profit.

So stop sitting on your defeated arses wasting time in chat land and do some democracy in your community.

by anti-gent Fri Apr 11, 2008 13:08

'The green space protests (which are worthy) are being used as a cover by bitter class-war purveyors to suck in tolerant people and infect them with their hatred of young middle-class university graduates. This is what motivates those who rant against "gentrification".'

What utter nonsense. As someone who has both studied and lectured at Bristol University I can fairly safely say that the luxury flats which are being built over previously communal spaces are not being bought by 'young middle class graduates.'

There are a number of students who come from hugely wealthy families who are bought 200 - 250k flats by Daddy when they leave student halls, but they are hardly typical of the middle classes. Indeed, teachers, nurses, social workers, university lecturers and other typically middle class vocations now find it increasingly difficult to get on the property ladder due to lack of affordable housing for first time buyers... and when they can afford to buy properties few opt for a luxury flat near the town center due to the prohibitive cost and small size.

by lr Fri Apr 11, 2008 14:06

i think its a great thing that people actually care. Im from Reading which is basically just full of shiny offices and flats and no decent music scene. Thats why i moved here!

by Des Sat Apr 12, 2008 17:20

As a long-time Montpelier resident I feel in sympathy with people opposed to gentrification.

Like it or not, my district has become very boring - nothing against middle class people (well, not much against them) but the social and cultural diversity has been largely lost from Montpelier and the 'global village' of yesteryear is looking like a student ghetto these days.

by Inner Citizen Sun Apr 13, 2008 12:33

Is this for real? Inner city Bristol is finally getting out of the garbage heap and you're complaining? It's almost as if you WANT to live in a rat-infested hole dominated by crime and drugs, where people are regularly shot by gangsters. Do you want to save ClubUK as well - or is that a step too far even for you?

I noticed that none of you are mourning the loss of the Eclipse Bar btw, probably because it really was a normal person's pub that got gentrified, rather than a watering hole for poverty tourists and middle class hippies. Shame about the Junction, but Lakota? Clockwork? Ain't they junkie / townie hangouts? Aren't drugs a large part of the scene there? They sure don't inculde me or anyone I know- probably because we're not old E-heads. The young people used to go to the Eclipse and the Blue Mountain, but not anymore...

Face it, Indymedia - You ARE middle class people. Ordinary people want the area spruced up and the scumbags who wrecked it the first time chased out of town. Only a psycho would actually want to continue living in an area populated by whores and junkies to the extent that Stokes Croft and St Pauls are, so I can only conclude that you have no idea what it is like for people who actually have to walk around in the real world. Slums are not romantic paradises where you can plan the class war - they are dumping grounds for all the social problems the State likes to pretend don't exist. Wake up and smell the coffee before you make even bigger fools of yourselves than you already have.

by Community man Sun Apr 13, 2008 19:04

Are you for real, Inner Citizen? Do you think that luxury flats and faceless shops and bars are the solution to poverty, drugs, crime, etc? Or are you like the rest of the people who don't care where these people go, as long as it's not in their back yard. Face it, making the inner city more accessible to the well-off will only serve to push the poor, the vulnerable and their criminal exploiters further to the fringes of the city and society in general. Out of sight, out of mind, and carry on pretending that everything's rosy in our capitalist world. Divide the cities even further geographically between rich and poor, so you know for sure where you can safely walk the streets, and where you should never go.

Financial and social investment in areas like Stokes Croft should be made by the government, to improve the lives and potential of the people who currently live, play and do business there already. Tackle drugs and crime with better legislation and policing, and by fairly distributing wealth and opportunities throughout society. It is not acceptable to hand it over to private business for a fast buck, and sell out the community and social and cultural heritage that exists there now and could thrive even more with proper investment.

