Debt & Dispossesion:

Is the Contemporary University an

agent of Gentrification?
Ben Beach - SN 925215
History & Theory - Megha Chand

No one should forget that the management plans that are being imposed,
and the financial engineering behind them, are typical products of the
university itself, which is the laboratory of Neoliberalism and one of
its most powerful institutions, its hardly slated to disappear in some
catastrophic collapse.
- UC Santa-Cruz Occupation, Communiqu from an Absent Future

Despite UCLs radical past, in some senses it is perceived now as an

elite environment. A new location offers the chance to reconnect with
our progressive past and re-articulate our impact on the communities
we serve
- UCL Management, The Stratford Proposition

You may think of yourself as a part of the student body, but for the bond
guys and the more intelligent ones in university management you are
simply thought of as what creates returns
- The Imaginary Party, Housing Speculation,
Student debt, Fees & Dispossession, a 21st Century love story

ITS ALL WRONG. LEAVE US ALONE

- Carpenters Estate resident, letter to UCL

Stills from Carpenters Estate: A Short Investigation

By Ben Beach

It has been claimed that the contemporary University functions as both a factory1
and a supermarket.2 Within this context, it is claimed to produce knowledgeproducts integral to late Capitalism, namely technological innovation, cultural
or semiotic goods and a steady stream of low-level functionaries, necessary to
reproduce its political-economic conditions.3 Elsewhere it has been claimed that
this role of the University has emerged within a restructured capitalism that follows
the crisis of the Keynesian planner state in the mid-1970s.4 In response to this
crisis a qualitatively new genus of capitalist production emerges, variously termed
by academics such as David Harvey and Fredrick Jameson as Neoliberalism,
Late Capitalism and Post-Fordism.
The turn to Neoliberalism with its attendant cultural shift towards Post-Modernism5
Andrew Ross, The Rise of the Global University, in Towards a Global Autonomous University,
eds Edu-Factory Collective, (Autonomedia, New York, 2009)
2
Randy Martin, Conditions of Interdisciplinarity in Towards a Global Autonomous University,
eds Edu-Factory Collective, (Autonomedia, New York, 2009)
3
The Situationist International, On the Poverty of Student Life, in The Situationist International
Anthology, Trans. Ken Knabb, (Bureau of Public Secrets, Berkeley, 1998)
4
Antonio Negri, The Crises of the Crises State, in Revolution Retrieved: Writings on Marx,
Keynes, Capitalist Crises and New Social Subjects, 1967-83, (Red Notes, Rome, 1988)
5
Frederick Jameson, Post-Modernism: or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (Verso: London,
1991)
1

has transformed the University from that seen in the Keynesian era, where it
sought to train workers to add value through their labour power - into a site that
cultivates a new debtor subject6 through a shift where students access Higher
Education (HE) exclusively through tuition fees and almost always, through the
leveraging of personal debt.7
However the crisis which precipitated the rise of the Neoliberal University
was never solved, but instead, indefinitely deferred and was to re-appear
with a vengeance with the emergence of the global financial crisis (GFC) in
2007/08. As the shockwaves from the GFC resonated into the real economy
and the socialisation of bad banking debts by states rendered it a sovereign
debt crisis, one of the hallmarks of Neoliberal management took hold - shock
therapy - extending and expanding the Neoliberal program under the guise
of Austerity.8 It was all too predictable that in the wake of Thatchers claim
that there is no such thing as society9 the benefits of education would be
viewed by politicians as exclusively a process of individual consumption and
as such, the Student as Consumer should pay for the privilege of their future
immiseration; through their dual status of both a worker and as a debtor. The
student who will subsequently create alienated value in their work now pays for
their own training, creating alienated value in both spaces.
This thesis will consider the mechanisms by which universities may now be
forced to fund themselves given that a significant portion of public funding
has been withdrawn. This will be with particular reference to fixed capital
investments in the urban environment with such investments observably
accelerating and exacerbating problems of gentrification in low-income areas.
It will seek to articulate a causal relationship between Neoliberalism with its
varying economic and cultural lineaments, the emergence of the Neoliberal
Franco Bifo Berardi, After the Future, trans. Arianna Bove (AK Press: Oakland, CA, 2011)
UC Santa Cruz Occupation, Communique from an Absent Future, We Want Everything, Entry
posted September 24, 2009, http://wewanteverything.wordpress.com/2009/09/24/communiquefrom-an-absent-future/ [Accessed 7 February, 2013]
8
Naomi Klein, The Shock Doctrine (Allen Lane: London , 2007)
9
Margaret Thatcher, Interviewed by Douglas Keay, London, October 31, 1987
6
7

university10 and the use of Architecture as Capital11 in relation to the

contemporary university as agent of gentrification. It is contended here that
there is a direct link between cuts to university funding and the forced evictions,
dispossession and urban (re)engineering that large-scale regeneration
programs entail. If this hypothesis is deemed to be valid, the critical theory
proposed will be presented as a starting point for a critical praxis amongst
oppositional residents, students and HE workers.
Applying the arguments of academics such as David Harvey, Andrew
McGettigan and Anna Minton, University College Londons (UCL) proposed
expansion into the Stratford Carpenters Estate will be used as an exploratory
case study to examine these relationships. Empirical evidence, primarily in
the form of interviews and content analysis will be employed and triangulated
with discourse analysis - the unit of analysis for this extended case study is the
Carpenters Estate, based as mentioned in Stratford, London.
For the purposes of this analysis, Gentrification will be understood in line with
the original definition of urban Sociologist Ruth Glass. Glass used the term
to describe the dispossession of communities from neighbourhoods due to
influxes of capital originating in urban land markets, consequently displacing
them to a subsequent inability to access housing, given the resultant rent and
price increases.12 Regeneration is considered here as on the production-side
of the gentrification process, primarily initiated and legally superintended by
the state but enacted mainly through private capital for the benefits of private
investors13. This thesis will seek to demonstrate that regeneration is a spatial
manifestation of Neoliberal ideology, erasing history in a Tabula-Rasa approach
to create sites of capital accumulation through urban (re)engineering.

