Neighbourhood upgrading: A fragmented global history

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Neighbourhood upgrading: A fragmented global history Richard Harris School of Geography and Earth Sciences, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario L8S 4K1, Canada

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ABSTRACT

Keywords: Neighbourhood Upgrading History Planning Policy Housing

This survey reviews the history of, and issues associated with, neighbourhood upgrading, defined as focused, coordinated action whose main purpose is to improve the physical and/or social conditions in particular, relatively disadvantaged urban subareas, for the benefit of existing residents. The survey brings together the fragmented, relevant literatures of historians, social scientists and policy analysts pertaining to both the global North and South. It considers the dimensions of disadvantage, together with the peculiar conditions of urban settings, problems of neighbourhood scale and boundaries, and the targeting of people or places. It reviews why governments act, and why they might prefer upgrading over laissez faire (neglect) or clearance. The longest section, organized historically and by world region, discusses the changing nature and importance of physical as opposed to social goals. It considers the agents involved in upgrading, including municipalities, property owners, other residents, and non-profits, before sketching major shifts over the past century and a half: the eventual shift from physical to social goals, the growing role of residents, and the rising importance of upgrading itself. These are attributed to the long-term expansion of government, the faltering rise of democratic practices, the growth of home ownership, the demise of colonialism, the rise of international agencies, and lately environmental concerns. A concluding discussion highlights issues that researchers and planners need to consider.

1. Introduction These days, governments affect the quality of neighbourhoods in a myriad, mostly positive ways. On my block just yesterday, the City of Hamilton picked up our garbage. In the past year, it has cleaned sewers, trimmed trees, swept roadside gutters, patched the sidewalk, installed a speed bump, and ploughed the street. (This is Canada, after all.) They should have fixed the potholes, too, but that is another story. These actions have improved the area, but even in combination they only count as everyday maintenance. ‘Neighbourhood upgrading’, or ‘improvement’, means something more. But it does not mean gentrification. A mile away, Hamilton's Beasley neighbourhood has lately been undergoing a renaissance. Some buyers have migrated there from Toronto; old homes have been fixed up and converted back to single-family residency; convenience stores have given way to galleries and restaurants. The appearance of the area has ‘improved’, but not for previous residents, who have moved out. The merits of this change have been forcefully debated: the City enjoys higher tax revenues while activists complain about displacement. But that is another story, one that has received entirely too much attention, in Hamilton and beyond. Most of Hamilton, and most neighbourhoods across North America and in cities around the world, have not been gentrifying; far more remain relatively disadvantaged and have been

barely holding their own (Harris, 2019b; e.g. Delmelle, 2017; Mallach, 2018). The present survey is concerned with those more common but less conspicuous neighbourhoods, and with how municipalities have tried to improve them. ‘Relative disadvantage’, a key term discussed in sections, refers as much to the lives of local residents as to their physical environment; indeed, the two are inseparable. For that reason, this survey includes social programmes that have been targeted to specific areas, as well as the more common physical initiatives. In that spirit, it focusses on processes and programmes that primarily benefit current residents. For present purposes, then, neighbourhood upgrading means focused and coordinated action whose main purpose is to improve the physical and/ or social conditions in particular, relatively disadvantaged urban subareas, for the benefit of existing residents. The term ‘neighbourhood upgrading’ is deliberate. ‘Neighbourhood’ has been used most frequently in the global North, specifically AngloAmerica, while ‘upgrading’ has more frequently referred to slum settlements in the global South. Other researchers have occasionally combined the terms and used a related phrase, ‘incumbent upgrading’, to refer to those situations where improvement is undertaken by, and for the benefit of, present residents (Clay, 1983; Varady, 1986). In addition, my usage is meant to signal the argument that global commonalities exist. Accordingly, the present survey aspires to, although

E-mail address: [email protected]. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2019.04.002 Received 27 November 2018; Received in revised form 28 March 2019; Accepted 1 April 2019 0305-9006/ © 2019 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article as: Richard Harris, Progress in Planning, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2019.04.002

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falls short of, a global view. In the developed world I focus on AngloAmerica – Britain, the United States, Canada, and Australia. These are the best-documented (in English), share many urban conditions and policies and provide enough experience, and research, to support extensive exploration of key issues. Across the South, many countries’ experiences are poorly documented in English, and their diversity makes it impossible to do justice to all local settings and initiatives. My first objective, then, is to establish global commonalities for others to explore and test. The second objective is to underline the value of considering the past. Conditions and challenges now associated with the global South once characterized the North; innovative programmes were forgotten, and had to be reinvented. Most importantly, taking the long view reveals trends that highlight the character of our own times, with implications for what we assume and how we act. As I suggest in the final section, the upgrading of existing neighbourhoods has become a more important issue in part because neighbourhoods themselves matter more. This is, then, an ambitious survey which draws on extensive and disparate literatures. These exist in silos: of historians, policy-analysts, and social scientists; of those concerned with the global North or South (Section 2). Building on the work of one writer, Charles Stokes (1962) who bridged that geographical divide, I then sketch a framework within which relative disadvantage – social and physical – may be considered (Section 3). But what, more specifically, is implied by the neighbourhood scale of action: the nature of the urban context, the scales that are meaningful, the roles of people and place, and then of coordinated effort (Section 4)? In that context, why should governments improve disadvantaged areas, rather than clear or ignore them? A satisfactory answer requires us to be aware of the alternatives to upgrading, and indeed why governments act at all (Section 5). Once the decision to upgrade has been made, the question is how? (Section 6). This section, the longest, is organized chronologically and by world region, summarizing major initiatives which point to long-term trends. One trend concerns who is involved in upgrading, and who takes charge, the answer to which has become more complex (Section 7). Section 8 pulls these various strands together in order to suggest how current practices have evolved from more than a century of change, while a concluding discussion flags key issues that modern upgrading programmes should consider.

forms the basis for a global conversation about cities. Nonetheless, research and debates about neighbourhoods remain segregated. There are two linguistic clusters that rarely overlap. In the global North, ‘improvement’ has been directed at ‘areas’ or ‘neighbourhoods’; ‘upgrading’ is rare. The targets of ‘area-based programmes’ (Andersson & Musterd, 2005) or ‘initiatives’ (Lawless, 2006; Matthews, 2012; Rae, 2011) have been given various labels, including ‘decadent’, ‘deprived’, ‘depressed’, ‘distressed’, and ‘disadvantaged’ (Horak & Moore, 2015: 23; Johnstone & Whitehead, 2004: 9; Viloria-Williams, 2006: 9–11; Walker, 1938: 4). They have also been called ‘twilight’, ‘grey’, ‘blighted’, ‘substandard’ and ‘precarious’, or else districts of ‘multiple deprivation’ or ‘concentrated poverty’ (Clapson, 2013: 37; Gibson & Langstaff, 1982: 55; Johnstone & Whitehead, 2004: 9; Slayton, 1966: 193). Sometimes the label implies action, or its obverse: ‘priority’, ‘neglected’ or, paradoxically, ‘strong’, which presumably suggests ‘to be made stronger’ (Church, 2014; City of Toronto, 2017; Clay & Hollister, 1983: 1; James, 2001: 16; Simkhovitch, 1922: 190). More confusing, planners have given various labels to their goal. Occasionally, they have spoken of ‘conservation’ or ‘modernization’ (e.g. Czarniecki, 1966). But, overwhelmingly, they prefer a particular prefix. There is modest ‘repair’, ‘reconditioning’, or ‘rehabilitation’; applied more widely there is ‘revitalization’ or ‘renewal’; and then the most ambitious ‘regeneration’ or ‘renaissance’, with sweeping economic and moral overtones (e.g. Aalbers & Van Beckhoven, 2010; Porter & Shaw, 2009). Not all of these terms are synonyms. Some point to physical characteristics (‘substandard’) while others are social in their referents (‘concentrated poverty’). For that reason, their shifting usage points to changing priorities. We can track this using Google's Ngram Viewer. This supports keyword searches of a huge historical corpus of published works, allowing us to see the changing relative frequency of words. ‘Blighted area’ took off during the Depression, but faded through the 1980s (Fig. 1). ‘Concentrated poverty’ then replaced it, gaining traction in the late 1980s and 1990s. The logic and implications of the implied shift in priorities is discussed in Sections 6 and 7. Terminology also suggests how change is being accomplished. ‘Revitalization’, ‘regeneration’ and often ‘renewal’ imply something sweeping, acts of demolition and reconstruction that go beyond the scope of this survey. In contrast, ‘repair’, ‘rehabilitation’ and especially ‘conservation’ speak of modest change. Sometimes it can be appropriate to focus on a single term, and the practices that it implies. But the present survey embraces almost all. They share the goal of improving the immediate residential conditions in which people live, and contrast with other strategies that governments can pursue, notably inaction and clearance. In the global South, fewer labels have been used, at least in English. ‘Settlement’, ‘squatter’, ‘in situ’, or occasionally ‘shelter’, paired with ‘upgrading’ are common (e.g. Huckzermeyer & Karam, 2006: 48; Martin, 1983; United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003: 130–131). Some local terms have been imported into English. The general meanings of bustee (India), kampung (Indonesia), favela (Brazil), and geçekondu (Turkey), if not their precise legal statuses, are widely appreciated, and these have sometimes been linked with ‘improvement’. And then there is another term, the one most commonly linked with ‘upgrading’: ‘slum’ (Hardoy & Satterthwaite, 1981: 9; Tibaijuka, 2009: 37–47). The use of ‘slum’ indicates that although policy debates still occur on world-regional islands, observers do see commonalities in the character of urban growth and change. Observers began to talk about slums in Britain in the early 1800s; after mid-century, moral condemnation was replaced by a new emphasis on how laissez-faire capitalism was creating slum conditions (Ward, 1989). In North America as well as Britain, this shift in thinking encouraged action, in the form of environmental improvement (Harris, 2019a). A century later, however, the term fell into disfavour. Governments had dealt with the worst areas, and there was growing unease with the word's connotations. It

2. An archipelago of intellectual islands Much has been written about neighbourhood improvement and settlement upgrading. This is not surprising. Place of residence matters to city-dwellers, and to those planners and politicians who have tried to protect, enhance and shape such spaces. But there are gulfs in the literature. Two stand out: between historical scholars and those concerned with current issues, and between those writing about the global North and South. Viewed together, their intellectual islands form a coherent archipelago that, like Hawaii, reflects shared causes and features. 2.1. North and south Our habit of dividing the world into two regions on the basis of level of development is inadequate, or worse (Robinson, 2006). It once had some logic: in 1950, much of the world consisted of colonial powers or their territories; as late as 1970, most countries were poor or affluent. It was possible, though never entirely adequate, to speak about ‘developed’ and ‘developing’ societies. This is no longer true. OPEC nations, the Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea) and now the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) have shown that collective social mobility is possible, even if sometimes faltering. The binary of global ‘North’ and ‘South’, now favoured by some, is no better. There are differences between world regions, but much is shared and 2

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Fig. 1. Trends in the usage of ‘blighted area’ and ‘concentrated poverty’, 1920–2008. Source: Google Ngram Viewer.

could still imply that residents were the agents of their own misfortune (Mayne, 2017), an implication they resented. In the 1950s, a classic study of Bethnal Green in London's East End reported that one resident was appalled that the area might be given that label (Young & Wilmott, 1957: 110). Blaming victims, whether racialized minorities or ‘inferior’ classes, was becoming less acceptable. The writings of Charles Abrams illustrate the change. In 1964 he published an influential survey where he defined ‘slum’ as a “catchall for poor housing of every kind as well as a label for the [immediate] environment” (Abrams, 1964: 4). He conceded that the word “often obscures the vast differences between one type of slum and another”, an issue discussed in the following section, but Abrams treated the term as plainly descriptive. Only seven years later, however, he at first defined ‘slum’ similarly but then critiqued it: “a piece of cant … Slum reveals its meaning the moment it is uttered. Abhorrence of slums has often led to reckless destruction…” (Abrams, 1971: 285–286). Alan Mayne (2017) has recently sustained this claim in a wide-ranging historical survey. Since the 1960s, across Anglo-America, few planners or researchers have dared use it. Concurrently, however, the term became ubiquitous when applied to the global South. It has been widely used by the United Nations, and by innumerable researchers (e.g. Davis, 2006; United Nations, 1971; United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003). In many countries it has been adopted by local residents and organizations, including Slum Dwellers International. Some writers have questioned its appropriateness (Gilbert, 2007; Mayne, 2017; Perlman, 2010: 36–38; Skinner, Taylor, & Wegelin, 1987: 8n4). They point out that, if a government blames residents for their conditions and daily practices, it can easily wash its hands of the issue. Or, if prompted to act, its response may be to bulldoze. Others, however, argue that the term effectively flags a social need, and priority for action (Mukhija, 2012). This global contrast in usage has two probable causes, one obvious and another subtle. Most obviously, the worst urban living conditions in the global North have been eliminated, or greatly mitigated. The current challenge is affordability. In the South, appalling conditions are common, and exist on an unprecedented scale. No wonder the centre of gravity of the slum debate has shifted Southwards. A subtler argument is that this shift is more apparent than real. New language may be used in Anglo-America, but old prejudices persist. In Britain, Whitehead (2004: 64) has argued that “as the slum and the ghetto have been invoked historically, the neighbourhood is now being used as a moral space through which urban deprivation can be recognized”. Within that space, terms like ‘multiple deprivation’ and ‘concentrated poverty’ now signal “local bundles of educational, health, employment, crime, transport and housing problems” (ibid: 64). Speaking of the residents of such areas, Shapely (2017: 335) claims that “socially, economically, politically and culturally” they are “as marginalized as the undeserving

poor or the residuum of the Victorian period”, while Matthews (2010) argues that they and their territories are pathologized. In the United States, where the racialization of poverty has long been more apparent, ‘ghetto’ still serves that purpose, along with ‘the inner city’ (Beauregard, 1993; Small, 2008). Whatever the label, stigmatization of peoples and neighbourhoods is ubiquitous, while the prevalence in the South of a term coined in the North shows that, even if only implicitly, commonalities in the global experience are acknowledged. The existence of such commonalities is indicated more strongly by the way ‘gentrification’ has gone global. Coined in London, England, it gained traction across Anglo-America from the 1970s as inner-city decline began to reverse. From the late 1980s, researchers have used it for all parts of the world, including squatter settlements reshaped by upgrading programmes (Lees, Shin Hyun, & Lopez-Morales, 2016; Skinner et al., 1987: 2). In some countries, including South Africa, it is also known as “downward raiding” (Lemanski, 2014). Explanations developed in the North, notably Smith's ‘rent gap’ theory, have been deployed in the South, for example in Lopez-Morales’ (2011) account of a policy of ‘in situ densification’ in Santiago, Chile. More generally, the term is used to frame discussions of the balance that governments must maintain between doing too little and too much to prevent neighbourhood decline (e.g. Desai & Loftus, 2013). Most generally, there has been a global convergence in thinking about urban policy. There has been a growing emphasis on city-wide upgrading, or ‘urban regeneration’ (Leary, 2013; United Nations Habitat, 2016: 57). This prioritizes market-led approaches that emphasize economic development and an integrated approach to policy. It would be easy to overstate the extent to which similar policies have been adopted everywhere, and there have been abrupt reversals, but a modest convergence has been occurring. We do not yet have a universal planning language, but are moving in that direction. 2.2. Historians versus the Rest A parallel convergence has not happened between historians and other urbanists. Historians remain wary of generalization, and of the claim that the past carries lessons for the present: it may, but circumstances change and details matter. Very few have drawn out the implications of past experience for the current challenges of neighbourhood upgrading (but see Miller & Tucker, 1998). Partly for that reason, most of those concerned with the present, and how to reshape it, have either ignored the past or misused it for rhetorical effect. The results are apparent everywhere. A number of substantial slum and neighbourhood upgrading programmes had been carried out by the 1960s in colonial and postcolonial settings (Section 6.2) as well as in Anglo-America (Section 6.3). In colonies, the best-documented are the bustee programme that the Town of Calcutta mounted after 1876, and 3