But protecting this heritage and making it thrive in the future means we need to stand up and be counted. We should be explaining the myth of 'development' and 'renewal' projects such as this to everyone we know, and making real efforts to pull whole communities together to resist it.

by Truth Seeker Sun Apr 13, 2008 20:48

Yeh, community man, but what you lot dont seem to realise is perfectly obvious: if you clean up an area and invest in it then it becomes more desirable to live there...which means the housing prices go up and some people cant afford to live there any more. Catch-22 eh?

by Mr. Angry Mon Apr 14, 2008 00:29

Quite frankly, Mr. "Community", I think the people of Bristol deserve a break from your drug dealers as well as from this incessant politicking from the likes of you.

Who opposed the police clampdown on the drug dealers? Mr. Community and his friends. Who opposes the REGENERATION - not Gentrification - of inner city Bristol and conflates it with the Council and their friends' disgraceful and corrupt land-grab? Mr. Community. Doing for local politics what the SWP have done for national politics, standing up for the bullies and lowlifes of the world, intelectually lazy and ultimately just as much a coloniser of working class areas as the yuppies you profess to hate, you are part of the problem. So self indulgent, you'd rather the place was a craphole so that you can "experience" that "authentic" inner city grot and go to cruddy old clubs from the 1980s than actually live in a functioning society.

St. Pauls is a craphole and the sooner it is replaced by ANYTHING - the better. And people who claim to speak for "the community" have pretty much always been on the side of the drug dealers, economically they tend to be customers and socially they tend to sympathise with them, much as the misguided liberals elsewhere seem to think that chavs are somehow representative of the working class in general, white liberals think that drug dealers represent black people when in fact these bastards are PREYING on the community and have long ago destroyed any and all community spirit in the area.

Quit smoking damn DOPE and hanging out at the bloody LAKOTA, and I might not LAUGH IN YOUR FACE when you whine about "the community". There is no community in St. Pauls and hasn't been for years - just a rapacious, dog-eat-dog Social Darwinsim. In this case, the yuppies are doing Bristol a favour, and in fact if you do a bit of basic research you'd know that there's plenty of affordable housing being sorted out - the whole point of the regeneration scheme is to prevent ghettoes of extreme poverty like the ones you seem to find so romantic.

And no, I don't care where the gangsters go - they can go to hell as far I'm concerned. Life in jail or deportation sound good to me. Like I said, the people of Bristol deserve a break from the people who supply you with drugs - but then that would mean supporting "the pigs", wouldn't it?

Here is your "community" - a whole generation that's grown up with no cash and no opportunities except violence and drugs - but the stweets are all so womantic, right tarquin?

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xHbPGccijv4

Look at the comments - completely illiterate, violent, macho, no idea of other people at all. Textbook antisocial personalities, forged in the nightmare of these post-Thatcher era, neo-Victorian slums. And you want to KEEP it this way?!?

Get out of my city. Just get out.

by St.Pauls Resident Mon Apr 14, 2008 09:36

I am a resident of St.Pauls, and have been for some time and the frankly insulting and racist sub-text of the comments by Mr.Angry and ...well..off the scale.

There is a community in St.Pauls, a vibrant one. Mr.Angry where do you get off on? The thing you seem to want replaced with 'anything else' is our homes, where we live. The vast majority of the area are ordinary people living normal lives with similar aspirations to anyone else in the city. Or is it that the homes of people with less money that other areas are fair game for developers? that we don't get a say in his schemes? That has been the central problem with the area for decades - that people who don't live here seem to think they know what is best for us and we should just shut up and let our betters get on with it.

Lets start with the drug dealing. Yes the area has a problem. However drugs are a global issue and not one of St.Pauls creation. Plus almost all of the addicts come from outside the area. Some of the dealers also come from outside the area. It has got better in recent years as, with the support of the community, several major South West dealing spots in St.Pauls have been closed - the black and white, and St.nicks house. If Mr.Angry would bother to look, he would find loads and loads of letters from residents and the community groups in St.Pauls supporting these actions. So he is wrong, wrong, wrong.