UC Santa Cruz Occupation, Communique from an Absent Future, We Want Everything

David Harvey, Rebel Cities (Verso: London, 2012)
12
Tom Slater, Gentrification of the City, in The New Blackwall Companion to the City, eds Gary
Bridge & Sophie Watson (Wiley: London, 2011)
13
Slater, Gentrification of the City, 50
10
11

The Beginning of the End of History

For academics such as Harvey, Negri and Jameson, the Social, Political and
Economic transformation they have termed Neoliberalism can be seen to
have arisen from the successive economic crises of the 1970s. Writing in the
Condition of Postmodernity, Harvey asserts the origins of the crises emerge
from the failure of Fordist-Keynesianism to contain the contradictions inherent
in Capitalism.14 Harvey cites Karl Marxs explanation of these contradictions as
arriving from three basic conditions needed for the maintenance of a Capitalist
system; Growth, control of the labour market and technological innovation.
[Appendix 1]
Harvey contends that these contradictions manifest themselves fully into
the 1970s crises of over-accumulation, as a combination of technological
advances in manufacturing - leading to rising unemployment - and a saturation
of markets across the Western world. This in turn created a decline in demand
for goods resulting in long-term stagflation. The long term nature of fixed capital
investments, tied into idle productive capacity, prevented any reallocation of
capital, leaving significant surplus capacity in the economy. Facing a continued
decline in profitability and increasing competition from newly industrialising
countries, Western capital (primarily the Anglo-American economies) began
a process of restructuring and adjustment towards what Harvey terms
Flexible accumulation.15 The Modernism of Fordist production and Keynesian
economics receded in these countries and Neoliberalism with its attendant
logic of the post-modern had arrived.
Writing in The Crisis of the Planner State, Antonio Negri shares these conclusions.
Here he identifies the consequent restructuring of capital towards a more fluid
composition as manifested through a negative-Keynesian regulation of the
money supply and the disciplining of labour-power.16 This negative-Keynesian
approach would utilise the flexibility afforded to governments by monetary
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990) p143
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1990 p145
16
Antonio Negri, The Crises of the Crises State, 1988
14
15

policy, using this as tool against rampant inflation whilst restoring the positive
balance of the market, this itself occurring through deregulation, privatisation
and the flow of finance into what has been referred to as the FIRE sectors

- finance, insurance and real estate17. This would have the effect of spurring
what Harvey termed paper entrepreneurialism, i.e the valorisation of capital
through financial transactions as opposed to productive activities leading to the
financialisation of society.18
Negri posited that the mixed-market model of Keynesianism with collective
wage bargaining to mediate final consumer demand at its centre had led to
massively increasing wages and in turn declining profitability. Negri states
that to return to profitability, capital would have to destroy the homogeneity
of labour power through the fragmentation and further atomisation of workers
by attempts to break political and behavioural unity in the struggles of this
social proletariat, whenever and wherever this shows signs of appearing.19
The highly composed Keynesian labour market, the agent which had created
the unparalleled growth of the post-war Golden Age, would have to be
decomposed in order to re-vivify growth and profits.
If Harvey and Negris analysis is taken as historically vindicated, these
attempts to fragment and break labour power can be seen to have a direct
relationship to the subsequent flourishing of post-modern culture. As Fredrick
Jameson observes; Postmodernism is not the cultural dominant of a wholly
new social order, [...] but only the reflex and the concomitant of yet another
systemic modification of capitalism itself.20 Viewed as a continuation of the
restructuring begun in the 1970s, Postmodernism was a potent ideological
weapon against Negris increasingly volatile and politically antagonistic Social
Proletariat. Through the disconnection of society from its temporal location,
both history and its class-based subjectivities could be erased, leaving society
free to be reconstituted with a new, individualistic subjectivity of Consumer21
Antonio Negri, The Crises of the Crises State 1988
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1990 p170
19
Antonio Negri, The Crises of the Crises State 1988
20
Fredrick Jameson, Post-Modernism: Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, (Verso: London, 1991)
21
Terry Eagleton, Capitalism, Modernism and Postmodernism in The New Left Review, July,
1985
17
18

and in the process destroying the power of socialised labour. It is little wonder
then, that in declaring the supremacy of Capitalism in 1989, Francis Fukuyama

would rebuke and invert Marxist Historical Materialism proclaiming the End of
History.22

Credit Action, UK Average House Prices, Graph, http://creditaction.org.uk/assets/PDF/statistics/2011/august-2011.pdf [Accessed February 10, 2013]