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the Dutch programme of kampung improvement undertaken in the East Indies from the 1920s (Cobban, 1988, 1993; Colombijn, 1994, 2010; Datta, 2012; Furedy, 1982; Gupta, 1993; Harris, 2018; Karsten, 1958; Klein, 1983; Tesch, 1948). In the early postwar years, contemporaries noted initiatives in Latin America (“Barriada Integration and Development”, 1963: 375; Juppenlatz, 1970: 82–83; Ray, 1969: 13; Turner, 1968: 124), the Philippines (Laquian, 1971: 39–40), Algeria (Wells, 1970), Turkey (Payne, 1982; Tokman, 1984: 99), East Africa (Oram, 1979: 43), and elsewhere (United Nations, 1967). By the 1970s, then, a good deal of experience had accumulated. Although some knowledge must have persisted locally, these experiences were soon forgotten by academics. By the early 1980s, only a few observers recalled the early postwar precedents. Martin (1983: 53) commented on the existence of “unpublicized” schemes of “modest improvements” in “many tropical cities”; Payne (1984: 3) noted that several countries, including Turkey, India, Indonesia and Peru, had undertaken upgrading programmes in the 1950s “or even earlier”. These passing references soon fell away. Today, the default argument is that upgrading programmes got under way in the early 1970s because of funding from the World Bank (Chiodelli, 2016; Davis, 2006: 70–75; Sanyal, 2016: 181; Tibaijuka, 2009: 38–40; United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003: 130). At most, some acknowledge the demonstration effect of an Indonesian kampung programme that began in 1969 and ran until 1993 (e.g. Hardoy & Satterthwaite, 1981: 245; World Bank, 1995: 13–14). And so, in a comprehensive early assessment published in 1987, Skinner et al. (1987: v) speak of Bank initiatives as “the first generation of slum upgrading programmes”. External funding had led to global coordination and a major scaling up, but much had happened before that. The strangest cases of amnesia have been local. Calcutta rolled out a programme for bustees in the 1960s but its proponents, and those who studied it, made no reference to a more modest programme along the same lines had been carried through in the 1920s (Basu, 1988: 83–87; Calcutta Metropolitan Planning Organization, 1967: 11; Dwyer, 1974: 209–221; Maitra, 1979; Moitra & Samajdar, 1987: 72; Rosser, 1972). Similarly, those writing in the 1920s and even the 1910s ignored the earlier programme, with an identical name, that had only ceased in 1910 (Harris, 2018). Curious! Forgetfulness was equally striking in Indonesia. The kampung programme that was revived in 1969 helped inspire the World Bank and has attracted much attention (World Bank, 1995). Nonetheless, the numerous observers who have written about subsequent projects in Indonesia have generally failed to look back further than 1969 (Basu, 1988: 39; Devas, 1981; Taylor, 1987: 39; Tunas & Darmoyona, 2014: 169; but see Silas, 1984: 74; Kessides, 1997: Box A1). Indeed, Juliman (2006) has described the 1969 initiative as “the world's first slum upgrading programme”. Nonsense! Similar forgetfulness has afflicted those writing about the global North. In Britain, urban conditions were improved in various ways during the nineteenth century, and by the early 1900s several cities were undertaking slum improvement, notably Birmingham (Nettlefold, 1905; Thompson, 1907: 20–36) (Section 6.3). Comparable initiatives had also been taken in the United States, Germany, and probably other European countries (Horsfall, 1904). Under the label of rehabilitation, similar programmes were mounted in Britain and the United States to deal with the deterioration (and in Britain bomb damage) caused by the Depression and war. In 1954, for example, a sweeping U.S. urban renewal programme included provisions for residential improvement (Wilson, 1966). These experiences have been largely overlooked by recent observers. In Britain, interest in rehabilitation that surged in the late 1960s ignored Birmingham's earlier experiences (cf. Pepper, 1971). In the United States, it was the clearance provisions of urban renewal legislation that attracted attention, and criticism (Worsek, 1966). It has been left to historians to resurrect its “lost history” of rehabilitation (Cowan, 2018; Teaford, 1990: 113–119; Von Hoffman, 2008). This situation is unsatisfactory. True, we should be cautious about

drawing lessons from the past, but the same caution is appropriate for attempts to generalize across cities and regions in the present. No situation is ever precisely duplicated. We can look to the past in much the same way as we look to other places for guidance, inspiration, and cautionary tales. Either way, experiences show us which options there are, which programmes of neighbourhood upgrading have worked, which did not and, hopefully, why. Before turning to such matters, however, we need to define more clearly what sorts of neighbourhoods such programmes should target. Slums, surely, are included, but ‘relative disadvantage’ includes others besides. 3. A framework: dimensions of relative disadvantage Neighbourhoods, like people, are preposterously varied, and they also differ in the ways they experience disadvantage. Accordingly, a thorough typology of relative disadvantage would be elaborate, accounting for variations by place and time with respect to both social and physical conditions and expectations (cf. Galster, 2019). For present purposes, however, such detail is unnecessary. What matters is to be able to point to the major dimensions of disadvantage that are relevant to neighbourhood upgrading. Some aspects of disadvantage are absolute, entailing starvation and disease, and there can be no question that such poverty matters (Frankfurt, 2015). But disadvantage usually has an aspect that is relative to a time and place, and this always matters too (Payne, 2017). In North America, today's poor expect services and living conditions, from piped water and electricity to a bathroom for every household, that were far from being the norm a century ago. Even today, many of their counterparts living in La Paz or Lagos can only dream of such possibilities. In any setting, then, disadvantage is experienced by what may be referred to as the bottom third of the population. This includes the welfare and working poor, as well as those in the (variously labelled) working and lower middle classes who recognize their economic disadvantage, and whose livelihood is precarious. But ‘bottom third’ is as much metaphor as a statistic. In cities where absolute poverty is common, such as industrial centres in the nineteenth century as well as many cities in the global South today, the proportion may exceed two thirds; in others it may be barely a quarter. The same term, statistical and metaphorical, applies to neighbourhoods. Cities like Kinshasa and Dhaka are defined by their slums; others confine deprivation to a handful of districts. Of course, the correspondence between poverty and neighbourhood disadvantage is imperfect because economic segregation is never complete. Not all poor people live in poor neighbourhoods, and even slums may contain some who are doing well. Examples include Harlem during the Depression and Dharavi today. The extent of this disconnect, between social disadvantage and the geography of residence, creates a perennial challenge to activists, planners, and policy-makers (c.f. Séguin, Apparacio, & Riva, 2012). The concept of, if not the term, ‘relative disadvantage’ has always informed debates about which areas governments should be concerned about. Planners have commonly employed some type of triage model that distinguishes between areas that are arguably beyond hope; those that are declining but can be saved; and those that require no help (Galster, 2019: 267–70). They have debated whether those in the second group should be the exclusive target of upgrading programmes. As discussed in Section 5.5, the appropriate answer depends on the context but, clearly, neighbourhoods in both groups are disadvantaged. Although disadvantage affects people who are not poor, and can describe areas that are still livable, a useful starting point for understanding its geographical aspect is Charles Stokes’ (1962) theory of slums. Stokes distinguished between slums of hope and despair. This might sound like a simplistic binary, and it has indeed been deployed too sweepingly. For example, Frankenhoff (1967: 27) suggested that it captured a difference between the slums of the developed world, 4

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blighted and declining, and those of the global South. There, he argued, Brazilian favelas functioned as ‘staging areas’, steps towards modest prosperity. More helpfully, Saunders (2012) has pointed out that such staging areas, or ‘arrival cities’, have existed at various times and places. For example, after 1900 around Toronto thousands of penniless immigrants bought unserviced lots and built shacks (Harris, 1996). In time, dwellings were improved as residents found a footing in their new world. Similar success stories could be told of many other immigrant enclaves in Anglo-America. Indeed, neighbourhoods that embody hope and despair can exist side-by-side in the same city. Speaking from his experience in Peruvian cities, the British architect John Turner (1965) distinguished between the corralones of the inner city and the barriadas at the fringe. Corralones were populated by low-income migrants, many of them single and crowded into older, deteriorated housing, while barriadas were being built up by low-income families with better prospects and stronger community networks. The former, he reckoned, were candidates for demolition, the latter for improvement, which was already happening. In effect, a similar distinction was made in early twentieth-century Toronto, between suburban self-improvement and problem inner-city neighbourhoods such as ‘The Ward’ (Harris, 1996: 2). Stokes’ distinction is useful because it explicitly bridges the global North and South, ties the prospects of a neighbourhood to the character of its residents, and above all because it embodies an historical perspective that is two-dimensional. He insists that what matters as much, or more, than current conditions is the neighbourhood's trajectory. This is determined jointly by the character of the residents and by how they relate to the outside world. Subjectively, attitude counts, and (im)migrants commonly bring a striving optimism. Objectively, their skills matter, as does the manner in which outsiders view them. With good skills and mainstream acceptance, immigrants are on an ‘escalator’ to success. But he notes that subjective and objective are not always in alignment: striving immigrants may lack marketable skills or be the target of negative stereotypes such that enclaves become stigmatized ghettoes. ‘Hope’ and ‘despair’, then, define a complex continuum. So far, so good. But Stokes’ argument has three limitations. First, he notes that optimism can become despair in response to a discouraging context, but does not explore how this happens. Second, writing in 1962, he himself was an optimist, noting only in passing the importance of “continuing economic growth” and assuming that slums of hope were effectively “self-eliminating if the society has the time to wait” (Stokes, 1962: 194). The past half century has challenged this assumption in two major ways. First, there are deindustrialized cities like Flint, Michigan, where early postwar slums of hope – in this case, mostly suburban – were later undermined by layoffs and unemployment (Highsmith, 2015). And then there are megacities, such Lagos, Nigeria, which have prospered but nowhere near fast enough to assimilate their migrant millions. The distinction that Stokes makes between ‘escalator’ and ‘non-escalator’ neighbourhoods, then, must also be applied to cities and metro regions. Indeed, the growth trajectory at such wider scales always put a cap on neighbourhood prospects (c.f. Galster, 2019: 266–7; 291–2). The third problem with Stokes’ argument is that his policy arsenal is limited. For slums of hope he sees upgrading as the “best form of slum elimination and even avoidance” (Stokes, 1962: 194). He cites the efforts of the Puerto Rican city of Ponce as a prime example. But for those of despair he has no useful comment: they require “a therapy we have not yet worked out” (ibid). Fortunately, since he wrote, in both the global North and South, many experiments in policy have had implications for upgrading. These have brought new assumptions about the appropriate role of local residents. Building on Stokes’ line of thinking, part of the purpose of this survey is to take stock of these, as well as earlier, policy initiatives, applying them not only to slums but more generally to ‘bottom-third’ neighbourhoods of relative disadvantage.

