Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

Britain is living through a “perfect storm” of unprecedented political and economic pressures which is having significant detrimental effects on many citizens, but especially on marginalized communities. Surging levels of economic inequality over the last thirty years, increasing austerity including punishing welfare reforms and an epidemic of neoliberal urban regeneration initiatives which reflect rampant and largely unchecked privatization and unbridled capital accumulation and represents nothing short of an assault on the poor and working class in Britain. Economic inequality is one of the defining issues of our times. In the UK, the wealthiest 1% own nearly 25% of all the country’s wealth, while the poorest 50% have less than 5% of the national wealth, and the numbers living in poverty in Britain are the highest levels in almost twenty years. This dramatically increasing economic divide between the richest and the poorest has been described as a “ticking time-bomb.” In addition to the scourge of economic inequality, there is a growing recognition that inequality increasingly has a spatial aspect and recent studies have provided evidence that life success, quality of life and, in fact, life expectancy, are heavily influenced by your postal code. A report by the Office for National Statistics has revealed that, overall, life expectancy in Britain has fallen for the first time in over 100 years,and analysis points to austerity as the reason for this decrease, with older residents in poorer areas suffering the highest increases in premature deaths. Spatial inequality is also manifested in terms of estate housing regeneration projects, especially in high-demand urban centres such as London, where cash-strapped (and greedy, as some would say), local authorities have sold-off massive amounts of ageing and poorly-maintained social housing stock to developers for redevelopment. It is estimated that in London alone, over 170 social housing estates have been, or will be, sold to private interests for demolition and regeneration, resulting in the displacement and “social cleansing” of thousands of low-income residents (ASH, 2017). The vast majority of the new housing is priced at market rates, with a minimal proportion (if any) of the new housing available at so-called affordable rates which few former residents can afford. The horrific Grenfell Tower tragedy was the result of the use of flammable cladding, resulting in avoidable loss of life and the displacement of hundreds of residents. It could be argued that this is about more than economic and spatial inequality – that, in fact, the actions of the state in terms of austerity measures, estate regeneration, and poorly-maintained social housing constitute a form of structural violence (Galtung, 1969), wherein the policies and decisions of the state and local authorities are having a significant adverse effect on the disadvantaged in British society. This paper will discuss how the notion of structural violence can illustrate the complex, often hidden, social and political arrangements that are “embedded in the political and economic organization of our social world, and which ultimately cause harm to individuals,” especially those with lower socio-economic status in Britain.