As restructured Capital advanced, a process of consolidation and integration

saw the interlinking of national and global financial centres.23 As Paper
Entrepreneurialism generated increasingly huge profits from increasingly
abstract mechanisms, surplus capital piled into assets, primarily financial
instruments and real estate, massively inflating prices. Nowhere was this more
apparent than with real estate, as debt-financing led to money pouring into
urban centres, leading to surging real estate values24 and fuelling huge waves
of regeneration in what has been termed by some academics as Big-Bang
Architecture25.
Francis Fukuyama, The End Of History? in National Interest, 1989
David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, (London: Verso, 2008) p16
24
Credit Action, UK Average House Prices, Graph, http://creditaction.org.uk/assets/PDF/statistics/2011/august-2011.pdf [Accessed February 10, 2013]
25
Anna Minton, Ground Control: Fear and Happiness in the Twenty-First Century City, (London:
Penguin, 2009)
22
23

Writing in Rebel Cities, Harvey contends that the role of the city in absorbing
surplus capital can be identified as early as 1853 with Haussmanns
reconstruction of Paris expedited in order to absorb both surplus labour and
capital, disciplining any resistance to his program with violence.26 Contemporary
Regeneration projects appear to follow much the same trajectory, this being
nowhere more evident than in Londons Canary Wharf.
As Anna Minton elucidates in Ground Control, developments such as Canary
Wharf marked the beginning of large-scale, Neoliberal urban engineering in
areas of low land values. Kick-started by unelected and largely unaccountable
Urban Development Corporations semi-governmental bodies designed
to stimulate investment in regeneration schemes - powers such as Land
Assembly enabled the creation of huge tracts of land for development. This was
achieved through the appropriation of available public land and the issuance
of Compulsory Purchase Orders that if necessary, would permit the use of
force to sequester homes and businesses on adjoining private land.27 Zones
of exemption from planning laws sidelined democratic processes, whilst public
funds were used as leverage to increase land values and entice developers;
causing capital to flood in and start a property boom that Minton describes
as A Gold rush.28 Minton critiques the consequences for local communities
as disastrous, erasing all traces of previous histories, with the resultant
gentrified areas inaccessible to low-income persons.29 Despite its numerous
demonstrable flaws, both Minton and Harvey assert that the Neoliberal model
of urban renewal has become the dominant force in contemporary cities.30

Harvey, Rebel Cities, 2012

Minton, Ground Control, pp 1-20
28
Ibid.
29
Ibid.
30
Minton, Ground Control, Harvey, Rebel Cities
26
27

Historys Revenge, or the Consolidation of the Neoliberal University

Like the crises of the 1970s, the financial crash of 2008 would bring with it
a huge program of restructuring. Describing it as a Financial Krakatoa Paul
Mason characterises the crash as one created through intense financial
speculation on massively inflated asset bubbles, in particular asset-backed
securities secured against property markets that were then sold on in financial
markets trading primarily in derivatives and debt.31 As the system teetered on
the brink of collapse32 policy makers frantically pumped money into the Banks
in a string of global bailouts. In the United Kingdom, figures for the costs of such
measures vary between 850 Billion33 to 1.5 Trillion34. However in spite of such
extensive re-capitalisation, the UK has in the intervening period experienced
an economic depression with the economy in early 2013 remaining 4% smaller
than its peak in early 2008.

Led by David Camerons Conservatives, a Conservative and Liberal Democrat

coalition government took office in May 2010 promising to cut wasteful
government spending to bring the deficit down and restore stability in a program
backed by economists and business leaders35. According to the director of
the Institute for Fiscal Studies the coalition governments fiscal agenda was to
be the longest, deepest, sustained period of cuts to public service spending...
since the Second World War.36
The Higher Education (HE) sector would not be exempt from this new reality,
with the Government announcing that annual government spending on the
HE sector would be cut from 7.1 Billion to 4.2 Billion.37 In addition the
Paul Mason, Meltdown: The End of the Age of Greed, (London: Verso, 2009)
C-Span, Paul Kanjowski on the Bailout situation Youtube, http://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=pD8viQ_DhS4 [Accessed February 10, 2013]
33
Andrew Grice, 850 Billion: Official Cost of the Banking Bailout, The Independent, December
4, 2009
34
Emma Rowley, Bank-Bailout adds 1.5 Trillion to Debt, The Telegraph, Business and Finance,
January 16, 2011
35
The Conservative Party, The Conservative Manifesto 2010, (London: The Conservative Party,
36
Lary Elliot & Katie Allen, Budget brings longest, deepest cuts since second world war, IFS
says, The Guardian, Economics, June 23, 2010
37
Jeeveen Vasagar, Universities Alarmed by 40% cut to teaching budgets, The Guardian,
31
32

Government outlined that, consequent to the Browne Review into HE funding,

the cap on tuition fees would be increased from 3000 to 9000 per annum,
with changes in loan provision transferring the economic burden of education
overwhelmingly onto the individual student.38