The people of st.pauls are tired of being dumped on. The traffic gets dumped on us, via the M32, used to store traffic for the whole city, giving us some of the highest levels of carcinogenic pollution in the UK. We have the highest proportion of social projects (half-way houses, homeless shelters, young people homes, probation office, drug treatment etc, etc) than any other area in the city - meaning all the people with problems get dumped in the area. We get the highest proportion of refugees placed and/or living here (and people are welcome, however we don't get the support from the council or national government needed). We get dumped on and then people look down their nose at us at the inevitable problems created elsewhere.

And the 'evidence' cited for his neo-colonial view of St.Pauls? A youtube clip and the comments (which are going to be global). Yes gangster rap has a misogynistic, homophobic and glorification of violence streak a mile wide - but what supports it? The people who buy it, the vast majority of whom are white middle class teenagers.

Please, mr angry, take your ideas of what you think we need and leave the city.

by dweller of the suburbs Mon Apr 14, 2008 13:54

the "people of bristol" are being pushed out of these areas. city rd working class rd full of flats the rent goes up, working class people can no longer afford to live there so they are thrown out ward. i thoguht that was blindingly obvious?. so all the "regeneration"(hahahahhahaha) that takes place is not much good to them becuase now they live in hartcliffe withywood southmead easton downend fishponds etc. i wont be able to afford to live/use that "functioning society" once its been "redevolped". and the "whores" you hate so much have already begun to be forced out of the inner city further and futher up stapelton rd. the problems the crime etc will all be thrown far away as well. it wont leave this city. you dont actualy seem to understand whats going on. i used to enjoy the eclipse and club uk but that was just the start i dont want anymore of those places to go to the middleclasses as well. as for "preventing gehttos of poverty" youve obviosuly never been to hartcliffe and other similar places. why arent they building yuppie flats out there!!?!?. your whole arguement is based on a personal attack on the people commenting talk about the issue please we can all sit around swearing at each other very easily. "why arent they building yuppie flats out there!!?!?" answer my question please if your serious about the issues.

by Medication man Tue Apr 15, 2008 00:30

So it's all someone else's fault, yet when someone tries to do something about it, then it's a giant conspiracy against you.

I'd say it was more racist, not to say extremely patronising, to want the black community to live in a slum, to be honest. And it is unbelievably self indulgent to moan about the loss of some poxy druggie clubs - do you know what processes bring you those clubs and the drugs you take there? Cocaine is like modern day slavery; it has turned Jamaica, Columbia and many parts of Britain and the US into war zones, but I don't see anyone here complaining about the coke trade. In fact they seem to think that narco-guerillas are "freedom fighters", but that is another story...

They ARE building yuppie flats in south bristol, but again the hippies don't complain about that because they don't like to hang out in the cruddy council estates. White trash is so last year, dahling....

I admit - I am a bit out of date - The last community thing I went to there was the police conference in the Malcom X centre. The gangsters showed up and took over the meeting. St. Pauls struck me then as primarily a business district - there was no community there, just a lot of frightened people who had nowhere else to go and a few very brave middle class people.

Why is it racist to want the gangs out? You're the racists if you really do want to keep the black area a violent slum. I don't think you understand just how the rest of town sees St. Pauls - it's percieved to be extremely dangerous for both residents and visitors. Especially when community TV shows pistol packing youths boasting of how they put residents "in the firing line".

If you want to talk about racism, what about the mouthful of abuse that got ladled out to the copper who was putting his life on the line to clean up the area? "YOU brought drugs into the country a zillion years ago in the opium wars, gibber gibber!" Remember that?

The "community" tolerated these lowlifes, and I distinctly remember "community leaders" going on TV to whine about the police action against those Aggi scumbags, to give another example.