4. What are we talking about’? As indicated in the introduction, for present purposes neighbourhood upgrading is understood to involve focused and coordinated action whose main purpose is to improve the physical and/or social conditions in particular, relatively disadvantaged urban subareas, for the benefit of existing residents. Each of the italicized adjectives serves to distinguish a type of project from related activities with which it can be confused. The meaning of relative advantage was explained in the previous section, and now the other terms must be discussed. 4.1. The urban context It matters that neighbourhoods are in urban places. Coordinated upgrading can happen anywhere, including villages. But neighbourhoods are embedded in a larger settlement, and this entails particular conditions, needs, and challenges. The most obvious condition is density. Practices acceptable in a rural area are hazardous in cities: reliance on wells for drinking water; natural drainage to handle storm water; unpaved roads; flammable materials for construction; open defecation, or casual disposal of human and animal wastes. The effects in cities may be understood in terms of externalities, the uncompensated costs (or benefits) of human activity, the impact of which usually declines away from their point of origin. In urban settings, proximity ensures that their impact is considerable. If those effects are not regulated or mitigated, they must be priorities for action. Some externalities can be tackled through regulation: a prohibition of flammable materials, zoning to keep incompatible uses apart, or mandatory provision and use of sewers and piped water. As a result, cities are the most regulated sorts of places, although enforcement is another matter. This creates greater scope for ‘informal’ practices, these being “actions of economic agents that fail to adhere to established institutional rules or are denied their protection” (Feige, 1990: 990; Portes & Haller, 2005: 404). That is why, paradoxically, informality can be commonest in urban settings and pose particular challenges for upgrading programmes (Harris, 2017). Residents may disguise activities to evade attention. Securing their participation in, and even getting their assent to, government-sponsored projects may prove difficult. Density creates another challenge: affordability. Competition for space makes urban land far more valuable than rural, and urban living more expensive. People can live at higher densities, devote more of their income to housing, or occupy poorer and cheaper accommodation, in areas that lack services. Slums or, more neutrally, substandard conditions can exist anywhere, but the combination of concentration and scale in cities makes their effects qualitatively different. They damage mental and physical health, and threaten public order. We cannot confine infectious diseases and criminal activity to particular streets, so affluent, elite groups living elsewhere may be affected. Being embedded in an urban area, then, increases the probability that substandard conditions will become a target of government action. As the examples of bustee and kampung improvement show (Section 6.2), health concerns in particular have often been a catalyst. The high value of urban land also offers temptations, especially in escalator cities. Land owners see big profits in redevelopment. They may pressure politicians to allow conversion to ‘highest and best use’, through rezoning, subsidies, or expropriation (a.k.a. eminent domain or compulsory purchase). Mere upgrading may appear to be a barrier to modernization, growth, and profits. Recently, this has been the view in China. In limited contexts, ‘historic’ buildings and streets have been preserved, repurposed for commerce and/or tourism. An example is Xintiandi in Shanghai, site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (Tsai, 2008). But the usual response to ‘shantytown’ areas and older districts has been clearance, while gentrification involves wholesale redevelopment (Li, Kleinhans, & van Ham, 2018; He, 2012). As Shin (2008: 2) notes, “urban regeneration in contemporary Chinese cities entails complete demolition and redevelopment, 5

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displacing the majority of local residents and dissolving long-standing communities”. In the scale and consistency of this policy China is unusual, but similar attitudes have been common everywhere. Urban embeddedness matters in other ways, which determine the likely effects of upgrading. Residents are always on the move, and that is especially true of tenants (Galster, 2019: 7–9). Attempts to change one area will affect others, while programme success depends on the patterns of mobility that it triggers. Enabling low-income households to relocate may do nothing to change a neighbourhood if similar people move in. It may worsen the situation. Disadvantaged areas always contain some social variety. Those best able to relocate are likely to be better educated and to have stable employment. If only those move out, the neighbourhood may end up with an increasing concentration of the destitute and the socially excluded, the very image of a slum of despair. This was one consequence of the Great Society programmes mounted in the United States in the 1960s, as it was of later neighbourhood-focused programmes in Britain (Lawless, 2006; Shapely, 2017: 334; Wilson, 1987). The 2000s saw a New Deal for Communities programme that has been described as “arguably the most interventionist ABI [Area-Based Initiative] ever launched in England, conceivably anywhere”: it entailed the expenditure of 2 billion pounds over ten years, targeted at “some of the most deprived localities in England” (Lawless, 2006: 1994). One was Sheffield, which deployed various strategies, including the renovation of older residential areas (Power, Plöger, & Winkler, 2010: 149–170). They did have beneficial effects, but many leaked out. Those who left the area were disproportionately older, white, and in employment, making “neighbourhood renewal that much more difficult” (Lawless, 2006: 1999). Alternatively, a successful upgrade may raise property values and rents, attract more affluent people, and displace previous residents. That is the stereotypical effect of gentrification (Lees et al., 2016). In the 1970s, the British ‘Improvement Area’ programme was found to provide disproportionate benefits to middle class owner-occupiers in precisely this manner, especially in London (Gibson & Langstaff, 1982: 69, 91). As discussed in section 4.3.2, such effects are not inevitable. But these and other possible effects of upgrading programmes arise from the particular circumstances of city life. Labour markets also have an urban aspect. When employed, the residents of disadvantaged areas typically do poorly-paid but necessary work as labourers, servants, cleaners, or store clerks. It is possible for substandard areas to exist in escalator cities that are growing and prospering. As Engels (1969: 87–94) described, in the 1840s the Irish quarter supplied labour to the cotton mills that enabled Manchester to boom; in 1950s London, Bethnal Green had “no frontiers: it belongs to the economy which stretches down both banks of the Thames” (Young & Wilmott, 1957: 89); today, slums ranging in scale from Annawadi (3000) up to Dharavi (1 million) provide the garbage pickers and cleaners as well as many small businesses that keep Mumbai humming (Boo, 2012; Sharma, 2000: 75–124). The success and effects of neighbourhood upgrading, particularly if targeted at multiple areas, will depend on the role that affected residents play on the local labour scene. Each of these effects of embeddedness – externalities, affordability problems, pressure for redevelopment, housing and labour market linkages – affect the form programmes of improvement should take. Mostly, they make the challenges greater, but in one respect the urban setting simplifies things. Poor conditions and prospects in an isolated settlement reflect a weak local economy, so that job creation has to be a priority. That is often true in neighbourhoods, too. Certainly, municipalities cannot counteract the effects of wholesale urban decline, and in recent years they have emphasizes the economic aspects of urban renewal (Galster, 2019: 291–2; Stone, 2015). But that does not have to be so because concentrated poverty exists in urban areas such as Vancouver that are otherwise thriving (Liu & Blomley, 2013). In such situations, planners can focus largely on local, social issues. This, however, involves the challenge of how best to define the neighbourhoods

of interest. 4.2. Scales, boundaries, and proper names Annawadi is somewhat smaller than the average North American census tract; Dharavi is three hundred times larger. Each is referred to as an entity but they function differently as wholes while the costs, along with the social, economic, and political implications, of changing them is hugely different. Does it make sense to speak of both, or either, as ‘neighbourhoods’? More generally, how important are size, social and physical characteristics, or indeed a name, in deciding what counts as one? The question of size has always been vexing (Lupton & Power, 2004). Characterizing the parts of a city, researchers use census tract data because they are conveniently available. But tract boundaries rarely outline the places that residents care about. These are typically multiple. In the United States, for example, Chaskin (1998) has suggested that three scales matter: the face block, the ‘residential’, and the ‘institutional’ neighbourhood. Downs (1981: 13–14) adds a fourth, ‘regional’, which might correspond to a small suburb or catchment for a large high school, while he labels the others ‘immediate’, “homogeneous” (in terms of property values), and “institution-oriented” (cf. Galster, 2019: 24). The latter may be defined by primary school catchment areas, church parishes, planning districts, or city wards, none of which in turn are likely to coincide. For many people, the block is what matters most because it determines who they see and what they cannot avoid on a daily basis. Quebecers have a word for this, voisinage, from the French for ‘neighbour’, voisin. At this scale community is built from casual encounters, especially among children (Grannis, 2009: 13, 94). Annawadi had no city blocks in the North American sense but its residents distinguished three block-sized subareas within their modest settlement (Boo, 2012: 42). Bethnal Green had dead-end, block-length “turnings” that framed sociality (Young & Wilmott, 1957: 109). Usually, block residents do not organize, except perhaps for a street party or to oppose a proposed development, although in 1950s Bethnal Green many turnings had their own pub. Even so, although often overlooked, quite a few blocks do organize, and to some effect (Seligman, 2005). For other purposes, however, such as school attendance, it is a much larger scale that matters. That is why, in the 1970s when Vancouver planners tried to identify meaningful neighbourhoods, they threw up their hands: “neighbourhood is a term which can mean anything from an area of several blocks to a local area (several miles within a large city) depending on the context” (City of Vancouver, 1978: 25). In the end, they aggregated tracts to create planning areas with precise boundaries that probably meant little to local residents. Although residents care about residential areas of various sizes, one of these is often tract-size (Coulton, Korbin, Chan, & Su, 2001). The difficulty is that, even then, the boundaries differ, being based on “lived experience” (Grannis, 2009: 100; c.f. Chaskin, 1998: 13). This matters because, if residents do not identify with planning areas then it becomes more difficult to engage them in upgrading projects: as Brown, Perkins, and Brown (2003) found, local attachment is an important, if neglected, resource. There is no perfect way to resolve this issue, because everyone's lived experience is different. Each of us define the boundaries of our neighbourhoods egocentrically, centred on and extending from our homes (Lee & Campbell, 1997). Fortunately, residents tend to agree on important boundaries, especially if major physical and social features are present (Grannis, 2009). And, even if planners create areas that initially have little meaning, in time they may acquire significance simply by having been designated (c.f. Horak & Moore, 2015: 199). Hamilton, Ontario, provides a fine example. In the 1960s, planners designated planning districts across the city, and often invented names for them. One such area, Durand, soon saw a lot of piecemeal demolition and high-rise redevelopment, and so a Durand Resident's Association soon formed in opposition (Elman, 2001). Within a decade, 6

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then, residents had accepted a neighbourhood name, together with arbitrary boundaries, and made it part of their identity. But such ready acceptance is not inevitable. In general, whoever undertakes a programme of neighbourhood upgrading must figure out, and then negotiate, an ambiguous and complex geographical terrain. And money creates envy. When programmes are selective, they generate resistance from those who live outside the arbitrary boundary. Whitehead (2004: 68–69) describes this in Walsall, near Birmingham, England. In the 1990s, national programmes helped designated areas that were deemed in need of ‘regeneration’. In Walsall, residents could not agree on the relevant boundaries, which exacerbated a feud over funding. As Whitehead suggests (ibid, 68), the root problem was that national policy was based on “the implicit assumption that neighbourhoods exist and present themselves as natural, organic entities”. This common misconception has bedevilled many such programmes. Indeed, although neighbourhoods, however defined, usually do matter, that is not always the case. Some areas lack coherent communities, even where we might expect to find them (Gibson & Langstaff, 1982: 132). Many believe that in the nineteenth century, through shared experiences, working-class areas developed tight-knit communities. This especially involved women, whose domestic responsibilities and limited mobility meant that they spent more time in and around their homes. But Scherzer (1992) argued that, in New York at any rate, ethnic and working class life was rarely tied to specific areas, and that the modern concept of ‘the neighbourhood’ was a middle-class invention. This was surely less true in smaller centres with fewer places to explore or find work. But the caution is appropriate. Clearly, sometimes tight-knit communities do exist. In Bethnal Green, Young and Wilmott (1957: 113) found “a feeling of solidarity among people who occupy the common territory”. But such areas may have been exceptional. In a lower middle class inner suburb of Toronto in the 1970s, Wellman found that most neighbours were not close friends, and that those on whom residents relied for emotional and material support lived elsewhere (Wellman, 1979: 1210, 1212). As Galster (2019: 41) argues, it is appropriate to speak about degrees of neighbourhood, and to make few assumptions about where any particular neighbourhood sits on the spectrum. A name, or lack of one, may offer a clue (Harris & Vorms, 2017). Absence may signify a weak sense of community. In 2009, the Toronto Star posted online a map of Toronto neighbourhoods and for six months curated readers’ suggestions as to how these should be changed to reflect local understandings (Kidd, 2009). The result differed from the original, and markedly from planners’ maps: residents’ neighbourhoods, all 236 of them, were varied in size, and boundaries inevitably differed. Several parts of the city, chiefly the early postwar suburbs that had been incorporated into the city in 1998, had no name, speaking of a lack of community and identity. As Downs (1981: 15) has said, across neighbourhoods “the intensity of [social] relations and their importance in the lives of the individual may vary tremendously”. Conversely, the existence of a well-recognized name shapes the way people view it. Among insiders it fosters identity, encouraging them to lobby for improvement and to resist change. To outsiders, a prominent name may impress, or evoke disdain and even fear. The latter is especially likely when associated with an ethnic or racialized minority. In Bucharest, Ferentari acquired a negative image for its poverty and crime, partly because of its Romani population (Florea, 2017). Bad reputations can attach to neighbourhoods even in countries like Canada, where segregation, and negative stereotyping, is less extreme than in Romania, or indeed Britain and the United States (Bradford, 2013). Liu and Blomley (2013) show that in Vancouver the Downtown Eastside, with its rooming houses and drug scene, is framed by newspapers as a high risk area in terms of health and crime. Richardson (2014) shows how Toronto's Jane-Finch neighbourhood, defined by a cluster of public housing high-rises, is covered similarly. The ‘slum’ label was not used in either case, but this did not matter. These areas’ names signalled trouble and, at least for reformers and activists, the

need for intervention. Significantly, stigma can last for some time after an area has changed (Hastings & Dean, 2003). As Stokes (1962) recognized, perception matters. It can differ from reality, and be equally hard to turn around. The same applies to entire, generic types of areas, including those targeted for aid. The media reinforce negative images of such types, including Turkish gecekondu, Parisian banlieues, British housing estates, American inner cities or simply that most generic category of all, slums (Avci, 2014; Burgess, 1985; Hargreaves, 1996). To that extent, and depending on how stereotypes are deployed, this can encourage governments to act positively, repressively, or simply to turn away. This means that it can be a mistake to target funds only to one neighbourhood, or a single type. Singling them out may confirm negative stereotypes (Crossley, 2017). That is why programmes directed at disadvantaged areas wrestle with the naming question: in many places ‘slum’ is taboo, but ‘blighted’ or ‘substandard’ have become problematic for related reasons. Authorities are aware of social sensitivities, preferring terms that flag the purpose of intervention rather than the conditions that prompted it: ‘priority’ or ‘strong’. Regardless, planners should try to ensure that “people clearly identify with and are committed to the area[s] concerned” (Turok, 2004: 410). 4.3. Places or people? A neighbourhood focus The perennial question for reformers and activists, and therefore for governments, is whether resources and energy should be targeted at specific places or the types of people who are concentrated there. It has been debated endlessly, for example, in the United States (Galster, 2019: 300; Goetz, 2018; O’Regan, 2017; Sharkey, 2013: 169–72; Turner, 2017). In principle, this contrast distinguishes generalized social or urban, programmes from neighbourhood upgrading. In practice, the line is often blurred. 4.3.1. Grass-roots organizations This fuzziness affects both grass-roots organizations and government programmes. Both have ambiguities of scope and purpose. An example of ambiguity in scope was the Association for Tenants’ Action, Kingston (ATAK), Ontario, in the late 1960s (Harris, 1988). ATAK was concerned with tenants’ rights, and in that respect relevant to people in all parts of the city. But Kingston was divided into three unequal parts: downtown Sydenham ward, occupied mostly by university employees and students; the working-class North End; and a middle class west end and suburbs. Tenants were concentrated in the first two areas and, with its radical politics, ATAK focused on the North End. It did not define its purpose as the improvement of this area but that was its main (modest) effect. Grass-roots organizations also often have ambiguous purposes. Fisher and Romanofsky (1981) identify two purposes: social work, including the building of community and effective lobbying; and political activism to obtain or restructure power. Groups that build community in specific areas are concerned with neighbourhood upgrading. But, even when based in particular areas, those seeking wider social and political change are only incidentally relevant to the neighbourhood. In practice, both types of ambiguity can coexist in one organization: many ATAK organizers not only wanted to help North End tenants but also to radicalize them on other issues. Some were active in a national network that was nudging Canada's social-democratic party further to the left. Such blurring of lines is common in periods of heightened activism, as in the global North during the 1960s and as is now apparent in many parts of the South (Beard, 2012; Fisher & Romanofsky, 1981: xvi). 4.3.2. Government programmes Similar ambiguities exist in government programmes, whether directed at the built environment or at specific social groups. Any programme of dwelling improvement will affect some areas more than others; indeed, there is a continuum. At one extreme is America's first 7