The proposed reforms, embodied within the 2010 Higher Education Bill, met
overwhelming resistance. This began in November of that year when over 50,000
students marched through Central London before proceeding to occupy and
vandalise the headquarters of the Conservative Party.39 Subsequent protests
quickly transmogrified into full blown rebellion, with walkouts and occupations
happening at Schools, Colleges and Universities across the UK, all set to the
rhythm of increasingly forceful and antagonistic demonstrations culminating on
December 9, in what was widely dubbed The Battle of Parliament Square.40
Yet despite the ferocity of the opposition, Senior Management Teams (SMT)
of Universities across the country were silent, resisting pressure from the
protests to condemn the Governments plans, choosing instead to pursue
suppression of dissent and to evict occupations through the courts.41 The elite
Russell Group of Universities were actively lobbying as early as May 2010 for
the abolition of the tuition fee cap - which would allow institutions to raise fees
to levels determined by the individual SMTs - despite being aware this would
trigger cuts in funding.42
Such a seemingly counter-productive stratagem can be explained as part of a
strategy to further extend the Neoliberal university, through the inducement of
a Market into Higher Education. Writing in 2011 Andrew McGettigan claimed
that ...penetration of Higher Education by business imperatives and practices
October 20, 2010
38
Sean Coughlan, Students face tuition fees rising up to 9000, BBC News, http://www.bbc.
co.uk/news/education-11677862 [Accessed February 10, 2013]
39
Adam Gabbet, Demo 2010 Coverage Live Blog, The Guardian, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/
blog/2010/nov/10/demo-2010-student-protests-live [Accessed February 10, 2013]
40
Dan Hancox, Fightback! A reader on a Winter of Protest, (London: Open Democracy, 2011)
41
University of Cambridge, Statement from the Vice Chancellor on the Occupation of the Combination Room, http://www.cam.ac.uk/univ/notices/vcstatement.html [Accessed February 10,
2013]
42
Graeme Paton, Universities call for rise in student tuition fees, The Telegraph, May 18, 2010

is a marked trend of the last 20 years. These extensive reforms are consistent
and continuous with previous developments but represent a qualitative leap
forward.43 McGettigan postulates that these reforms to the HE sector are part
of an ideological program, in which the functions of the state are erased to
the point where they do no more than ensure circulation and superintend the
interests of financial capital - itself seeking profitable returns - with private sector
providers of services. Citing Milton Friedmans essay The Role of Government
in Education McGettigan concludes that the primary aim of the Government
is the further commodification of education so as to allow the creation of a
competitive education market, this itself expedited through the financialisation
of institutions. The ultimate aim being the transformation of Universities into
more business friendly spaces.44

Andrew McGettigan, The Process of Financialisation of Higher Education, SCEPSI The

European School of Social Imagination. http://scepsi.eu/kafca/the-process-of-financialisation-inhigher-education [Accessed February 10, 2013]
44
McGettigan, The Process of Financialisation of Higher Education
43

Carpenters Estate (Red)

& Olympic Park
Carpenters Estate demarcated in Red.

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section of the working c

Capital and class move

and infrastructure of the

Sitting at a Strategic A

danger when they welc

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Debt, Dispossession & UCL

We now have two priorities. To ensure that these cuts do not impact negatively
on current and future students, and to find alternative funding sources
to replace these lost funds. This will be particularly challenging given the
immediate year-on-year cuts to the overall budget.
- Professor Steve Smith, president of Universities UK45
It is within this context that UCLs expansion plans should be considered.
Marketed as a desire to create a World Leading Research Campus UCL
intends to construct a 23 acre campus on the perimeter of the Olympic Park
in East London on land currently occupied by the Carpenters Estate, a large
social housing provision minutes from Stratford station. Current plans involve
the eviction of over 700 residents from their homes, before the Tabula-Rasa
45

Jeeveen Vasagar, Universities Alarmed by 40% cut to teaching budgets

approach sees the total demolition of all existing structures, along with all
traces of the community and its history.46 UCLs marketing brochure asserts
that UCL Needs land to expand within London, citing that UCL must have
growth.47 But this posits some critical questions: to what end and why must
UCL have growth?

In the Student protests of 2010, hundreds of students seized control of spaces

at the heart of UCL in a sustained campaign of direct action; organising
occupations, economic disruption and protests in a concerted effort to force
UCLs SMT to condemn the Governments plans48. Like many other universities
UCL management resorted to legal coercion to bring the campaign to an end
and like many other managers, UCLs provost - Malcolm Grant - had been
instrumental in lobbying for higher tuition fees.49
The dichotomy between the position of UCL management and the bulk of
the student and academic population was widely perceived as indicative of
Neoliberal logic amongst the managers. Yet despite having actively lobbied
in support of the Governments changes, UCLs Finance Committee - which
includes Malcolm Grant - was predicting significant budget cuts following the
2010 General Election as early as 2009, stating that financial planing for such
a contingency had already begun.50 This seemingly contradictory approach on one hand lobbying for fees whilst with the other acknowledging these would
come at the cost of severe funding cuts - can be reconciled when examined
as part of a process of financialisation. As McGettigan describes in detail,
unlike the public nature of state funding, the private nature of individualised
tuition fees allows their use as securities in the issuance of bonds, or rather
securitised loans.51
UCL, The Stratford Proposition, London: UCL, 2012
UCL, The Stratford Proposition, London: UCL, 2012
48
UCL Occupation, UCL Occupation: News, http://web.archive.org/web/20101212004607/http://
blog.ucloccupation.com/2010/11/ [Accessed February 11, 2013]
49
BBC News, Universities back Fees Increases, BBC News Website, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/
hi/education/7947605.stm [Accessed February 11, 2013]
50
UCL, Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 July 2009 (London: UCL
2009)
51
Andrew McGettigan, The Third Revolution: 2. Bonds: The Market In Research Fortnight,
September 2011
46
47