St. Pauls is not a popular area in Bristol; rightly or wrongly people don't like your area because you allowed thugs to take over and then you cry racism whenever anyone tries to do something about it. Well, the decent people of Bristol are sick and tired of having an American-style ghetto on their doorstep. Make of that what you will; we won't have this violence in our city and we will throw a big party when it is run out of town on a rail. Oh, and again -how dare you make out that complaining about the drug gangs is "racist"? Most of the victims are black.

BTW, Brixton got done up quite nicely and black people benefited hugely. The area isn't controlled by gangsters anymore and house prices have gone up. Success!

Don't blame "people from outside the area" for your areas problems. I went to school in Montpelier, I've seen people I went to school with go out and become hardcore drug dealers, because that's the career path you're given if you live in a twenty-first century slum. It sucks and it has to change.

The problem here is capitalism itsself, which creates these problems and causes urban blight.. Sadly no-one has yet had a better idea.

Perhaps you should spend less time looking for someone to blame and more time trying to create the alternative.

by The Bristol Blogger - The Bristol Blogger Tue Apr 15, 2008 07:44 bristol_citizens at yahoo dot co dot uk

"You allowed thugs to take over and then you cry racism whenever anyone tries to do something about it."

Really?

Ever come across this:

"It reminds me somewhat of the state of ‘community policing’ that developed in St. Paul’s in the period from the murder of Bangy Berry at the beginning of 1996 through the late 90s into the early 2000s. Many local people were horrified at the foothold Jamaican Yardies were getting in the area, bringing more guns and crack into St. Paul’s. Residents’ groups and tenant associations repeatedly appealed to the police to do something, only to be repeatedly brushed off with the mantra, “There are no Jamaican Yardie gangs in St. Paul’s.”

Instead the local police chiefs refused to tackle the bandits treating our neighbourhood like their own private Wild West frontier town. Instead the police blackmailed local residents with a threat: St. Paul’s would not be policed like any other ward in Bristol. St. Paul’s residents would have to gather the evidence themselves and testify in court, at their own risk. Only then would the police do anything.

Except we know now that the police were long aware of the Jamaican Yardies. By 2003 A&S was admitting that it knew there were dangerous gangsters waging war on our streets, and was spinning its own, much-embellished narrative of a Chicago-style gang war between the Yardies and the Aggi Crew, not only to local hacks at the Post, but also to out-of-town crime reporters like Tony Thompson. Of course, the inconvenient truth of abandoning the locals in the late 90s was left out of the briefings. No mention was made of the police’s categorical denials that Yardies owned Tivoli Gardens and the Frontline before the ‘official’ timeline permitted.

The truth is messy. And seeking after the truth should not be about wish-fulfillment."

http://bristle.wordpress.com/2007/09/21/police-play-spi...ival/

by st pauls resident Tue Apr 15, 2008 12:15

"I admit - I am a bit out of date"

Yes you are, but that does not seem to stop you from ranting and painting the whole area and those who live in it with a the same brush of "helping gangs and hating cops". That is rubbish and you would know it if you knew anyting more about the area and those of us who live there.

All the crack houses that have been shut down in the area have been done with community assistance because of the way the law works it can only be done that way. For example the Black and White was a business, and the laws regarding closing a business are very strict and it took time, including lots of community support for it to happen. Nobody was crying racism or helping the gangs as you accuse, just working to make our area better. And we did it.

All st.pauls asks is the same level of service as the rest of the city. no more no less. it is just that we have to fight for this, stuff happens here that would never be tolerated say in Clifton, here the council etc turn a blind eye. And yes, 'people from outside the area' are a problem for us; who do you think buys all the coke and weed sold in the area? Yes, people from outside the area. Again if you knew anything about the situation you would know about the battles the community has had, not just with dealers and thugs, but with the council and developers.

You commit the most classic mistake of all in regard to st.pauls - as somebody who by their own admission does not know what is going on, you still feel you have the right to judge and pontificate on where you don't live. Well I live there and am involved in the community day-to-day and there are good people who just want to get on with their lives without yardies or property speculators messing things up.