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national home improvement programme, created in 1934, and soon copied by Canada's Home Improvement Plan (HIP) (Harris, 2012a: 202–215). Coupled with efforts to revive the building industry, these provided loans to help owners repair and improve their properties. Inevitably, the loans went to owners of older homes who were able and keen to borrow, and so loans went disproportionately into areas of middle-class home owners. The improvement of such neighbourhoods had not been the main, or at least stated, purpose, but that was their effect. At the other extreme are initiatives that target specific areas. A Canadian example is the Neighbourhood Improvement Program (NIP), launched in 1974 (Patterson, 1993: 333–334). This provided federal money for upgrading infrastructure in chosen areas, the identification of which was left to municipalities. Simultaneously, a Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program (RRAP) provided loans and grants to low- and moderate-income property owners to make repairs. Initially, RRAP funds were available only in NIP areas, and together they constituted a well-defined and sometimes all-too-effective improvement programme. In Toronto, their timing reinforced the nascent gentrification of some neighbourhoods (Filion, 1988). But, even with a later extension, the NIP programme only ran for ten years. Although RRAP continued, and affected some areas more than others, it became, like the programmes of the 1930s, a more diffuse effort. Parallel comments apply to programmes directed at specific types of people, most obviously the poor. All prosperous nations try to alleviate poverty through income transfers, and offer services that target the poor. Sometimes, as with the housing benefits scheme in Britain and Section 8 voucher programme in the United States, assistance is targeted at the housing sector. Because of income segregation these have an uneven effect across the city. If low-income tenants receive higher and more reliable incomes, landlords should be able to charge higher rents and maintain properties to a higher standard; local businesses should fare somewhat better than they otherwise would; indirectly, crime rates may be reduced. Inevitably, this mostly affect the more disadvantages areas. The effects of general social programmes shade into those designed to help people in need, but only those living in particular areas. Such policies take two, potentially complementary, forms (Katz, 2004: 8; c.f. Andersson & Musterd, 2005: 381). The first involves the provision or improvement of social services. In 2000, the British government introduced a national programme of urban revitalization that used a new ‘Index of Multiple Deprivation’ (Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, 1998). It targeted some resources at specific postcodes and also ‘bent’ mainstream services into those areas (Johnstone & Whitehead, 2004: 5). Coordination proved “extremely challenging” (Turok, 2004: 410). A second tactic is to bring in people, typically middle-class, who are deemed to be better role models, and with possible connections to employment and social opportunities. Under the rubric of promoting social mix, this has become a favoured strategy in the wholesale redevelopment of public housing estates. An example is the Cardroom Estate in Ancoats, Manchester (Karadimitriou, Magalhaes, & Verhage, 2013: 15–16; 147–167). In principle, the promotion of mix is also possible with upgrading and piecemeal redevelopment, but it requires fine calculations because it runs the risk of enabling wholesale gentrification. For programmes primarily intended to improve the lives of a particular social group, a neighbourhood strategy can be problematic. There are two problems: completeness, which refers to the proportion of the poor that a selective approach will reach, and efficiency, defined as the proportion of the residents in the targeted areas who are in need (Séguin et al., 2012). Where the segregation of a target group, or a neighbourhood type, is very marked, such drawbacks are minimized. Extreme examples are the bustees of Calcutta, favelas of Brazil, and many squatter settlements, whose boundaries are clear. But in cities of the global North it is more difficult to draw lines. In Montreal, for example, an analysis of census data has shown that both problems can be

substantial (Séguin et al., 2012). This confirms the impression of many observers of the area-based programmes that are designed to alleviate poverty (Matthews, 2012: 148). An example is the Neighbourhood Scheme, a British programme of the 1970s, which, like the Canadian NIP, directed funds to specific areas. Critics pointed out that in terms of both efficiency and completeness it fell short (Shapely, 2017: 323). Areally-targeted programmes face other challenges. As noted in Section 4.1, because neighbourhoods are embedded in larger urban contexts, benefits can leak out: even those programmes that are not supposed to help residents move out may have that effect (Leary, 2013; Lawless, 2006:1998–9; Turner, 2017: 309–310). Those that do promote mobility have unpredictable effects. An example is Moving to Opportunity, which provides rent vouchers to low-income residents in certain areas that can be redeemed anywhere (Goering, 2012). Depending on what types of people move in to the vacated homes, this may either bring about neighbourhood improvement or its opposite. Another difficulty is administrative (Leary, 2013: 130). National and state/provincial governments operate sectorally. Departments have little experience, or in many cases incentive, to cooperate in focussing new resources on particular areas. In principle, close coordination with municipal planning departments may overcome bureaucratic silos, but this involves a delegation of responsibility and power. Collaboration with local partners can help (Zdenek & Walsh, 2017). But the challenges and ambiguities are obvious, as sectoral and area-based programmes intersect. One source of ambiguity is that physical features, and therefore accessibility biases, must figure prominently in any area-based programme. This is obviously true of upgraded infrastructure and houses, but also of many social services. With limited exceptions, such as mobile libraries, parks, educational, employment, and recreational facilities must be housed somewhere. They have their greatest effect on people who live nearby. Programmes can focus entirely on the built environment, but if they are to count as neighbourhood upgrading those with social purposes must have some degree of physical bias. 4.4. Improvement and relative disadvantage Programmes of improvement or upgrading are inherently selective. To be sure, in recent years some municipalities have used the rhetoric of neighbourhood as a marketing strategy. Toronto describes itself as ‘a city of neighbourhoods’; a recent U.S. collection speaks of the Return of the Neighborhood as an Urban Strategy (Pagano, 2015). In such ways cities may aim to upgrade all residential areas, but these are better understood as general urban programmes. Minneapolis, notably, has blurred the distinction. Its Neighborhood Revitalization Program has invested in every neighbourhood, empowering local residents to set priorities, design and help implement projects in each. To this general attempt to revive the inner city it has added a wrinkle: distinguishing three types of neighbourhoods, it has awarded more to those it considers most at risk (Fagotto & Fung, 2006). For selective strategies, the issue is which types of areas should be a priority? If it was up to residents, the answer would be the better-off. The people most likely to defend, preserve, or improve their places of residence are homeowners, who are among the more prosperous of households (Cox, 1982; Galster, 2019). In Minneapolis, they have dominated residents’ associations even in mostly-rental areas, which is why the city is now considering the idea of requiring associations to be representative (Lee, 2019; Nathanson, 2019). Defense has always been a prominent goal, as in the neighbourhood movement that developed across Anglo-America from the 1960s (Goering, 1979; Howe, Nichols, & Davison, 2014). According to NGram Viewer, it was in the 1980s that such activism acquired the NIMBY acronym, but it has a longer history. In Toronto after 1904, zoned areas grew in number piecemeal, as local residents petitioned the city for regulation. Some excluded industry, others commercial activity, and still others apartments. By mid-century the most tightly regulated areas were those occupied by the middle and 8

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upper classes (Moore, 1979). The most active neighbourhoods are the most affluent. In Vancouver, the residents of prestigious Shaughnessy have always pressed hard for protection, initially from apartments and more recently from ‘monster homes’ (Hasson & Ley, 1994: 28, 45, 62, 64). In Toronto, the first neighbourhood association formed in 1923 in the Annex, an upper middle-class area developed from the 1880s. It aimed to defend the area against apartment buildings, stores, and a proposed hospital (Jacobs, 1971). Through many vicissitudes it has persisted, acquiring its best-known resident, Jane Jacobs, in the 1960s. Homeowners have also lobbied for physical improvements. A century ago, new suburbs often lacked physical infrastructure. Around Vancouver in the 1910s and 1920s newcomers petitioned for sewers and streetcars (Hasson & Ley, 1994: 29; Weaver, 1979: 213). Directed at other services – for example better schools and parks – such activity by affluent home owners remains familiar today in cities almost everywhere. In contrast, the residents of lower-income areas, especially tenants, are more likely to suffer in silence. In the early twentieth century, middle-class volunteers established and staffed ‘neighbourhood houses’ in the immigrant districts of many British and North American cities. They worked to provide the educational and social services that would help people adjust to their new environment. As the convener of Toronto's main settlement house, Mary Clarke (1974: 183), observed pointedly, ratepayer associations “do not exist in the districts where the need for them is greatest”. Municipalities respond to the pressures for preservation and improvement that have come from affluent or middle-class homeowners. These are the people most likely to vote, to make campaign contributions, and to exert influence in sometime less scrupulous ways. In the 1950s, Nash's survey of residential rehabilitation in the United States identified three types of areas where this was occurring, the first two being ‘prestige’ and ‘middle class’ (Nash, 1957). It is his third category, ‘low rent’, that matters here. But in such areas upgrading does not usually happen spontaneously. Coordinated effort is required.

1966). Externalities reinforce the point. The value of any site depends on its location, especially the character of adjacent property. If an owner skimps on maintenance, the value of her building will decline, but not by much as long as neighbours maintain theirs. But those owners are likely to make the same calculation. If they, too, disinvest then the neighbourhood will go downhill fast. This ‘prisoner's dilemma’ dynamic is especially common in areas with high rates of tenancy, which is characteristic of many disadvantaged areas, especially the slums of despair. The calculus of real estate finance reinforces the trend. Most buyers of real estate use mortgage credit. Lenders are naturally skeptical of areas that are susceptible to declining value. They may refuse to make high-ratio loans, demand higher interest rates, or simply avoid some areas entirely. By the 1960s, ‘red-lining’ undermined the housing market in many U.S. inner cities. Legislation has made this more difficult since the 1970s. From 1975, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act compelled lenders to report their lending practices, and then in 1977 the Community Reinvestment Act encouraged lenders to become active in lower-income areas (Squires, 2012 in Carswell). In many cases it effected improvements that fortunately fell short of gentrification (Fitzgerald & Vitiello, 2014). But lenders, acting as rational economic agents, found other ways to discriminate against fragile neighbourhoods, as the subprime mortgage crisis of 2008 showed (Immergluck, 2012). Without coordinated resistance, the dynamic of decline is likely to continue. As the City Plan Commission of St. Louis (1936: 24) observed during the Depression, blighted districts “cannot be rehabilitated by the voluntary initiative of individuals”. This is especially true in high-tenancy areas. A study of a small English town found that 83 percent of homeowners had recently made repairs or improvements and that landlord neglect was in “striking contrast” (Cullingworth, 1963: 169, 171). To be sure, change may happen spontaneously if there are clear, external signals that reinvestment will pay off. The arrival of optimistic immigrants, fuelled by a regional economic boom, may do the trick, creating an ‘arrival city’ (Saunders, 2012). The gentrification of an adjacent area may work magic, and that is how gentrification can spread. But the latter is localized, because borrowers and lenders will remain cautious. Under the U.S. urban renewal legislation of 1954, incentives were offered for owners to fix up homes. But, as the Detroit Housing Commission (1962) noted of the Vernor Springwells area, residents were leery of going into debt while lenders were not encouraging. A general survey of the effects of upgrading under urban renewal found that, after a decade, progress had been “disappointingly slow” because of scarce finance (McFarland & Vivrett, 1966: 13). William Slayton (1966: 215), Commissioner of the Urban Renewal Administration, conceded the point. Getting credit is a problem until real estate assessors can offer assurance that prices are stable or rising, and they cannot do this until many properties have been bought, improved, and sold at a good price: a classic Catch 22. As an appraiser's representative observed in 1966, “the rehabilitation appraiser must recognize that most rehabilitation expenditures … probably will not be economically acceptable …” (Worsek, 1966: 430). That is not a message that investors want to hear. Commonly, then, coordination is required. This could be organized on the fly. An area might be stabilized and improved if many property owners got together and promised to reinvest. But this is unlikely. Owners can fix roofs but they can do little about sewers, schools, or crime. Even in an area of homeowners, building enough trust would be a challenge, while enforcement is impossible, except in Common Interest Developments. Worse, home ownership and trust are often most lacking in those slums of despair (Stokes, 1962). That is why upgrading requires the intervention of municipal, and sometimes upper levels of, government. Only the state has the power to police crime, enforce maintenance and, if necessary, expropriate. It is usually the municipality that provides infrastructure and services. Its involvement is almost indispensable (Galster, 2019: 263–4).