As McGettigan illustrates, bankers and financiers perceive that demand for

University bond-issuances would be enormous, with the under-leveraged
nature of the university sector permitting the absorption of billions of pounds
in capital. Securitised on a long-term stream of income from tuition fees,
guaranteed through demand for university places outstripping available
supply, McGettigan suggests that such bonds would have the august AAA
investment-grade credit rating and quotes financiers as claiming Investors
would love to get their hands on anything to do with the University Sector.52
Citing Karel Thomas, a representative of a lobby group for financial directors of
UK universities, McGettigan states that universities interest in bonds centres
on funding capital projects, typically new buildings. It is within this context that
Thomas is quoted as saying ...raising funds for investment in facilities through
bond issues will work for some universities, most likely larger institutions with
secure cash-flows and big investment plans.53

With the cost of UCLs Stratford expansion projected to exceed 1 Billion on top
of an additional 500 Million construction program at its existing Bloomsbury
campus, it is instructive to find that in the Financial Times, Malcolm Grant is
quoted as looking with great interest at Cambridges 350m recent bond
issuance and triple-A credit rating.54 It would seem reasonable to conclude
then that the rise in tuition fees has directly allowed UCL to fund expansion
programs that otherwise would have been impossible. Increases in fee caps
have permitted the formation of a market in securitised student debt in UK
higher education.
The 2011 UCL White Paper is a 10 year strategy; outlining a vision for UCL
of close collaboration with commercial enterprise, the development of the next
generation of Business Leaders and the translation of the intellectual capital
of the UCL community through commercialisation of intellectual property, the
management articulate numerous orthodoxies of Neoliberal thought55. Hinting
McGettigan, The Third Revolution: 2. Bonds: The Market, September 2011
Ibid.
54
Chris Cook, UCL wins approval for Stratford Campus, The Financial Times, October 25, 2012
55
UCL, UCL Council White Paper, 2011 - 2021 (London: UCL, 2011)
52
53

at the motives for future developments, the paper states that UCL will not be
financially sustainable by raising tuition fees alone and that financial forecasts
to 2014 accept that continued investment in the estate and infrastructure is
key to our future sustainability56. Perhaps the most revelatory statement of
the impetus for the Stratford development is the explicit statements written in
UCLs 2012 Financial report:
The reduction in HEFCE teaching grant is creating an imperative for investment
in the estate... Capital funding for universities has shrunk dramatically
and it is now almost entirely the responsibility of universities to obtain
funding for capital investment. UCL has an ambitious plan... to transform
the Universitys estate with future expenditure of around 100m per annum
on an unprecedented scale. This includes the prospect of a new University
campus in east London.57
If UCLs internal documents do not clarify the extent to which the Stratford
expansion is driven primarily by financial concerns, then UCLs initial marketing
document The Opportunity in Stratford is markedly more candid. The
Counterfactuals of the economic modelling declare that UCL needs to build
upon its collaboration with businesses and Entrepreneurs, develop incubator
UCL, UCL Council White Paper, 2011 - 2021, p54
UCL, Annual Report and Financial Statements for the year ended 31 July 2012 (London: UCL
2012)
56
57

space and facilities for start-up companies and a range of initiatives in the
area aimed at boosting economic growth. All of this is articulated in a language
of capital investments financial opportunities and regeneration.58 With
UCL clearly stating that any location must be within London where large-scale
facilities can be provided at a lower cost [...] and financial sustainability the
proliferation of the term regeneration throughout the document betrays much
of the rationale for the selection of the site.

The London Borough of Newhams (LBN) economic demographics report of

2011 notes high levels of poverty and deprivation that are both persistent and
prevalent59. Robin Wales, the Mayor of Newham - who residents mockingly
call Robin the Poor - has stated that Newham imports poverty and exports
prosperity; the people who move into the borough are far poorer than those who
leave60. The regeneration Masterplan states its explicit economic motives, with
Stratford set to become a vibrant new centre for East London that will drive
the future growth of the capital addressing worklessness, deprivation and a
transient population.61 Concurrent with both Minton and Harveys arguments,
the low-income nature of the Stratford population correlates with low land
values, allowing maximum profits to be extracted from new developments62.
Outside of the cold and inhuman statistics of LBN and UCLs economic
modelling, a subaltern history of class dynamics can be read in the Carpenters
Estate. Discourse from residents encapsulates what can never be adequately
described through numeric analysis, demonstrating a close-knit community
with a low crime rate and long standing inhabitants sharing both friendship and
a sense of place. In a letter to UCL Council, one resident wrote:

UCL, The Stratford Proposition, London: UCL, 2012

London borough of Newham, Local Economic Assessment 2010-2027, London borough of
Newham, Regeneration and Property Directorate, 2010
60
Mike Law, Sir Robin Wales, Forest Gate Labour Meeting, Johns Labour Blog, entry posted
November 6, 2009, http://grayee.blogspot.co.uk/2009/11/sir-robin-wales-forest-gate-labour.html
[accessed February 11, 2013]
61
London borough of Newham, Stratford Masterplan: Executive Summary, London borough of
Newham, 2011
62
Harvey, Rebel Cities, pp 27-67
58
59

UCL Management..

