Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Haringey's Warehouse Districts Under Threat?
An item at tonight's Council Cabinet meeting has thrown into question the future survival of Haringey's two warehouse districts and the artistic communities who live in them.
Both the Harringay Warehouse District and the Fountayne Road community now face an uncertain future following the publication of a Haringey Council report, "Tackling Unauthorised Living in Industrial Areas". (Report attached)
The report, which was discussed at the full cabinet of the Council today, recommends a two-year project costing £600,000 which will seek to deal with "the growing problem of unauthorised residential and live work uses in and around (the) Industrial Sites" in Haringey. The recommended process is "to establish a special multi-disciplinary team to fully investigate and address the problem through a combination of regulation, improvement, enforcement and, where necessary, prosecution".
The alarm bells were ringing for me since earlier in the week I had discovered that these areas are earmarked as being amongst those that will "will accommodate the majority of development in the borough over the next 20 years".
In Facebook and Twitter conversations this afternoon, warehouse residents shared their fears that the vibrancy their communities bring to the borough will be overlooked and their communities sanitised and destroyed.
In response to my Twitter requests to Council Leader Claire Kober this evening to protect these communities, Cllr Kober sought to offer some reassurance:
@harringayonline some people in unacceptable conditions. My concern is for safe, decent properties. No intention to undermine communities
@harringayonline no intention to damage what's good. Priority is to go after rogue landlords just as we do elsewhere in borough
When I asked if she would ensure that warehouse residents will be involved, the Council Leader replied:
@harringayonline don't see any problem involving residents. Will ask officers to consider how best to achieve
I very much hope that the approach the Council takes in this project will support these communities rather than beginning the process of whittling them away.
Tags for Forum Posts: local plan, local plan 2014, site allocation plan, warehouse district
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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This is not about replacement. It's about getting regulations followed so the people living there are safe. The recent fire in one property will have triggered this council focus of resources and now the council must follow up under their remits. Someone I know who lives there says that a lot of the property in that area is owned by one landlord and that that landlord is aware of the issues and making necessary changes under fire regs etc.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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It may in part be about following regulations, Matt and I recognise the statutory duties that the Council has. However, it seems unlikely that it is a coincidence that the areas are also earmarked for development in the borough development plan.
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Permalink Reply by Sharon on
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I live just round the corner from the 'warehouse District', and have found that the community is not enriched by the community there as I had hoped. There are regularly loud parties and club nights which disturb the neighbours, a few of the residents have dogs which are allowed to fowl the communal grassy areas and as they are not supplied with recycling bins, they are using the communal ones on the estate.
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Permalink Reply by Brian Moreau on
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I live on Overbury road and am familiar with all residents there and in the Arena complex.
I do not know of one resident that has a dog!
The only person I see with a dog is a guy that comes from the council estate in the Tiverton area. It is a big black Doberman that attempts to bite everyone that passes it and the owner lets it fowl anywhere and never picks it up.
Also if you check the streets your see about 100 recycling bins! But yes it took years of campaigning for the council to provide us with them.
If you don't think we are enriched then why not have a look at our community closer and attend one of the many art and creative events we hold.
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Permalink Reply by Abi on
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Plus I doubt all the cats I hear about that live there would be too happy about canine visitors...
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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I think it's about both replacement and regulation.
The regulatory issue is real. Unscrupulous building owners will skimp on safety, space, materials, and planning rules. In some cases they will take a risk and break the rules. If they can get away with it. Usually, nothing happens until something goes wrong - sometimes seriously wrong. Like a fire. Or a partial building collapse.
The drive to development is just as real. The aim is to squeeze out or displace smaller more marginal businesses and poorer residents. Especially people who are paying less than market rent or for large mortgages. Or where rents or property values can be hiked up.
I've been saying and writing about this for a while and trying to raise the alarm. Or at least suggesting people give some thought to key questions about what kind of cities, neighbourhoods and social mixing of people we'd like to see.
In this I don't claim any particular wisdom or prescience. In fact the opposite. This has been right in front of me and other people for years and I hadn't really understood it until fairly recently. To give an idea of how slow on the uptake I was, Victoria Norman (Vix on HoL) is a friend of ours and had described to us how she made one of the "classic" journeys of "creatives" from Brick Lane to Tottenham.