4.5. The element of coordination Given how urban housing markets work, upgrading in disadvantaged areas requires at a minimum the coordinated efforts of property owners and government. Neither the one nor the other alone is likely to be able to effect useful change. Governments must work with property owners (Galster, 2019: 83–15, 274–6; Stegman, 1972: 274–5). In strong neighbourhoods, landlords maintain their properties because there is a demand from tenants who can afford market rents; home owners do likewise, as investment, to impress neighbours, or simply to enjoy their home. It is a cliché that homeowners maintain their properties to higher standards than landlords, one common throughout Anglo-America and beyond (Dietz & Haurin, 2003; Kwak, 2015). For example, it was invoked by the Director of Medical Services of the Kenyan Ministry of Health and Housing in the 1960s (Fendall, 1963: 579). More recently, it is implied in the movement to provide squatters with secure title to their properties (De Soto, 2000). But both landlords and homeowners must believe that property values are stable or rising in real terms, or they will lose part of their investment, itself perhaps their major form of wealth. Landlords are especially likely to calculate: after all, why own rental property if not to make a profit, whether from rents or capital appreciation? Commonly, these considerations ensure that most neighbourhoods will remain stable for decades. They also explain modest examples of spontaneous upgrading. These have probably always been common, although they have received much less attention than the more striking process of gentrification (Bunting, 1987). In disadvantaged areas, however, property values are stagnant or falling relative to other parts of the urban area. There everyone, especially landlords, will have an incentive to disinvest (Davis & Whinston, 1966: 54–59; Sternlieb, 9

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But it is rarely sufficient. Public investments may change the outlook of local property owners but, if city-wide or regional conditions are not encouraging, they will not. And if not, then an improvement project cannot succeed. Even if the attitude of owners changes, their uncoordinated actions may have consequences that are unanticipated and undesirable. Creating the right sort of improvement is a major challenge. William Slayton was in the right position to know this. Reviewing his agency's achievements through the mid-1960s, he commented that neighbourhood rehabilitation was “even more difficult and complex than clearance and redevelopment” because it involved the decisions of so many people (Slayton, 1966: 214; c.f. Hays, 1985: 224–225). Coupled with the difficulty of drawing meaningful area boundaries, of finding the right language, of balancing social and physical objectives, and of assessing wider connections within regional labour and housing markets, it is no wonder that effective upgrading programmes have been so difficult to devise.

would need to raise taxes on those who can afford to pay, rarely a popular move. Collier (1976: 133–4) suggests that inaction is especially common in authoritarian regimes that are less accountable. A political argument applies in Anglo-America, too. In Britain in the nineteenth century, the franchise was limited by property ownership and/or occupation. In North America, many tenants only got the right to vote in municipal elections after mid-century. To make their presence felt, then, slum residents adopted other stratagems: bribery, petitions, riots. Accepting their lot has been more common, if only because they assumed that action was a waste of time. To this day, voter turnout in low-income neighbourhoods is below the average. One reason for governmental inaction, then, is the lack of political pressure. Even when challenged, politicians and officials can offer other reasons for not doing anything. They may claim that conditions are not that serious and will get better on their own. They may argue that the problem lies with the poor and their culture of poverty (Lewis, 1965), and that to act is a waste of money. Alternatively, politicians may point out that to target just a few, arbitrarily defined areas is unfair: it does nothing for poor people living elsewhere. Economists speak of this as horizontal inequity. Then again, helping some people might become the thin end of the wedge, encouraging others to make demands. And of course politicians make such arguments cynically, purely for effect. Social liberals usually criticize municipalities for inaction, but some sympathetic observers have defended laissez faire, or at least a light touch, even in highly disadvantaged areas. The goal, Peattie (1994: 136) has suggested mischievously, should be to create “more and better slums”. Her argument is that the poor cannot afford ‘standard’ housing and that to force them to pay for it would make their lives worse (Davis & Whinston, 1966: 60n12). A seminal study of low-income residents who were displaced and rehoused in Britain in the late 1920s found that, because rents had doubled, they cut back so much on food that their mortality increased (M’Gonigle, 1933). Even worse, if substandard conditions are eliminated, those who cannot afford the better housing may become homeless. This is arguably one reason why homelessness has increased in many western nations in recent years. In this view, slums are “a necessary and even helpful phase” of city growth (Stokes, 1962: 188; c.f. Mukhija, 2012). No country has eliminated substandard conditions, not least because standards change, but some observers have argued that enforcing unrealistic regulations is counter-productive. The argument applies everywhere, which is why Peattie suggests that “informal [i.e. selectively relaxed] code enforcement policies” make sense even in Anglo-America (Peattie, 1994: 141). But the argument has particular force in the global South. Often, the original culprits were colonial powers that imposed inappropriate laws which, through inertia and pride, postcolonial governments have retained (Ben-Joseph, 2012; Mabogunje, Hardoy, & Misra, 1978: 63–65). The most plausible argument calls for compromise. Informed observers have called for ‘minimal land development regulation’; others have advocated hybrid arrangements whereby traditional practices are adapted to relaxed modern standards (Dowall, 1992; Harris, 2008a). Some may judge the result substandard, but defenders argue that the ideal is the enemy of the good. Perhaps more often than we know, compromises have been made. For example, after a period when the Dutch enforced their own standards, by the late 1920s kampung improvement used “traditional methods … as a starting point” (Cobban, 1993: 889). In such ways, inaction shades into improvement.

5. Improvement and its alternatives A century ago, the Scottish polymath-turned-planner Patrick Geddes argued for what he called ‘conservative surgery’: selective demolition but above all the maintenance of the existing built environment. But he acknowledged the challenges. In a report for the Indian city of Tanjore, he warned that “the conservative method … has its difficulties. It requires long and patient study. The work cannot be done in the office …” (Geddes, 1947: 44). He might have added that it involved patient consultation with residents, except that, as discussed in Section 6.2, this did not happen in the 1910s. Because of such complexities, governments have often baulked, turning to easier options. To understand why improvement is ever chosen, then, we need to consider the alternatives. Logically, there are three. They can be combined, and often have been, but municipalities usually lean in one direction or the other. To some extent, their inclination has varied according to the type of neighbourhoods at stake. Before discussing that issue, however, it is useful to outline and assess the main alternatives to improvement. 5.1. Ignore the issue: laissez faire The first option is to do nothing. After 1945, Latin America experienced rapid urban growth because of extensive squatter settlements. These were classic arrival cities. Encountering this, John Turner observed that “the most common ‘policy’ in countries where rapid urbanization is taking place … is, in effect, laissez faire” (Turner, 1968: 122). He was right, not only at that time but for earlier and later periods too. This polite way of describing the absence of intervention can be a whitewash. Where it ignores serious problems it is better spoken of as neglect. Laissez faire is apparent today in much of sub-Saharan Africa and South-east Asia, as it was around many North American cities in the early 1900s, and in British industrial cities in the nineteenth century. To this day, planners and municipalities sometimes neglect areas that they regard as hopeless (Dewar & Weber, 2012). Here is a policy that has transcended place and time. There are many reasons why governments have gone this route. Ignorance is one. Politicians and officials rarely visit lower-income areas and may have no knowledge or emotional understanding of what life is like there. Significantly, there have been times when, after paying a visit, they have come back determined to act. When the Kerner Commissioners entered the slums that had seen ghetto riots in the United States in 1967 they were shocked, and their forceful report dismayed President Johnson (Gillan, 2018). Evidently, as the incoming President of Brazil in 2003, Lula looked for a similar effect when he took his privileged colleagues on a slum tour (Bellos, 2003). But most reasons come down to money and politics. Municipalities often lack the resources to install services or enforce regulations. Political calculation is often involved. To obtain those resources they

5.2. Reasons to act If it is cheaper to ignore the problem, why do governments act? One answer, political pressure, has already been implied. The riots that produced the Kerner Commission reinforced a federal commitment to addressing inner city problems. In the early 1900s, kampung improvement was in part a response to nationalist pressure (Colombijn, 2010: 195). Unrest also prompted more recent initiatives, for example 10

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in Latin America and India (De Sampaio, 1994: 93; McFarlane, 2008: 88–107; Ray, 1969: 13, 84–97; Ward, 1982: 203). Self-interest also comes into play. The effects of poor conditions cannot be confined. Infectious diseases respect no boundaries, especially when work brings together the poor and their social superiors. The earliest initiatives to improve working-class areas in British cities were partly driven by concerns for the health of people who lived elsewhere in the city (Tarn, 1971: 2). At the same time, Calcutta's bustee programme was prompted by the outbreak of cholera among Europeans (Harris, 2018). As medical knowledge has improved, concerns about disease have been partly replaced by social issues, notably crime. Although criminal activity and riots often concentrate in particular areas they, too, leak out. Anyway, the costs of policing crime and substandard conditions, and of depressed property values, affect all taxpayers. As a result, like modern ‘housing first’ programmes for the homeless, improvement may be cost-effective. The first time this sort of calculation was seriously attempted was in Cleveland in the early 1930s (Navin & Associates, 1934). It soon had considerable influence. For example, it helped justify clearance ahead of Canada's first public housing project (Rose, 1958: 64–67). Such thinking concerns what Friedman (1968: 4–14) calls the ‘social cost’ of slums. Spreadsheets may prod municipalities to act. Funding, or compulsion, from beyond city limits may tip the scales. Municipal action in Britain in the 1800s was enabled and then driven by national legislation. Later, clearance became widespread in the interwar years when the government could afford a substantial programme (Yelling, 1992). Kampung improvement gathered pace after 1929, when the colonial government began to defray half of the cost (Dick, 2002: 183); postwar urban renewal in the United States was encouraged by federal legislation that came with funding (Slayton, 1966; Von Hoffman, 2008); the worldwide surge of upgrading in the 1970s depended on World Bank money, while its subsequent relapse followed a cutback (Buckley & Kalarickal, 2006; Sanyal, 2016; Fox, 2014: 199). In some cases, as in Jakarta in 1972, outside money helped municipalities do what they had already begun. In others, especially when coupled with legal requirements, it goaded them into acting for the first time. In some cases, as in Manila, unreceptive governments resisted the siren call of pesos, and proceeded with clearance (Kwak, 2018: 105–107). But usually outside money mattered. And occasionally governments act because it is the right thing to do. What Friedman (1968: 4–14) calls the ‘welfare’ motive has certainly guided volunteers, activists and reformers. They include those who staffed settlement houses in Britain and North America in the early twentieth century, the community activists who lobby governments in western cities today, and the NGOs now active across the global South (e.g. O’Connor, 2015; Rohe & Gates, 1985: 13–22). It has also influenced many individual politicians, but only rarely whole governments. There can be more to this argument than meets the eye. Changing the experiences of individuals can have a cumulative effect greater than the sum of its parts. The very concentration of people with certain characteristics – of income, say, or ethnicity – has consequences. This ‘neighbourhood effect’ has at least four sources (Andersson & Musterd, 2005: 379): stigma, an uneven distribution of public services, poor socialization among local residents, and poor social networks to enable social mobility. The latter two, amounting to a lack of social capital, are a type of externality and in principle can be positive (e.g. Choi & Sloane, 2012). Recent immigrants benefit each other by settling in enclaves where they can communicate in their first language and support commercial or religious institutions. Of greater concern are situations where poverty, or the ghettoization of stigmatized minorities, creates cumulative negative effects. Even before they turn into slums of despair they may prompt the municipality to wield the bulldozer (Mayne, 2017), as Toronto did in Regent Park in the 2000s (August, 2014). In recent years, researchers have worked hard to quantify neighbourhood effects, but this has proven difficult (Sharkey & Faber, 2014).

There are all sorts of indications. A Canadian study, for example, found that, controlling for income, the longer someone lives in a low-income area the less likely they are to leave (Frenette, Picot, & Sceviour, 2004). Unfortunately, no consensus has emerged about the magnitude of such effects (Galster, 2019: 173–208; Ross, 2012; Sampson, 2012: 31–49, 2019; Slater, 2013; van Ham et al., 2013). One difficulty is ‘selection bias’: people decide where to live partly on the basis of their preferences about how to live (Sampson, 2012: 64). Criminals and gangs may select a low-income area known to be problematic, thinking that they may attract less attention there, and perhaps be better able to recruit. What appears to be a neighbourhood effect, then, is partly produced by who chooses to move there. Another challenge is taking account of the diversity of residential areas; in terms of social composition, physical character, and urban setting, no two is alike. Disentangling cause and effect where each place is different is a huge challenge. A further complication is that neighbourhood effects are non-linear. Galster (2019: 126–43) concludes that there are thresholds beyond which the impact of social segregation, and the physical character of an area, takes a jump. The best-documented examples concern racial tipping points in U.S. cities, which have been calculated precisely and shown to vary by place and over time (Kollman, Marsiglio, & Suardi, 2018). Analogous effects apparently exist for income, in terms of related conditions, including tenure, housing investment, crime, educational achievement, and health (Quercia & Galster, 2000; c.f. Choi & Sloane, 2012). Where several thresholds are crossed, for example in areas of concentrated poverty, the effects are magnified. In that way, neighbourhood conditions are “at once part of the problem and part of the solution to urban inequality” (O’Connor, 2015: 79). Or, as Galster (2019) expresses it in the title of his book, Making Our Neighbourhoods, Making Our Selves. One implication is that, rather than spreading limited resources around, it makes sense to concentrate upgrading efforts on a limited number of neighbourhoods. In that way, municipalities are more likely to help areas haul themselves back across those thresholds (Galster, 2019: 268–9; Wilson & Kashem, 2017). Although neighbourhood effects, including thresholds, are hard to nail down, they have motivated many governments (Turok, 2004: 406–7). From the nineteenth century until at least the 1950s, in AngloAmerica ‘the slum problem’ was thought to include the behaviour of local residents who set a bad example for each other. Theirs was the socalled ‘culture of poverty’ (Lewis, 1965). Their dispersal was viewed as part of the solution. That said, Friedman (1968: 14) is surely correct in arguing that welfare arguments have usually been less effective in driving policy than the calculations of ‘social cost’. After all, action of any sort requires money, and politicians hate to raise taxes. 5.3. Getting rid of the problem Once prompted to act, municipalities have two choices, demolish or improve. Clearance is simpler, and that is a strong recommendation. Of course, it brings challenges, as William Slayton (1966) discussed after heading America's urban renewal programme. It raises questions about how slums will be redeveloped, not to mention whether and how displaced residents will be rehoused. But once they have the capacity to act, including the power of expropriation, municipalities need not worry about securing the participation of local residents. Indeed, the less participation the better (Keyes, 1969: 5). In principle, clearance has merits. If deteriorated buildings are replaced with new ones, property values and tax revenues rise (Navin & Associates, 1934). Adjacent residential and commercial areas get a boost. If displaced residents are rehoused, their living conditions are presumably improved. In practice, things rarely work out that way. There are always some displaced people who are not rehoused. Those who are often end up in remote locations, increasing their time and costs of commuting, as shown recently for Honduras and Mumbai (Doshi, 2012: 103; Pearce-Oroz, 2005). Sympathetic observers have repeatedly reported that clearance devastates communities: this was 11