..wants to destroy
his Home.
facebook.com/uclusavecarpenters
Eviction is necessarily a violent process. UCL is forcing the Residents of Carpenters
Estate from their homes against their will. The 700 residents are of no concern to UCL
managements desire to build a 1 Billion campus, funded through the debt of current
and future students. Despite failing to have any meaningful consultation with Residents,
Students and Academics, proponents have chosen to press ahead, branding residents
Peasants and Academics Full of Shit. Students reject this as undemocratic and
unacceptable, and in response, have occupied the Wilkins Garden Room for use as a
discursive and informative space. Come and join events, talks and workshops.

Youre not only going to destroy perfectly solid homes youre going to take
away a community that many of us have been for years, something that cannot
be replaced!!! Our estate is a very nice quiet crime/trouble free estate where
we feel safe to walk about at night... Many elderly residents that have had to
move out already are now away from their friends and community that they
knew and now are very lonely and unhappy.63
Another wrote:
I have lived in Newham all my life and brought up a family of four on Carpenters
Estate with no trouble its always been trouble free and not much crime at all.
We have a good close community because we have all lived together for 41
years. So much trust that we have each others keys.64
Whilst another articulates:
We have homes that have seen three generations pass through them. This is
what drew me to this community nine years ago. Not just the great amenities
and transport links, but an overwhelming sense of belonging. To a place that
expanded the boundaries of my home and merged it with my neighbours, so
much so that the words home and community have become indistinguishable
to me.65
For those outside the community, the Carpenters Estate is perhaps best
characterised by the three large tower blocks that puncture into the Stratford
skyline. Designed by Thomas North and Kenneth Lund after whom the blocks
are named, they typify a typology of 1960s council architecture common in
London. The estates construction took place against a backdrop of a massive
housing crisis following the Second World War. As Colin Ward observes, the
Government was placed under huge pressure to act by the direct action of the
working classes; who squatted and occupied abandoned buildings through
Anon. Letter to UCL Council, September 17, 2012
DW, Letter to UCL Council, September 17, 2012
65
JA, Letter to UCL Council, September 17, 2012
63
64

increasingly large networks of mutual aid and solidarity66. In 1943 with class
antagonisms increasing, Quintin Hogg - a Conservative MP - asserted whilst
debating the Beveridge Plan to establish the Welfare state that; We must give
them reforms or they will give us revolution67.
Subsequent governments scrambled to generate ever greater numbers of units
as housing became central to Post-War reconstruction. Yet as Adrian Forty
postulates, with the need to maintain productive output in the factories, sufficient
labour was not available to build the volumes required. Following technology
transfers from the automobile industry, system building offered Politicians a
way out; using prefabricated parts and unskilled labour to rapidly (and cheaply)
erect towers. Yet Forty argues that the use of prefabricated concrete was
far from simply utile, but a deeply ideological choice; creating the illusion of
change required by Social Democracy, whilst the productive structure of the
economy remained fundamentally unchanged. It would be this synonymity
with Social-Democratic values that would later fuel the towers destruction; as
Postmodernism attacked Negris Social Proletariat the explosive demolition
of the towers - freshly rebranded as symbols of decline - would be advertised
as public spectacles68.
Surviving the demolitions on the 1980/90s, residents welcomed the siting of
the Olympic park on adjoining land and the promises of the Olympic Legacy,
few realising the extent of the threat69. As Harvey affirms in Rebel cities,
the ability to extract monopoly rent in from such centres of symbolic capital
translates into gold dust in property markets70. Both developers and LBN alike
Colin Ward, Housing: An Anarchist Approach, London: Freedom Press, 1976
Mary Lee Settle, London 1944 in We Write for our Time: Selected essays from 75 years of
the Virginia Quaterly Review, Edited by Alexander Burnham, p344 (Virginia: Virginia University
Press, 2000)
68
Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture: A Material History, (London: Reaktion books: 2012)
69
Richard Brodie, Bloomsbury Olympic
70
Harvey, Rebel Cities, pp103-12
66
67

have been quick to advertise the investor potential of the glass walled flats
emerging on the peripheries of the estate; part of the Regeneration Supernova
currently exploding across Newham71. Eager to cash in, UCLs proposition lists
800,000 Ft2 of floor space for the University, with the corresponding - 720,000
Ft2 listed as Non-UCL residential or Partner Space72. With UCL functioning
as a property developer the source of the return on the Stratford investment
becomes starkly apparent. Embodying the rationale Minton describes as behind
Canary Wharf, UCLs proposition highlights the availability of infrastructure and
transport links, enthusiastically highlighting that Leveraged by huge public
sector investment, CBRE research shows that 1.6 billion of private sector
capital has been invested so far in the Olympic Park and surrounding areas.
In November 2011 would residents of Carpenters Estate find out exactly what
regeneration meant for them. In an interview with a chair of Carpenters Against
Regeneration Plans (CARP), OM described how representatives of the council
descended on the estate, knocking on doors and informing people that UCL
was locating there, presenting people with seemingly no option but to move
71
72

London Borough of Newham, Investor Prospectus, (London: Borough of Newham: 2012)