It's the pattern described by Grayson Perry in his third Reith Lecture, where:
"If you think of artists, they're like the shock troops of gentrification. We march in. We're the first people. We like this old warehouse. We need a cheap studio. So that's what happens. Artists move into the cheap housing and the cheap spaces. And they do their work and they're quite cool. And a little bit of a buzz starts up."
Except that instead of, as Grayson Perry said, "the dead hand of the developer is noticing it" and moving in, now the developers are three steps ahead. It appears to me that they deliberately use artists and creatives as "shock troops" to fill up and make money from old buildings. (Step 1). If that works then gradually spiralling-up rents. This also creates new legal planning "facts on the ground". (Step 2. ). When established these pave the way for phasing out the creatives and developing the building and site into far more lucrative residential and commercial blocks.
I didn't really grasp this, until I started meeting students who visited Tottenham after the riot; asking our views about it. From these visitors I learned about some geographers, urbanists, sociologists and anthropologists - and even a few planners - who are making sense of forces changing great cities. Some of whom are offering helpful critiques of how this won't regenerate cities but threatens to suck out the creativity and life, using clearances and "social cleansing" to create and strengthen the barriers of income, class, race and ethnicity. As well as severely curtailing the "public realm" - the parts owned and controlled by the community as a whole.
By the way, can I make a plea for us to stop talking about "Warehouse districts". Haringey isn't New York and this is is both misleading and confusing. Not least because most Haringey residents won't have a clue what and where is being discussed.
So if we're talking about what have been called "trading estates" or former factories, or light industrial buildings, let's please use the terms which have been used before and - crucially - specify the particular buildings and streets we mean.
I'd prefer to leave Claire Kober, Joe Goldberg, Alan Strickland and their developer and planning friends to make up fake "narratives" and spin about "Urban Centres" which don't centre on anything; pretend "Villages"l and artificial "Cultural Quarters". With the terms "regeneration", "renewal" and "Mixed Communities" they've become part of a whole language of illusion and obfuscation designed to hide what's actually underway.
(Tottenham Hale ward councillor until May 2014)
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New York's new mayor was apparently voted in because New Yorkers are sick & tired of the general issue of social cleansing (as it's called) during the Bloomberg era. Areas cleansed for re-furb or new build condos with franchised shop outlets added to the mix. Rents sky high, the urban edginess taken out etc.
Borris is very, very busy doing the same to London.
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'Warehouse District' is what the people who live there call it. Who am I to tell them they're wrong.....unless of course they chose to call it Manor House Warehouse District!
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Yes, I and my neighbours could choose to refer to our street with a buzzy-Manhattan-sounding name. But if we want outsiders to understand what we're on about; and why the issues are important and affect them too , then isn't it a good idea to use commonly and clearly understood terms and names which enable mutual understanding and making common cause?
It also seems like a good idea to try to learn about and respect the neighbours' lives, views and customs. People who share Sharon's view and personal experience are hardly going to be objecting to a planning application which will lead to eviction of the artists.
P.S. Hugh, I'd expect you to be one of the last people to support ignoring local history with its original layers of place names.
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When the term 'warehouse district' came into use, I doubt that the locals went through such a thoughtful process, Alan - any more than anyone anywhere does. The name grew to prominence; it's a convenient label; it's in use. That's how these things work; you know that.
You've been part of my precious conversations about neighbourhood names. I've never analysed the why's and wherefores of neighbourhood name choice in the way you're suggesting, but what I've always said is that it's locals who should choose.
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It may be a convenient label for people who live there. But as Sharon points out, it may also be meaningless for others outside. Worse a name can be a means of exclusion. Here is us; they are over there.
With new developments, on the whole locals don't choose. Whole areas of London are named after the grand families which owned them. Developers - not locals - now give posh sounding names to fake "Quarters" and "Villages". Another ploy is to use the name of a real historical person who has little or nothing to do with the development. One example is Emily Bowes Court one of the student blocks in the make believe "Hale Village". Another is Priscilla Wakefield House.
As you know, not only has Tottenham been one of those places which shrinks - the opposite of Hampstead - but there seem to be moves to chunk it up and rename the sections - presumably to try airbushing out the Tottenham riots.
Magical thinking, of course, to believe that not uttering the name of an event, a place or a problem makes it disappear.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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Bang on at the Europeans for taking away your sovereignity, but actually Americanising the country at an alarming rate. That's the real danger !
Americanisms aren't cool !
Warehouse District, bah !
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