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noted “in every kind of newspaper, periodical, pamphlet, and public utterance” in late nineteenth-century London; in 1915, Patrick Geddes commented that “the policy of sweeping clearances should be recognized for … one of the most disastrous and pernicious blunders in the chequered history of sanitation”; in mid-twentieth century Chicago, “relocation … meant the uprooting of families, enforced homelessness, sacrifice of neighbourhood values, threats to sources of political power” (Dyos & Reeder, 1973: 366; Geddes, 1947: 45; Meltzer & Orloff, 1953: 451). A decade later, following the redevelopment of parts of Boston's West End social psychologists concluded that displacement had been worse for residents’ mental health than the conditions they left behind (Ramsden & Smith, 2018). No wonder that a study in Puerto Rico found that “most slum dwellers like their neighbourhoods; most dwellers in public housing dislike theirs” (Hollingshead & Rogler, 1963: 243). Complicating the story, in time the residents of public housing become attached to their home and resist redevelopment and relocation, as shown by Toronto's experience with Regent Park (August, 2014). Even the tax boost to municipalities may be a chimera because cleared land is often left vacant for years before being redeveloped (Anderson, 1966: 498–99). The political advantages of clearance are also mixed. Redevelopment is striking, as hovels give way to gleaming apartment blocks. It shows voters that slums are being taken seriously. It can impress tourists and other visitors, too. Dick (2002: 243) has commented that new housing projects “gave the city [of Surabaya, Indonesia] a more modern appearance, and impressed foreign visitors”, adding that they could “generate official and unofficial income for both bureaucrats and contractors”. Construction projects create jobs, and this can be a reason to promote clearance, as with the U.S. public housing programme during the Depression. Contracts also offer opportunities for patronage and kickbacks, while redevelopment creates the possibility of allocating modern, affordable housing to favoured friends and family. Put together, especially in less democratic societies, these have been powerful incentives for slum clearance. But residents have typically resisted. When outsiders pay attention, especially in democratic societies where votes count, this can be a political problem. A big reason why urban renewal and public housing programmes in Anglo-America were halted by the early 1970s was widespread opposition. Nonetheless, there as elsewhere, it has often crept back. The HOPE VI programme, begun in 1992, entailed the demolition of public housing projects (Goetz, 2012a). Initially, agencies were required to replace units but this was soon set aside. On balance, destroying such dysfunctional projects made sense, but arguments can always be found for bringing in the bulldozer.

problems can arise. Sometimes it is too successful. Back in 1966, James Wilson cautioned that, depending on the place, time, and programme details, improvement might attract the middle class and drive out the people it was supposed to help (Wilson, 1966: 418). At the time, most people would have viewed this danger as hypothetical. Since then, however, the gentrification of many inner city neighbourhoods has shown that the danger is real, even in low-income areas in the developing world (e.g. Huchzermeyer, 2004: 5–6). Improvement, then, but in moderation and not in all areas. And so one of the most basic questions in deciding whether to improve, clear, or leave things be, must be which areas to target. 5.5. Which areas to target? There is no end to the variety of neighbourhoods, and there are almost as many ways of deciding which type, or types, should be targeted. As noted in section 3, variations on a triage approach have been the most common. This distinguishes areas that require little or no attention from those that are beyond redemption and those that would reward improvement. The most general reason for despairing of a neighbourhood is that it is situated in a city and region which itself is declining. As Stokes (1962) hinted, and as Galster (2019: 266–7, 291–2) among others has argued, it is a waste of time and money to swim against an economic rip tide. For hope to be realistic there must be the prospect of jobs. Curiously, however, most discussions of upgrading have focused more narrowly on the characteristics of the areas in question. 5.5.1. The Anglo-American scene Variants of the triage model have dominated Anglo-American discussion, notably since the 1930s. During the Depression in the United States, public debates highlighted ‘blight’ and acknowledged varying degrees. They distinguished between “blighted areas” that were “on the downgrade” and true slums, that had hit bottom and showed “an extreme condition of blight” (Walker, 1938: 3–4). Supposedly, only the former could be rehabilitated according to “good city planning” (Robbins, 1938: 191). After WWII, the American Council to Improve our Neighborhoods (ACTION) undertook a series of studies which distinguished between areas “that cannot economically be rehabilitated” and so must be eliminated; those that could be improved; and “currently sound housing and neighbourhoods” where all that was required was judicious intervention to forestall decline (Nash, 1957: x). These three areas were labelled ‘low rent’, ‘middle class’ and ‘prestige’, implying that physical conditions went hand-in-hand with income. Clearly, it was assumed that clearance, improvement, and an upscale version of laissez faire each had a role to play (c.f. Light, 2009: 134–136). The same thinking informed the implementation of urban renewal. Although the vocabulary has changed since then, similar distinctions are still made. In 1974, the U.S. government launched a Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) programme that provided for de facto upgrading by helping community-based development organizations, which became partners (Scally, 2012; Varady, 2012). These CBDOs had to be based in specific neighbourhoods and serve lowand moderate-income persons. This programme was quite successful, in part because of its flexibility (Clay, 1983: 29). Generally, it did not overplay its hand and cause gentrification, but bypassed the “most desperate slums” (Hays, 1985: 236). Similar calculations have affected policy elsewhere, including Israel, where Project Renewal was successfully directed at “distressed neighbourhoods” that had “not yet reached extreme deterioration” (Carmon & Hill, 1988: 479). Of course, as the number of seriously deteriorated districts in affluent nations has been greatly reduced, many of the most disadvantaged areas in many cities are not in fact slums of despair. That is why it has been possible for planners in some cities to effectively abandon the triage model and focus on areas that are most in need (Gelfand & Looney, 2018). This

5.4. Fixing things up The remaining option is improvement. In principle, it is more expensive than laissez faire but cheaper than clearance and rehousing, making it an affordable way of taking, and signalling, action. It is less likely than slum clearance to arouse taxpayer opposition. It will almost certainly be more acceptable to current residents, because it is less disruptive of personal routines, including commutes and shopping, or of community networks and institutions. But, like home renovations, it often costs more than expected, and taxpayers who believe in self-help may argue that residents of disadvantaged areas should be helping themselves rather than relying on the state. Alternatively, if taxpayers are calling on the government to act, clearance and resettlement may look more appealing because so visible: improvement involves many baby steps which outsiders may never see. And then improvement offers less scope for patronage, whether for building contractors or the friends and relatives of politicians. Balancing these considerations, improvement will often look to be best option, and many projects work out well. The upgrading of the settlement of George, in Lusaka, Zambia, is a well-documented example (Tait, 1997: 132–135; c.f. Martin, 1982; Pasteur, 1979). But significant 12

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checked and corrected” (Goodwillie, 1940: 5). Sunset could be deferred, but not prevented. The same assumption of decline informed the thinking of William Slayton (1953: 320–321) and the Urban Renewal Administration. In addition to slums, he distinguished between “growth”, “conservation” and “reconditioning” districts, characterizing these in turn as “quite new”, “considerably less old” than those needing reconditioning, and “rather old”. Pilot studies carried out for this programme shared the near-fatalism that the Bank Board had expressed. A survey in Detroit, for example, acknowledged a “filtering process that profoundly affects every neighbourhood in the city” (Parkins, 1958: 2). Along with assumptions about the role of race in market dynamics, the association of age with dwelling quality persisted. Twenty years later, after a more pro-active upgrading programme was in place, Ahlbrandt and Brophy (1975: 7–9) expounded on the “life cycle of a neighbourhood”, with its ‘normal’ process of decline. Indeed, some argue that this assumption shaped federal housing policy, helping to guarantee the decline and abandonment that it anticipated (Metzger, 2000). Since the 1970s, the calculations shifted. The resurgence of immigration to all Anglo-American nations provided new hope for older neighbourhoods that became arrival cities. At the same time gentrification, once hypothetical, became real. Demonstrating that income need not correlate with age of dwelling or neighbourhood, it soon framed discussions of upgrading in cities like London and Sydney. There, the challenge for upgrading projects was not how to get property owners to fix things up but how to prevent newcomers from investing too much. But in most cities age still matters, albeit in a new way, along with location. Increasingly the most disadvantaged areas are those that developed in the early postwar decades. In North America these are known as inner suburbs, and in Australia as the ‘middle ring’ (Pinnegar, Freestone, & Wiesel, 2018: 299; c.f. Kendig, 1979: 2). In Toronto, for example, almost all of the thirteen – recently raised to thirty-one – ‘priority’ areas are in this zone (City of Toronto, 2017) (Fig. 3). Increasingly inner-suburbs are declining, and being negatively stereotyped (Anacker, 2019; Schafran, 2013). They are old enough to have deteriorated, are somewhat removed from centres of employment, and unappealing because lacking in the design features that modern buyers prefer. Youth is still attractive to many, and seniority appeals to some. Especially in escalator metros, it is the middle aged neighbourhood that is now having a crisis.

Fig. 2. The geography of planned clearance and rehabilitation in St. Louis, 1953. Source: St. Louis Housing Survey Report, Let's Look at Housing, August 1953. It was assumed that older buildings would be the most deteriorated and require demolition.

often makes sense (e.g. Wilson & Bin Kashen, 2017). In Britain, planners turned their attention towards areas that were merely blighted or, as British legislation once labelled them, “twilight areas” (Gibson & Langstaff, 1982: 55). Here, light was fading but night had not yet come and sunset might even be put indefinitely on hold. Sometimes this makes sense. At other times, if undertaken only for political reasons, throwing money at the poorest areas may use up funds better spent elsewhere. The distinction depends on the context. Triage assumes that in the long run neighbourhoods decline. The underlying dynamic is that of filtering, whereby houses built for the elite and middle classes deteriorate, decline in relative value, are subject to subdivision, and become affordable for successively lower income households. Because homes of a given age form clusters, the filtering of dwellings entails neighbourhood decline. The stereotypical result was that the worst areas were the oldest, adjacent to downtown, while those that were merely threatened lay in the ring beyond (Fig. 2). In Britain in the early 1900s, belief in this process justified the ‘suburban solution’: if the government, and new train and tube (subway) services, enabled middle-class households to buy homes in the suburbs then the older, but still decent, homes that they vacated would become available to workers and eventually the poor (Harris, 2012b: 466). This thinking was independently invented in the United States two decades later, being incorporated into a new language of ‘the housing market’, a new term, entailing a process that connected all neighbourhoods and drove change (Harris, 2012b, 2013). Implying that decline led irreversibly to de facto slums of despair, this discourse shaped thinking about triage and associated programmes of clearance and rehabilitation. There was always some resistance to the idea that whole districts should be written off. In the United States a natural friend of resistance was Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC), which funded “reconditioning” as part of its mandate to refinance homes and stabilize neighbourhoods (National Resources Planning Board, 1940: 95). Its first neighbourhood-scale project was launched in Waverly, Baltimore, in 1940 (Leclair-Paquet, 2017; Teaford, 1990: 113–114). Together with the HOLC, the Federal Home Loan Bank Board had financial stakes in the area and regarded it as an experiment. Both recognized challenges. After outlining the typical neighbourhood “life cycle”, which had “too generally been considered … inevitable”, the head of HOLC's Neighborhood Conservation Service conceded that there was indeed a “natural tendency of these neighbourhoods to decline in attractiveness and economic value”, a tendency which “cannot be wholly and forever

5.5.2. The global South Since 1945, conditions have been very different in the global South, but a version of the triage model has in fact been common. In effect, although not in name, that is what Stokes’ (1962) model implies. As Turner (1965) observed of corralones, slums of despair are beyond hope and should be destroyed; upgrading should be reserved for the hopeful barriadas. The United Nations made the same distinction a few years later, contrasting “open end” as opposed to “dead-end” settlements (United Nations, 1971: 149). Many municipalities have freely engaged in clearance of the most substandard districts, the slums of despair, of which there are many. Prime targets include those areas vulnerable to flooding, subsidence, or mudflows. In contrast, upgrading is reserved for the more hopeful neighbourhoods. Currently in South Africa, for example, governments have recognized the dangers of “extravagant spending in marginal locations” (Todes & Turok, 2018). A major practical difference is that, whereas disadvantaged areas are usually in the minority in the global North, they dominate many urban areas in the South. There, on the basis of an analysis of six neighbourhoods in Sri Lanka, Jayaratne and Sohail (2005: 57) have offered useful guidelines as to the areas that are most likely to benefit from upgrading. A basic consideration, of course, is that the site is fit for human habitation: that as sea levels rise it will not predictably be subject to flooding, for example. Beyond that, the authors (like Turner and Stokes) argue that it is important for residents to have an ‘established means of livelihood’. 13

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Fig. 3. Neighbourhoods designated for improvement in the City of Toronto, 2014. Source: City of Toronto and United Way, Strong Neighbourhoods. Responding to a Call for Action. https://www.toronto.ca/legdocs/mmis/2012/cd/bgrd/backgroundfile-45145.pdf. All of these inner suburban neighbourhoods were developed primarily between 1945 and 1970.

Governments in the South typically have a meagre social safety net – that is even true in China – and some sort of employment income guarantees that the residents, as owners or tenants, can afford improvement. The skills of local residents affect this but so, even more, does the health of the local economy. Jayaratne and Sohail suggest that there should also have been some grass-roots interest or pressure for improvement: prior lobbying indicates that residents will do what they can to make any public initiative succeed. But they caution that the land must not be too valuable: otherwise, the financial pressure for gentrification, or wholesale redevelopment to non-residential use, might render a modest upgrade a waste of time and money. Such pressures on low income areas have been felt in many cities, for example Bogota and Buenos Aires (Yunda & Sletto, 2017). These cautions are all relevant in the global North, too. But to these Jayartne and Sohail add two that are particularly relevant to squatter settlements: that the area be on publicly-owned land and that it be consistent with the municipal plan, assuming one exists. Many, although not all, observers believe that legal title is a pre-requisite of long-term upgrading, and obtaining it is in principle a straightforward matter if the land is publicly owned, but not otherwise. Significantly, they say nothing about the character or quality of the dwellings, implying that this is not a key issue.1 Of course, any project, public or private, is a hostage to fortune (Mukhija, 2012). The local economy may collapse, jeopardizing improvement or redevelopment. The fate of Flint, Michigan, is one cautionary tale among too many. Conversely, most of the areas that revive

owe more to wider forces, coupled with local activism, than to government programmes (Lupton & Power, 2004: 4; Von Hoffman, 2003: 12–14). It is important to identify ‘slums of hope’, ‘arrival cities’, and ‘blighted’ areas that are amenable to ‘reconditioning’ – places that should reward upgrading. But there are no guarantees. 6. What should be done? The physical environment The challenge of identifying areas for improvement is equaled by the difficulty of determining priorities, and for whom. Some answers have remained broadly consistent for over a century, but others have changed. Perhaps the greatest shift in the content of improvement has been the growing importance of its social aspects. To appreciate the character and timing of this change I sketch the separate history of Anglo-America and the global South. The most basic concern is that physical conditions may pose a threat to public health. The origins of urban planning as we know it today are the “beachheads of sanitary reform” (Benevolo, 1967; Corburn, 2007; Smith, 1980: 99). Poor housing is often the most visible culprit, and efforts have been made to compel or help owners to make repairs, especially in Europe and Anglo-America, where winters can be unforgiving of those who lack decent shelter. But housing was not at first the key issue, and in much of the developing world it still is not. 6.1. Nascent neighbourhood improvement in Anglo-America, 1840s–1900s In the 1800s, reformers and municipalities began to consider the effects of the physical environment on public health. At first, they cared about communicable diseases, slowly learning how these spread. In urban settings, they focused on water quality, and the disposal of