UCL, The Stratford Proposition, London: UCL, 2012

away; for many residents, this was the first they had heard of the scheme.
OM described in detail how the Tenants Management Organisation (TMO)
supposedly representing residents was largely run by council bureaucrats,

who having hollowed out internal democracy, would uncritically accept the
plans being proposed by the council. Describing the Consultation process
UCL offered to residents, OM pointedly stated:
I couldnt believe what I was hearing... John Johnson [UCL relations officer]
came to speak to the steering group members about the procurement of the
various partners to do the development for the estate. He says, you can have
an input into it, in terms of selecting who should be the architect and surveyor;
and I am sitting there thinking you want us to select the very people who
are going to help displace us?73
Discussing UCLs Stratford expansion in the Financial Times, Minton
characterises such developments as driven forward by a combination of dirty
tricks and astro-turfing, leaving communities with a sense of being At War
with local authorities74. Indeed, A Consultation report by LBN characterises
opponents as Against Change, simply marking their negative responses as
Distortions instead highlighting the success of primary school children creating
Postcards and discussing the use of Compulsory Purchase Orders75.
It is difficult to comment on the architecture as none is proposed, simply a vague
allusion to world class buildings, alongside a washed-out massing render,
which appears to be shooting columns of light skyward. Like the Flexible
Accumulation that brought the scheme into existence, UCLs marketing boasts
that central to the design will be flexibility: floor-plates that can adapt to reflect
the pace of change in [...]business and higher education76. As Jameson argues
in The Brick & The Balloon, postmodern architecture embodies the logic of the
financial capital that created it: the endless extension of open plan

OM, Carpenters Against Regeneration Plans, Interview by author & Corina Tuna, University
College London, January 20, 2013
74
Anna Minton, Undemocratic Developments, The Financial Times, November 30, 2012
75
London Borough of Newham, Stratford Metropolitan Masterplan Supporting document: Consultation Report, London: Borough of Newham
76
UCL, The Stratford Proposition, London: UCL, 2012
73

ity in Stratford

the provision of flexible and sustainable

ng, research and living

n. UCL has produced a Strategic Development Framework for the site that
l to accommodate 1.5 million 3.0 million ft of research, teaching and
pportunities for collaboration and partnerships with private, educational and

ast
us, but a
ed hub,
and
te.
eway onto
through
Stratford
the site
lympic
nodes set
vibrant
and the

ng
while
nd
will be
nging
the pace
y,

ion ft has been developed in order to consider potential investment requirements, at an estimated capital
exible, comprehensive site capacity study based on conventional urban design concepts that makes
vel of density and site coverage. It is not a representation of the scheme that will ultimately be developed.
UCL Stratford Proposition 5

space surrounded by advanced curtain walling, a modernism stripped of

content constituting merely empty form and embodying the seeds of its own
demolition when land values rise again77. As Minton states in Ground Control,
the logic of Neoliberal urban space is one of control achieved through intensive
surveillance, erasing spontaneity and replacing it with carefully orchestrated
spectacle. Utilising an army of security guards to remove undesirable elements,
the focus of the privatised spaces is the attainment of high footfall to sustain the
retail outlets supplied in lieu of social space. Minton summarises this approach
as Clean and Safe, producing sterile, corporate landscapes designed around
the accumulation of capital instead of the socialisation of people78. A cursory
glance at the new buildings surrounding Carpenters and the nearby Westfield
shopping centre suggests the world class buildings will follow much the same
logic, erasing the estates history and with it, its class based subjectivity.
[Appendix 2]

It is unsurprising that UCLs proposition is generating such antagonism, as

UCLs SMT relentlessly force through the proposals whilst residents are
sidelined, patronised and displaced. Student opposition has been the subject
of intimidation campaigns79, whilst Andrew Grainger, UCLs head of estates
and formerly a key manager in the development of Canary Wharf80 said of
opposition from UCLs built environment faculty, that there is a difference
between academic expertise and practical [application]. More candidly, Robin
Wales simply stated academics are full of shit and that a lot of regeneration
is nonsense talk.81 In letters to UCL, the gulf between residents and the
institution is stark:

Fredrick Jameson, The Brick & The Balloon: Architecture, Idealism and Land Speculation in
The New Left Review, March 1998
78
Minton, Ground Control, pp37-81
79
UCL Save Carpenters Estate, Press Release: UCL students vow to continue Carpenters campaign despite intimidation, http://ucl4carpenters.tumblr.com/post/36916928223/press-releaseucl-students-vow-to-continue-carpenters [Accessed February 12, 2013]
80
Linkedin, Andrew Grainger, http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/andrew-grainger/3/177/357 [Accessed
February 10, 2013]
81
Natasha Gorodnitski, UCL Stratford: Approach to Academics, entry posted November 20,
2012, http://uclu.org/articles/ucl-stratford-approach-to-academics [Accessed February 10, 2013]
77