I am not going to tell you about your area and it's problems, where do people get off doing the same with st.pauls?

by Mr. Medication Tue Apr 15, 2008 16:00

Fair enough, I just get angry at all the rich hippies and trustafarians who aren't from Bristol themselves, and who just want to keep their sleazy hangouts going so they can still play at being revolutionaries when they're fourty. Don't trust them - they're addicted to losing and only care about how good they look in their vanity publications.

by Ella Tue Apr 15, 2008 19:59

"BTW, Brixton got done up quite nicely and black people benefited hugely. The area isn't controlled by gangsters anymore and house prices have gone up. Success!"

I'm from London and all I have to say about that is hahahahahaha.

by Medication man Tue Apr 15, 2008 23:19

That was my understanding of the situation, anyway.

(blushes a deep, crimson red)

They are gentrifying South Bristol though - so where's the outrage on behalf of that area?

It's a mixed bag, this business - some people lose, but everyone gains in that at least it's safe to walk the streets. My estate was still pretty dodgy when I moved in, and then the drug dealers got run out of town and the hotel built, and it has got much better around here. Sure, it's a pain in the ass that I have to look at more rich, smug arseholes that I want to, but it's better than having to check my pockets every time I pass someone in the street or worry about flying lead from the dodgy dudes who had taken over the corner shop. Hell, I can even use the local shop myself now, confident in the knowlege that I'm not helping to launder drug money.

I honestly think that you are getting your knickers in a twist over nothing, in fact over some changes which will be good for Bristol (this obviously does not include the sell offs of the parkland). Rave has had it's day; it's a shame about the pubs but there will be other ones. Anyway, haven't you revolutionaries got better things to do than drink?

And take heart - there's a recession coming, there'll be plenty of grot when that hits, believe me!

by Truth Seeker Wed Apr 16, 2008 12:26

No, Medication man is right, several times.

First, Brixton is way better than it used to be. It's still pretty bad, but compared to what it was like in the late 80's and early 90's it's way better. Why? Oh, "gentrification".

Second, they ARE building yuppie flats in places like Hartcliffe.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7016787.stm
But guess what, the usual suspects (most of the posting here I bet) ranted about that ASWELL!
http://thebristolblogger.wordpress.com/2007/09/08/fifte...outh/

In fact, "badnewswade" has posted a good response on the BBs page here:
http://thebristolblogger.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/plug-2/
and Ella's response there shows he has hit a nerve.

by Adam Wed Apr 16, 2008 23:14

There's loads here from all sides I agree with but the point that everyone seems to be missing is that we don't have enough homes being built and to bang on about not having them in your neighbourhood is just nimbyism. The only time this country was building fewer homes was in the war. Bristol is particularly short of land and if you can't convert old buildings then you have to use derelict land. If you can't find that you have to build on under-used open-space. If you can't build on that you have to build on green belt - and like most people I like green belt. So we will need new homes in St Pauls and South Bristol and anywhere else we can fit them - in a sensible, sustainable, well-planned schemes. Anyway I'd rather we kept building in the cities so we can all walk to work. We will need to build a lot of flats because we're all staying single longer, having kids later and divorcing later. We will need developers to build most of them because we don't pay enough taxes to have a decent public housing programme (and we built rubbish when we did). The developers will call them luxury flats because thats what the marketing people do but they're just flats. And most schemes come with affordable housing because the council squeezes it out of the developers as the price for their planning permission. If we don't accept this then when this current slump ends we will have another surge in house prices and another generation will face years of renting run-down shared houses, living with parents or mortgaging themselves into slavery to afford anywhere to live. By all means fight to defend our green spaces, pubs etc if they are important to the community. And by all means speak up for affordable housing. But it would be nice to see a few people putting 2 and 2 together and realising that if you just moan about every new housing scheme then where the f*ck are people going to live in the future? oh yeah - squat - doh. Or maybe I'll let my kids stay at home until they're 40 while we all try to overthrow the capitalist model of housing production. Cheers

by crofter Fri Apr 18, 2008 10:50

Just to add a few points.