1

The only consideration Jayartne and Sohail mention that pertains to the built environment is that the area not be seriously deficient in services. The issue here is presumably the potential cost of upgrading. 14

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human and animal wastes; later, crowding and ventilation were emphasized. The need for improved sanitary infrastructure was recognized in Britain, the first urban nation, by the 1840s. An outbreak of typhus in 1838 prompted concern, and Edwin Chadwick's report in 1842, coupled with his relentless activism, marked a turning point (Melosi, 2000: 46). Henceforth, governments found it difficult to take a fatalistic view of slums, or to treat them as expressions of moral failure. Environmental conditions became a priority. This gained momentum in 1854, when Dr. John Snow tracked a cholera outbreak in Soho, London, to a polluted water source, although the relevant bacillus itself was not identified until the 1880s. Inevitably, the first major sanitary initiatives were taken in London. A Metropolitan Commission of Sewers – a “landmark” – was established in 1848, ‘nuisances’ were dealt with in the Removal Act (1855) and in 1871 the Metropolitan Water Act was passed (Jephson, 1907: 17–20, 41, 138). Conditions were just as bad in parts of other British cities (Muthesius, 1982: 56). As late as 1911, half the houses in Manchester lacked sewers (Luckin, 2000: 214). In this era, housing legislation was “predominantly about public health”, being “governed by the ‘sanitary idea”’ (Dennis, 1984: 164; Gouldie, 1974: 293). Key steps included the Public Health Act (1848); the Sanitary Act (1866), “an enormous step forward” which allowed municipalities to compel owners to connect dwellings to public sewers; and the Public Health Act (1875), which required them to provide sewers and remove refuse, and caused building regulations to be judged by their effects on public health (Gouldie, 1974: 80, 139; Jephson, 1907: 201–2; Muthesius, 1982: 55–62; Wohl, 1977: 81). In London from 1855, owners had to “put their houses in order” while officers inspected and compelled repairs. Everywhere, owners were constrained and pressured to make repairs and sanitary connections (Jephson, 1907: 137–8). None of this was framed as slum or neighbourhood upgrading, although that is what it became. Action was not confined to, or targeted at, specific areas but much more was done in some districts than in others. This came to be explicitly recognized. In Edinburgh in 1865, for example, the city's first Health Officer, Henry Littlejohn, wrote an influential report that declared water and drainage to be critical for public health. For the city's Old Town he recommended that closes be paved and drained, that piped water be provided to tenements, and that wells be eliminated (Laxton & Rodger, 2013: 116–7). Improved sanitation also became a priority in North America in the second half of the nineteenth century. However, because urbanization happened later, and because of more skeptical attitudes towards government, regulations also came later. U.S. cities were slower to compel property owners to make sanitary connections (Warner, 1972: 204). Even New York City was relatively ineffective. In 1867 a Tenement House Act required one water closet for every twenty people, and in 1884 a Tenement House Committee recommended that privies be eliminated and that water be provided on every floor, but to little effect (Plunz, 1990: 33). Only in 1901 did the City require running water in every apartment, at first a notional goal. Canadian municipalities were similarly sluggish. Prompted by its Medical Officer of Health, it was only in 1913 that Toronto required owners to connect to water mains and sewers (Harris, 1996: 151–155). Indeed, across North America, many suburban areas lacked such services well into the twentieth century (Harris & Mercier, 2005: 791). Much the same things happened in North America as in Britain, but later. Chicago was a prime example. Dr. Rauch, the first head of the city's Health Department, helped establish the American Public Health Association in 1872 and was elected its president in 1876 (Platt, 2005: 158). Locally, he documented contrasts in disease and sanitary services between rich and poor neighbourhoods. Outbreaks created support for health initiatives that he advocated, and which benefited most the poorest neighbourhoods. But enthusiasm waned when infections abated, so that he and his successors had to deal with “a glaring gap between available resources and unmet goals” (Platt, 2005: 162). Eventually, efforts were targeted at specific areas. In 1902, a major

typhoid epidemic again attracted general concern. Dr. Alice Hamilton and Jane Addams of Hull House, the city's most prominent settlement house, mapped the incidence of typhoid and lobbied for tenement house reform. The City and landlords made special cleanup efforts in the 19th ward, where Hull House was situated (Platt, 2005: 358). Streets were paved, sidewalks built, garbage removed, and some buildings demolished. Crucially, illegal privies were removed. These initiatives, and their equivalents elsewhere, were the earliest forms of neighbourhood upgrading in North America. 6.2. Colonial and postcolonial upgrading programmes, 1870s–present In the same era, similar efforts were made in British colonial settings, some with a geographical focus. In most colonies, public health and poor sanitation were prominent issues by 1900 (Home, 2013: 133–35). Cities from Zanzibar and Singapore, to Georgetown, British Guiana, to Lahore, India, did something about it (Bissell, 2011: 192–96; Chang, 2013; De Barros, 2002: 49–68; Glover, 2007; Chang, 2013). One place that concentrated on specific districts was Madras in 1871, tackling conditions in the city's hundred or so parcherries, ‘villages’ of thatched huts (Harris, 2018).2 These “hot beds of disease” housed 70,000 people and were undrained. A reform initiative begun by the local Health Officer emphasized infrastructure: piped water, as well as “drainage and improving the ventilation by removing some of the huts” (quoted in ibid). Investments were targeted at clearly-defined districts but were apparently too temporary to amount to a real programme. The first sustained, localized upgrading scheme was the one that Calcutta directed at its bustees. These, too, consisted of huts in clusters of varying size. They sat on sites sublet from landowners and in turn rented to tenants. Legislation in the 1830s had prohibited the thatched roofs that encouraged fires, but residents drank water from polluted wells, washed cooking utensils in polluted tanks (pools), defecated in the open or used latrines that were infrequently emptied. After a false start in 1876, and a subsequent cholera outbreak, a sustained programme began in the early 1880s (Datta, 2012; Furedy, 1982; Harris, 2018). Running until 1910, it ignored the quality of the housing, although much was of mud and wattle construction. Instead, it filled tanks, improved street cleaning and night soil collection, and provided clean water to standpipes, as well as public toilets and bathing platforms (Fig. 4). Controversially, some were designed with separate facilities for men and women. Calcutta's bustee initiative may have been the world's first neighbourhood upgrading programme in the modern era, and was almost certainly the first to be named as such. Characteristically, it was concerned almost entirely with providing infrastructure to improve public health. The same emphasis defined the other well-documented colonial-era initiative, launched by the Dutch in the East Indies in the 1920s (Fig. 5). There are parallels as well as differences. There, too, dwellings were of indigenous construction in defined areas – kampungs – many with symbolically-gated entrances. Dwellings, however, were mostly owneroccupied. These kampungs were villages that had been absorbed as urban areas grew, and were administered separately. As kampungs were encircled, existing sanitary practices became dangerous. As with Calcutta, cities upgraded the infrastructure, including roads. But the major changes were to provide piped water and sewers, as well as open channels for waste and storm water. Apart from selective demolition and relocation, dwellings were left alone. From 1929, costs were shared by the colonial government, encouraging further action through the 1930s (Cobban, 1988, 1993; Colombijn, 1994, 2010; Dick, 2002; Harris, 2009; Tesch, 1948). This programme was regarded by both the Dutch, and by many residents, as a success. Postwar, the same emphasis on sanitary infrastructure was apparent across the colonial and early postcolonial world. An influential example 2

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This is the first colonial initiative for which I have seen documentation.

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was set in Puerto Rico. In 1939, Teodoro Moscoso was appointed head of the new housing authority in Ponce, the U.S. territory's second city. Instead of reproducing cheaper versions of the public housing being built on the mainland, he developed innovative programmes of aided self-help for new construction together with upgrading of existing settlements. In some cases, his agency relocated existing dwellings to sites in new, serviced subdivisions. In others, it built and serviced ‘utility units’ in existing neighbourhoods, one for every four shacks. These units included showers, washtubs, toilets, and drinking hydrants (Chase, 1951). The idea of helping people to build their own homes gained momentum after it was promoted by Jacob Crane, an American planner who became head of the International Office of the Housing and Home Finance Agency in 1947 (Harris, 1998). In an era of rapid urban growth and housing shortages this made sense. It is unclear how much influence the idea of utility units had beyond the island, but it did cross oceans. In Kenya, settlement standards were relaxed after 1945. There was growing recognition that “housing … has to be related to standard of living” and that enforcing an unaffordable standard was “bad value for money” (Booker, 1947: 55–56; c.f. East Africa Royal Commission, 1955: 230). In 1959, a member of the colony's Central Housing Board visited Puerto Rico and reported that the island's experience showed that “it is not good public health policy to remove families from slums to housing estates”, especially “if the resulting rentals will cripple the domestic budget” (Fendall, 1959: 484). The Board was now advocating “simplified standards”, on the principle that it was better to provide “liveable [sic] dwellings” for the many rather than “standard buildings for the few” (Fendall, 1959: 482, 483). In older neighbourhoods, it emphasized the housing conservation and the provision of water standpipes for public use. This line of thinking was most influential in the old, coastal city of Mombasa, with its extensive areas of traditional, Swahili housing. Back in the 1920s, planners had dismissed the idea of clearing the Old Town and instead made sewers their priority (Jameson, 1925). This view thrived in the 1960s. A report by Kenya's Town Planning Department (1969: 18) noted that there were “two basically different courses of action”: demolition and reconstruction or “community improvement”. Arguing that, although the Swahili house departed from western norms, it embodied a “sophisticated structural system” and was sound. It recommended minimal demolitions, and only after “careful study” (ibid, 5, 9–10). Instead, it argued for a “comprehensive drainage plan”, extension of refuse collection and street cleaning, selective road construction and, most urgently, the extension of water and sewer lines to areas that depended on communal taps, pit latrines, and septic tanks. Other observers were recommending, and other governments were doing, similar things. In 1965, based on his experience in Uganda and Papua New Guinea, Oram (1965: 47) argued that in such tropical settings dwelling quality mattered less than sanitation. By then, Peru's Law 13517, passed in 1961, had formalized existing ad hoc procedures similar to those being advocated in Kenya. It supported the installation of services and, where necessary, re-planning of streets (Collier, 1976: 85). Not surprisingly, when the U.N.’s Department of Social and Economic Affairs commissioned Elizabeth Wood to undertake a global survey, it discovered a growing interest in upgrading (United Nations, 1967: 16). As Executive Director of the Chicago Housing Authority from its inception in 1937 to 1954, Wood was familiar with housing built to western standards. Under her supervision, the Authority had considered the option of rehabilitation (Chicago Housing Authority, 1946), but then rejected it. However, citing the Peruvian law together with examples from India, Venezuela, Brazil and Africa, Wood extolled the virtues of upgrading over clearance for the developing world, and reckoned that better sanitation had to be “the first objective” (United Nations, 1967: 24). Thinking at the U.N. moved further in that direction when, in 1971, it dedicated a major document to improvement (United Nations, 1971). From 1973, its view was seconded by the funding programme of the World Bank. Within a decade, a major assessment was undertaken of

Fig. 4. A public latrine for the use of men and women, Calcutta, c.1900. Source: W.J.R. Simpson, The Principles of Hygiene as Applied to Tropical and Subtropical Climates. London: John Bale and Sons, 1908. Sanitary concerns were driven by cholera outbreaks.

Fig. 5. Kampung improvement in Semerang, Dutch Indies, c.1930. Source: W.M.F. Kerchman, 25 jaren decentralisatie in Nederlandsch-Indie 1905–1930. Semarang: Vereeniging voor Locale Belangen, 1930. Sanitary infrastructure, not housing, were priorities in this era.

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“the [Bank's] first generation of slum upgrading programmes” in eleven cities across Asia, Africa, and Latin America. It reported that the priority was connecting homes to infrastructure (Skinner et al., 1987: 11). After Bank support flagged, NGOs and local residents picked up the slack, with similar emphasis (e.g. Dill & Crow, 2014; Tomlinson, 2015; United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003: 130–132). In Nairobi's informal settlements, for example, NGOs erected pay-for-use toilets and/or shower blocks (Dill & Crow, 2014: 191). These were inadvertent descendents of Moscoso's utility units or, indeed, Calcutta's bathing platforms and public toilets a century earlier. No wonder that, under whatever auspices, improved sanitation is still a priority in the global South. A recent U.N. study divided the world into three regions: developed, developing, and least developed. It reported that in cities in the developed world 98 percent of dwellings received piped water and 97 percent boasted ‘improved sanitation’ (U.N. 2016: 63, 64). In the developing world the proportions were lower, at 72 percent and 77 percent, respectively, and in the least developed nations lower again, 32 percent and 47 percent. Circumstances should define priorities. It is notable, however, that percentages for urban piped water provision in the developing world as a whole (72 and 32 percent) are much improved from the comparable figure – 33 percent – half a century ago (Dieterich & Henderson, 1963). Upgrading has had an effect. Although the importance of sanitation seems obvious, and is universally assumed, there is little systematic evidence to show its effect. Assessments of upgrading projects only began in the 1970s. Most indicate some benefit. For example, a study of an Indian steel town found that the infant mortality rate was 75 percent higher in a bustee area without services than in a planned area with basic infrastructure (Crook & Malaher, 1992). It recommended that potable water would be a key intervention. More generally, an early survey suggested that, indeed, the greatest health improvements came with purer water and more efficient disposal of excreta (Harpham, Lusty, & Vaughan, 1988: 135). But a recent meta-analysis argues that the evidence is poor because most studies contain inherent, usually implicit, biases (Turley, Saith, & Bhan, 2012). At best, there is some indication that better infrastructure leads to some reduction in communicable diseases, a surprisingly weak statement for initiatives that have dominated thinking for almost two centuries, and which constitute the historic bedrock of urban planning.