We DO NOT WANT TO MOVE FROM OUR HOME on the.. Estate, we love

our community and WE ARE a community, we will FIGHT UCL plans. We feel
what has been proposed is Illegal.82
Another bluntly stated:
My Family and I are so ANGRY. How dare anyone try and evict us from our
home of 26 years? Is there no justice for ordinary people in this country? When
the big boys with all their millions tell us to move, guess we have no choice but
to roll over? This is our home we have worked hard to pay for it, if UCL think
they are taking what belongs to us well think again. We are not for sale. ITS
ALL WRONG. LEAVE US ALONE. 83
Given Ruth Glass coined the term Gentrification whilst an academic at UCL, it is
bitterly ironic that UCL should seek to justify its actions through the institutions
history by stating: Despite UCLs radical past, in some senses it is perceived
now as an elite environment. A new location offers the chance to reconnect
with our progressive past and re-articulate our impact on the communities we
serve.84 Clearly, the community being served is not the one being erased for
the construction of a high-end supermarket, where the current cost of entry is
9000 a year.
Through analysis of the historical origins of Neoliberal thought as articulated
by Harvey, Negri and Jameson, it is demonstrable that such logic is dominant
amongst management in the University sector. As the extensive research
of Andrew McGettigan and documents obtained from UCL demonstrate,
the Neoliberal program has seen the transformation of Higher Education
into a knowledge services industry, that prioritises capitalist expansion. It is
apparent that there is a direct causal link between cuts to HE funding and
UCLs expansion of its estate, with multiple documents clearly stating this. It
can be demonstrated through McGettigans research and UCLs statements in
MF, Letter to UCL Council, September 17, 2012
DJP, Letter to UCL Council, September 17, 2012
84
UCL, The Stratford Proposition, London: UCL, 2012
82
83

the media that the rise in tuition fees and concurrent market in student debt is
directly enabling expansion programs to an extent that was not possible before
2010. The student is now a debt factory, the more debt he produces, the more
expansion will be possible; It is little wonder that the Russell Group lobbied
for no cap at all on tuition fees85. With universities as diverse as Imperial, De
MontFort and Cambridge86 now exploring debt-financed urban expansions, it
is probable that UCL is at the vanguard of this approach.
UCLs proposal in Stratford displays every hall mark of Neoliberal urbanism,
spurred on by public sector leveraging, financed through debt and driven by
the desire to create sites of capital accumulation. Discourse from residents
demonstrates the lack of any consultation, democracy or community participation
in the scheme, instead being subjected to imposition and patronisation in a
process that unstopped, will ultimately end in the total erasure of their community
and its history, displacing class-based subjectivities. It is clear that UCL is an
agent of gentrification; UCL Stratford represents an act of accumulation by
dispossession, a scheme proposed not for the benefit of existing communities
but the continued valorisation of capital. As the abstractions of UCLs financial
modelling and LBNs statistical analysis clash against the lived reality of
the Carpenters residents being forced from their homes, the unadulterated
NUS, NUS warns Russell Groups call for removal of tuition cap would leave students with
40,000 debts, http://www.nus.org.uk/en/news/news/nus-warns-elite-russell-groups-call-forremoval-of-fee-cap-would-leave-students-with-40000-debts/ [Accessed February 12, 2013]
86
McGettigan, The Third Revolution: 2. Bonds: The Market, September 2011
85

violence of debt and financialisation is brought manifestly into the open87. It is a

disgusting and brutal schism between capital and people, which to the warped
logic of duplicitous shits such as Malcolm Grant and Robin Wales is celebrated
as Growth.
It is beyond to scope of this essay to discuss the innovative and dynamic
strategies being deployed by residents and students in opposition, instead this
thesis seeks to offer a critical theory as a starting point for a critical praxis.
It is essential that architects engage critically when the consequences of
architecture can degrade the lives of millions of people. A failure to do so is a
best moral complicity and at worst, collaboration with flagrant social injustice.
When regeneration programs represent the spatial translation of Neoliberal
Capitalism, authorised by subservient political structures and enacted through
the violence of the state, it is clear that we should look not to our political
leaders, but to each other. If UCL Stratford is demonstrably consequential of
macro-economic processes, it is plausible that cities globally are subject to the
same mechanism. UCL Stratford, like so much of the miserable future on offer,
cannot be allowed to happen.

87

Walter Benjamin, On a Critique of Violence In One Way Street and Other Writings

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to the City, eds Gary Bridge &
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Fredrick Jameson, Post-Modernism: or the Cultural Logic of Late
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Appendix 1
Foundational to the functioning of Capitalism, is the continued search for

and creation of a surplus value - a circuit of valorisation - which manifests

itself as Economic Growth. A steady rate of Growth must be maintained if
capital accumulation and profitability are to continue and as such, any barrier
to growth will necessarily trigger a crises. Growth is dependent upon livinglabour creating surplus value from which capital can extract profits, creating
an oppositional binary between workers and capital, with both parties vying for
control of this surplus value and thus, Capitalist control of the labour market is
essential for profit extraction. Technological and organisational developments
are spurred on by the constant desire to maximise profits, with new technologies
reducing labour and productions costs, with competition forcing other other
Capitalists to match the advances. If control of the labour market is essential
to the continuity of capital, then advances in organisational systems with which
to regulate are of equal importance.88 Due to the often contradictory nature
of these foundations, Marx concludes that there is no way in which these
foundations can be composed to generate the necessary constant growth,
giving Capitalism its inherent tendency towards crises.89
Appendix 2
The name of the estate and much of its official history stems from the
Worshipful Company of Carpenters - a historic livery company - who originally
purchased the land in 1767 with the intention of valorising capital90. If as Marx
once quipped historical facts and personages occur, as it were, twice, then it
is somewhat prophetic that the Carpenters Company also invested heavily in
technical education at UCL and that the construction of the current estate was
achieved through Compulsory Purchase Orders issued in the 1950s; the roots
of the estates destruction is somewhat etched into their fabric91.
88
David Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, 1990 p180
89
Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels, Capital, 1883
90
Worshipful Company of Carpenters, A History of Stratford: Worshipful Company of
Carpenters, 2012
91
Richard Brodie, Bloomsbury Olympic, Mute Magazine, April 2012