I do not understand where the idea came from that people who are trying to protect cultural spaces (i.e. playing fields, pubs, clubs, paths, rights of way, social clubs etc.) are against social housing. What we are arguing about is usage of spaces. If a property is a cultural asset then it should be regarded as such by the planning authorities. It is much harder, it seems, to create a playing field or pub or club than to turn one into housing/offices/shops. This is the point. The owners/developers have no interest in protecting these assets if it does not suit their financial returns. We in the community do have an interest in maintaining these spaces. There is thus a conflict of interest which goes beyond simple ownership rights. I would like to see the City Council protecting these spaces. For example. If you buy a pub. You have bought a pub not just a building. Pubs have people who use them as a community centre. Usage is important. When you buy a property you should be aware of its use and there should be protections against changing its usage. Same for playing fields, green spaces, social clubs, music venues etc etc.

As for social housing as far as I am aware if a developer wants to build more than 14 flats then 1 has to be 'affordable'. I do not like this ratio, as it is unrealistic in the current situation of high house prices and it is open to serious abuse. As a consequence lots of developments are less than 14 houses in plots. The centre of the city has the highest property prices so it suits the developers/speculators to build high value properties which will not be available to most people. This is gentrification. Why opposition to this has to be equated with being against affordable/social housing is beyond me. Its the complete opposite. Why can't I live by the river in the centre of town? Why can't Bristolians live in Clifton? We all know why.

The accusations of Luddism (i.e. supposedly against progress) thrown against us is a classic error. The Luddites weren't against progress as such, they were against a change which was going to remove their way of life and replace it with a worse situation for them (i.e. less control over their labour, longer hours and less wages). They understood that the machine owned by someone else was not going to make their work easier. They were right. If the machine had reduced their working hours or made their lives easier (which it could have done if things had been different) then they would not have opposed it. The problem was capitalism, i.e. who owned the machine and how they used it. I think the parallels are clear. We are not against housing, we want social housing for all, anywhere in the city. Surely that is democracy?

Arguing that people who want to protect cultural spaces are 'middle class' is an insult to all those who have fought for community centres, playing fields, pubs etc across Bristol. Not only is it wrong, it is also patronising to most Bristolians. It seems that the writers are happy to use a few trustafarian jitters as an example to knock any kind of popular democracy. This is a bad and backward move, leaving the way open for the rich kids to take over the centre of Bristol. Ironic huh?

by Ella Fri Apr 18, 2008 22:32

In fact, "badnewswade" has posted a good response on the BBs page here:
http://thebristolblogger.wordpress.com/2008/04/11/plug-2/
and Ella's response there shows he has hit a nerve.

It hit a nerve because I hate people talking rubbish. If you guys would take a short click over to an online encyclopaedia you would see a definition of gentrification and then maybe you would understand. Gentrification means the displacement of communities by an influx of wealth. It does not benefit THEM. They lose their homes, they lose what has probably been generations of culture. I support improving these areas for those who live there. I do not support removing them for the benefit of those who do not.

by Adam Sat Apr 19, 2008 08:39

Crofter I wasn't suggesting you were against social housing. I generally agree with your arguments about protecting cultural spaces but in your two posts you've suggested that social housing is good and private housing is bad. A few people here seem to be making the same point and that's where I disagree. I don't see where all this social housing is going to come from. I've just googled the subject and found a council report from last year. Bristol need 1400 new homes a year to cope and 66% of them will have to be affordable (I can't find my calculator but lets say 1000 affordable homes ever year). The report says "this high a percentage would be unprecedented and probably undeliverable". It would require a big increase in government subsidy. If the council doesn't get the money from the government then it will have to rely on squeezing the developers. Council policy is to get 30% affordable housing on all new developments (not 1 in 14) but I bet they get less because it comes down to who's got the best lawyers. Even if the council gets hard nosed and sticks to its policy it will only produce roughly 400 affordable homes a year but (and here's the problem) only if it lets developers build something like 1000 homes to subsidise it. I'm sure the government will fund some of the difference but not all. I don't like it any more than you but we need to we should get off this dead end argument that developers = luxury flats = gentrification. They are a necessary evil. I don't like the fact that someone is making a profit out of supplying me with water but I'm not going to suggest they turn my stopcock off until they renationalise Wessex Water. And if people don't like developers building in the inner-city where do let them we do it? Cr*p suburbs like Bradley Stoke or maybe green belt?

by The Bristol Blogger - The Bristol Blogger Sat Apr 19, 2008 13:17 bristol_citizens at yahoo dot co dot uk

Here's the full list of affordable housing being provided as part of the Broadmead development:

* 12 three-bedroom houses

* 8 four-bedroom houses

* 4 two-bedroom apartments

That's 24 homes courtesy of a development reputed to be costing £500m, which means we're getting less than 1 property for every £20m of private investment. That is an absolutely pathetic investment ratio. Who negotiates this crap on our behalf?

by another st.pauls resident Sun Apr 20, 2008 16:43

The broadmead development was stitch-up. Not only are there bugger all affordable housing but they knocked down some houses to make the development, so if you take those off, the total is event lower. And what is thier definition of affordable?

I fear the same thing happening in the Dove Lane stitch-up too. People are right to mobilize and protest.

by The Bristol Blogger - The Bristol Blogger Sun Apr 20, 2008 19:10 bristol_citizens at yahoo dot co dot uk

If there's such an insatiable demand for flats for single people due to alleged changes in demographics, how come Crest Nicholson is offering £500 a month off mortgages to sell their Harbourside flats, which start at £230k?

Apparently Crest have only sold half the flats at Canon's Marsh ...

More details: http://www.thisisbristol.co.uk/displayNode.jsp?nodeId=1...earch

by true gent Sun Apr 20, 2008 23:06

A few more points- most of Stokes Croft and a lot of St Pauls are in conservation areas where the buildings have extra protection - (this doesn't include the 1 Dove Lane area ) - so most of the area is exempt from wholesale demolition and replacement with modern flats. The open spaces are also given more protection within conservation areas and , although the council is selling off some green space it is highly unlikely in the inner city areas like St Pauls where open space and parks are at a premium. Also mentioned were community centres - St Pauls now fairly well served with these - Malcom X Centre, Community Sports Centre, St Werburghs Community Centre etc. They all appear to be doing OK at present - St Werburghs Centre, for example, has just got £1 million investment.

So what are we left with? - some pubs and clubs may close - well that's largely a business decision by the owners depending on whether they get enough money from punters or more money from developers. And rents are likely to go up if an area becomes more desirable to live in - well that is true, especially in private rented sector and I can see how this would impact on some people. However there would still be a beneficial effect for all the owner occupiers of the little terraced houses around the area, whatever their ethnic origin.

Finally, maybe events have already overtaken all the speculation about the future of Stokes Croft and St Pauls. House prices have dropped fairly rapidly in BS2 in the past few months and that is likely to dampen the ardour of most developers. So those of you who wish to keep things as they are can settle back into the existing scruffy neighbourhood while others of us can hope that next time St Pauls could be restored as the beautiful Georgian neighbourhood of Bristol it once was.

by indeed Mon Apr 21, 2008 17:22

Adam
- you make a narky comment about squatting... ok, so squatting isn't the answer to housing a nation of people, but somewhere between 3-5% of residential properties are left empty, and that's those left empty long-term, for whatever reasons. That's a lot of empty houses. That's not to mention the empty office buildings. Walk through the centre of bristol, down towards temple quay, and then towards bedminster. You'll notice empty office block after empty office block, all with big "To Let" signs. Tony Gosling wrote a great article on here a couple of years back about this, his theory was that they set such a high rent that nobody would rent them as office space, so that in a few years they can apply for planning permission they otherwise wouldn't have got on the basis that they can't rent them as commercial properties. I don't know enough to agree that this is their motive, but what I do know is that it's criminal these blocks are being left empty when we have homeless people on the street and rents rising.
It would take days to address all of the points from above, but in brief:
Medication man, do you actually know anything about cocaine? Yes it's ravaging those countries. Personally I hate the drug. Yes it's being used in areas like St Pauls. But if you wanna know who's really funding the coke trade it's the middle classes. Walk into any bar in Clifton and you'll find plenty of coked up suits. As for the dealers? I've known plenty of middle class kids (no, not the pseudo-revolutionaries, i mean the apolitical ones) who have turned into pretty hardcore drug dealers. As for the clubs on Stokes Croft, again, do you know anything about them? Generally the drugs with the highest consumption around there are weed, ecstacy and ketamine, the distribution of these tend to be less gangster-dominated, more from munted party-heads.
I think far too many people fall prey to the media spin, they like to write specials about how they've discovered a place soooo scary that the police won't enter, where everyone cowers under their covers afraid leave their house. Murders happen in St Pauls, it aint nice, but in the most part it's gangsters killing gangsters, which I thought you'd approve of. I've lived around the border of easton/st pauls (on both sides of the motorway) for the past two years and rarely feel threatened. you wanna know where I do feel threatened? The city centre on a friday or saturday night. Have a guess what drug it is that's causing that threat? It's fucking alcohol, not crack, cocaine, ecstacy or weed. I'm not arguing that alcohol is equal to these drugs, it's not as simple as that. But that's the drug that's caused more of a threat to me, it's pissed up people who have sexually harrassed me, or threatened me physically when i'm at work, it happens all the time, and I don't see any rush to chase the landlords out of town.

by Medication man. Mon Apr 28, 2008 04:13

I agree with you "indeed", alcohol is a major bummer, in fact the great unreported scandal of the way bristol has been redeveloped is the massive overuse of drinking places, resulting in big problems with drunken arseholes taking over the city centre and, ironically, proper drinkers who don't need to start a fight to have a good time being unable to go out because of the high level of alcohol related violence. The sense of menace and intimidation is indeed comparable to how st pauls has been.

I take the point about coked up suits as well.

St. Pauls has changed though, and this is good. It's really quiet at night, and you can now live in places that you wouldn't have gone near a couple of years ago. There are new tenants moving in now, these are not rich yuppies but working people just like you, who can't afford to live anywhere else (given the areas reputation, most people still wouldn't live there if they had the choice)

I still think that a lot of people are labouring under the illusuion that people with jobs moving into the area = gentrification. This is not the case.

We've had similar changes round our way and they have been very positive, we're actually hoping for a chav-free summer this year and it might happen! The dealers have already been chased off our estate for good. How can anyone be against safe streets and people being able to live stable, normal lives? I personally don't fit in to the system, but I don't want to make everyone live like me.

People are talking about social housing, but social housing was pretty much unlivable until recently, you might as well have squatted - it certainly didn't make a lot of sense to make any kind of commitment to a place that was run by dope dealers and dodgy dudes, and when I did, again, the trustafarians descended, and stole our co-operative so that they could have an organic yogurt-weaving centre (or whatever they're doing with the place now).

Now that's gentrification- take unlivable housing stock, recruit the poor losers created by the Thatcherite catastrophe into setting up a co-op, then when they've done all the hard work replace the poor stiffs with naise middle clarse people who won't argue with you at meetings!

After seeing the sort of brazen social cleansing that "anarchists" and "socialists" like that are capable of all on their own, I have little faith in the "activist community" and what it wants and says.