procedure’ meant that in slum areas “careful consideration is always given to the possibility of making bad houses fit to live in” (Nettlefold, 1908: 35; 1905: 40). The city certainly attended to sanitary matters, where needed. These were “brought up to modern requirements” by abolishing the old [toilet] pan system, installing water closets, and getting rid of ‘filth’ inside and out (Nettlefold, 1905: 26). The city opened up enclosed courts using selective demolition. But its methods also involved attention to the quality of the housing, mostly absenteeowned. Between January 1902 and December 1906, it declared 3303 properties unfit for habitation, but only 520 were demolished. For the remainder, it served owners with notices to ‘make fit’. Within four years, 1203 dwellings had been “rendered habitable”; another 312 were undergoing repairs; others were “pending”; and owners had repaired many others (Thompson, 1907: 28, 31). In parts of Birmingham and Camberwell, and in places as diverse as Kensington, Manchester, and Worcester, slum upgrading added house repair to sanitary infrastructure. These initiatives had little immediate influence, but programmes to rehabilitate housing in designated areas eventually returned. Some “reconditioning” of slums happened during the 1930s, but under the Greenwood Act (1930) demolitions were emphasized (Burnett, 1986: 241; Kirby, 1979: 59). This changed with the outbreak of war in 1939, and after 1945 interest in rehabilitation slowly revived (Kirby, 1979: 73). Initially, because of the housing shortage, many deteriorated or bomb-damaged homes were ‘patched’. Birmingham, again, was especially active (Pepper, 1971: 99). Then, after 1953, the national government offered grants for property improvement, and amounts were increased in 1959 with the goal of encouraging home ownership (Gibson & Langstaff, 1982: 55–56). Because landlords were slow to take advantage, the 1964 Housing Act gave councils powers to compel them to act within designated Improvement Areas, but the 1969 Act was the “watershed” (ibid, 64; Pepper, 1971). Overstating the point, Gibson and Langstaff (1982: 78) argue that this was the first national attempt to mount a programme of area improvement. Targeted districts were named ‘General Improvement Areas’, and carrots were emphasized over sticks. A further Act in 1974 introduced the idea of Housing Action Areas which helped non-profit Housing Associations to tackle the worst conditions. By 1975, then, neighbourhood upgrading had arrived and was almost synonymous with home renovation and repair. Since then, upgrading programmes have waxed and waned with the changing priorities of successive governments. Area-based initiatives (ABIs) persisted into the new millennium, particularly under the New Labour government, 1997–2010 (Lawless, 2006). But, following the Thatcher governments of the 1980s, these were framed and often overshadowed by a larger strategy of urban regeneration. This “ambiguous” term has sometimes meant “any development that is taking place in cities and towns”, but has always emphasized economic growth and physical redevelopment (Jones & Evans, 2013: 3; Tallon, 2013: 4). Significantly, a recent textbook on regeneration makes minimal reference to ABIs and includes no entry for ‘neighbourhood’ in the index (Tallon, 2013: 81–2). The goal is to change the overall growth trajectory of a city, hoping that this might indirectly tip the scales in disadvantaged areas from ‘despair’ to ‘hope’. The best reason for this new emphasis is a growing recognition that neighbourhood initiatives should be linked with others of wider scope (Aalbers & Van Beckhoven, 2010; Jones & Evans, 2013: 3; Turok, 2008: 151). Inequality, poverty, crime, and unemployment reflect wider forces. As (Andersson & Musterd, 2005: 386) put it, “problems in the neighbourhood are seldom problems of the neighbourhood”. Some cities have combined programmes at both scales, Montreal being an example (Morin, 1998). But the shift to market-based thinking, commonly labelled neoliberal, has often entailed a de-emphasis of small-area initiatives (Porter & Shaw, 2009: 4–5; Karadimitriou et al., 2013: 15–15). To some, government is viewed as the problem rather than the solution, its red tape a barrier to initiative and growth. In an era of slow economic growth, cities have had to compete for investment with other

6.3. Neighbourhood upgrading in the global North since 1900 In the global North, as urban sanitation came to be taken for granted, the emphasis of improvement programmes changed. Initially, housing became the new priority. The shift was appropriately subtle, being adjusted to local conditions. In Britain, early initiatives used provisions of the Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890. Parts II and III allowed municipalities to acquire properties (with compensation) for selective demolition or improvement, and to compel landlords to make repairs. Several jurisdictions took advantage. The London borough of Camberwell, for example, used Part III to remove “nuisances”, to “prevent filth accumulating”, to purchase and demolish some properties, and “to adapt and put other houses into sanitary repair” (Thompson, 1907: 32–33). It was the City of Birmingham, however, which led the way. In the late 1800s, Birmingham made an international name for itself for programmes that came to be known as the ‘civic gospel’ of municipal socialism (Briggs, 1963). John Nettlefold, a manufacturer and city councillor, continued this tradition after being appointed first chair of the city's Housing Committee in 1901. He favoured “thorough repair” over “clearance”, because it was quicker and cheaper (Daunton, 1987:30) (Fig. 6). Making a thorough argument that others would reinvent in the 1960s, he pointed out that clearance was expensive, inflicted hardship on those displaced, exacerbated the shortage of affordable homes, forced people to travel further to work, and wasted scarce resources (Nettlefold, 1908: 15–20). Nettlefold's ‘Birmingham 17

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Fig. 6. An example of slum repair in Birmingham, c.1906. Source: J.S. Nettlefold. Practical Housing. Letchworth: Garden City Press, 1908. Repair included occasional demolitions, with repairs undertaken by landlords or the City.

(Goodwillie, 1940: 31, 54). The Waverly project was “ahead of its time” and met with limited success, but convinced many that rehabilitation was best undertaken “on a neighbourhood basis” (McFarland & Vivrett, 1966: 5, 6). Before the end of World War II, several U.S. cities were thinking in such terms. Plans for Boston's South End, together with Chicago's Hyde Park-Kenwood and Woodlawn planning districts, were among the most prominent (Boston City Planning Board, 1946; Chicago Plan Commission, 1946). Other cities, such as Cincinnati, developed master plans with the idea that targeted rehabilitation might “stabilize some older districts” (Cincinnati City Planning Commission, 1948: 8–10; c.f. Chicago Metropolitan Housing and Planning Council, 1953). As in Waverly, they envisaged selective demolition and the repair of ‘sound structures’ (Boston City Planning Board, 1946) (Fig. 7a and b). Such ideas, and NAREB's lobbying, bore fruit in the Housing Act of 1954 (cf. NAREB, 1954). Its provisions mandated vigorous code enforcement coupled with optional loans. A report, which examined four state legislative proposals and activity in nine cities, advised municipalities to walk a fine line. Experience showed that “minimum rehabilitation in blighted areas may perpetuate slums” but that a renovation that competed with new construction “is beyond the means of slum dwellers” (Siegel & Brooks, 1953: 3). There was a flurry of interest. Detroit launched a “neighbourhood conservation programme” that potentially covered a third of the city. It aimed to identify “priority conservation areas” where planners might leverage Title I loans and targeted code enforcement within “neighbourhood betterment projects” (Parkins, 1958: 40). In the end, however, the suburban boom pushed inner cities into decline and property owners showed little interest (Von Hoffman, 2008; cf Friedman, 1968: 51, 162). Support for neighbourhood improvement revived at the same time as in Britain, in the late 1960s but with greater emphasis on

cities (Harvey, 1989). A new triage prioritizes areas with “the potential for sustainable economic growth” (Turok, 2008: 164). In Britain, helping the poor is rarely seen as the best way for governments to enable cities to compete, and so the ranks of the homeless grow. With a later start, a similar trajectory was followed in North America (Carmon, 1999). From at least the 1930s onwards, “funding for neighbourhoods would be channelled almost exclusively through housing” (O’Connor, 2015: 80). Even before then, some argued for investment in deteriorating areas. Notably, in 1930 the prominent city planner Harland Bartholomew (1930) suggested that “we should be capable … of so regulating the processes of [neighbourhood] transition as to avoid wanton waste and abandonment of areas for no reason”. But, typically, it was the real estate industry that made the case most effectively. The powerful industry organization was the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB) which in 1934 peopled senior positions in the new Federal Housing Administration (Weiss, 1987). The following year it proposed a draft statute that would enable municipalities to establish Neighborhood Protective and Improvement Districts which would go beyond zoning by “taking positive action for bettering neighborhood character” (“NAREB suggests…”, 1935). The areal focus would complement the Title I rehabilitation loans programme, established in 1934 (Harris, 2012a, 2012b: 193–202). It could have been a classic example of combining a general programme with local targeting. Nothing came of this lobbying in the short run. Instead, as mentioned in section 5.5.1, the first neighbourhood upgrading programme in Waverly, Baltimore, was not launched until 1940. Because infrastructure was adequate, housing was emphasized. Parts of the area had suffered from “deferred maintenance” and so the project undertook code enforcement and offered loans as a “preventive remedy” 18

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Enterprise Community initiative which included tax incentives. By then, the most prominent, if specialized, localized programme was HOPE VI, which from 1992 redeveloped public housing projects. The results were generally positive, involving “the complete physical upgrading” of the areas in question, together with creation of social mix by introducing market housing (Goetz, 2012a: 305; Goetz, 2012b). Some residents were rehoused but most were not and, since wholesale demolition and reconstruction was involved, these hardly count as incumbent upgrading. At best, some benefits spilled into adjacent neighbourhoods (Chaskin & Joseph, 2016: 197–203). Fallout from the 2008 financial crisis prompted Congress to fund a Neighborhood Stabilization Program in order to mitigate the effects of concentrated foreclosures, but this was a one-off initiative (Anacker, 2019). As one critic has observed, by the 2000s “the federal government's investment in urban revitalization seemed a romantic memory of the activist 1960s” (Biles, 2011: xi). The trend in Canada, and especially Australia, since 1900 has been similar if more muted. By comparison with their counterparts in Britain and even the United States, Canadian governments have launched limited housing and neighbourhood-based initiatives (Harris, 2000). When provincial and federal governments became concerned about slums in Canadian cities, their default was to plan demolitions, but these depended on local funds and were modest in scale. Public housing, with attendant clearances, did not begin until 1949. Its Depression-era Home Improvement Plan was modelled on Title I of the 1934 NHA, but on a more modest scale. Little thought was given to the potential of physical upgrading until the 1960s. The Housing Act of 1964 provided subsidies for public works to improve residential areas. The following year, the City of Toronto Planning Board (1965) announced an “improvement programme” that included property rehabilitation, the upgrading of open space, landscaping and treeplanting, and more active junk removal. Using classic triage, it assumed that older housing had inevitably been declining, that many areas needed clearance, but that, “with reasonable renovations and maintenance”, family housing in intermediate areas would be “good for many years to come” (ibid, 1965: 1). Eventually, in 1974 such thinking was incorporated into the federal Neighbourhood Improvement Program outlined in Section 4.3.2. The legislation was permissive, and so take-up depended on the inclination and enthusiasm of local municipalities (Filion, 1988). All major centres tapped the federal funds, but some (Winnipeg, Vancouver) were keen while others (Hamilton) lagged (Patterson, 1993: 327). Tied at first to the Residential Rehabilitation Assistance Program, NIP emphasized the upgrading of housing, but when NIP ended in 1983 and RRAP funding waned, support for physical upgrading effectively disappeared. Canada saw no federal intervention that was equivalent to the CDBG or Hope VI (Horak & Moore, 2015: 184). At most, local initiatives redeveloped some stigmatized public housing projects. The premier example was Regent Park in Toronto, Canada's first public housing project. Its reincarnation has brought stores, public facilities, and market housing into what had been a low income service desert. But at the national and provincial levels, even in the much-touted National Housing Strategy launched in the fall of 2017, few resources have been directed specifically at neighbourhoods (Graham, Laflèche, & Procyk, 2019). Postwar policy in Australia has given even less weight to neighbourhood programmes. It has had little need to. A spate of construction in the 1950s housed lower-income Australians in subsidized housing, and by 1970 there was little difference in average incomes between inner-city neighbourhoods and newer suburbs (Kendig, 1979: 11). Since the 1960s, older areas have been “filtering up” (ibid, 140), and by the 1980s there was extensive gentrification (Houghton, 1987). In common with Canada, the United States and the U.K., Australian urban policy has increasingly emphasized regeneration. Most projects have not been concerned, even peripherally, with “poverty and area-based disadvantage” (Ruming, 2018). The version of incumbent upgrading to receive encouragement has been what Australians call “knockdown

Fig. 7. (a and b) Before and after plan sketches of the rear of a block in Boston's South End, 1944. Selective demolition would have opened up a court and allowed for upgrading. Boston: Source: Boston: City Planning Board, Building a Better Boston. Vol.3. A Progress Report on Reconditioning. Boston: The Board, 1946.

philanthropy and the private sector (Fink, 1990; Twelvetrees, 1989; Varady, Kleinhans, & van Ham, 2015). From 1966, the Office of Economic Opportunity supported Community Development Corporations. These eventually gained momentum in the 1980s and 1990s, when they helped lower-income areas by providing decent, affordable housing (Vidal & Keating, 2004). The success of CDCs depended on external funding (Gittell & Wilder, 1999), being shaped in part by the priorities of outside agencies, and in some eyes they symbolized the failure of government (Stoecker, 1997; Twelvetrees, 1989: 189; Varady et al., 2015; c.f. Zdenek & Walsh, 2017). Meanwhile, the main support for improvement now came from social liberals who preferred to work outside the market (Rohe & Gates, 1985: 32–49; Teaford, 2000). Their efforts bore fruit in the Housing and Community Development Act of 1974 (Hays, 1985: 193–238; Varady, 1986; Varady, 2012). This funded a Block Grants programme (CDBG) which, as the name suggests, helped property owners to make renovations and cities to upgrade infrastructure (Scally, 2012). Using triage, it by-passed “the most desperate slums” (Hays, 1985: 236; O’Connor, 2015). In the process, it often enabled incumbent upgrading, although this sometimes gave way to gentrification (Clay, 1983: 29; Varady, 2012: 389). Soon, however, as in Britain, the focus of neighbourhood upgrading shifted as federal administrations recognized the need to address social issues and economic development together. The Reagan Administration reduced funding for the CDBG programme in the 1980s. Housing was downplayed in favour of a neoliberal emphasis on private investment and job creation. This shift had been anticipated in 1979 by President Carter's National Commission on Neighborhoods, whereby institutions and lenders supported local economic development and revitalization. In the 1990s, President Clinton introduced an Empowerment Zone/ 19

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rebuild”: property owners demolish existing modest homes and replace them with something larger and more modern (Pinnegar et al., 2018). At the same time, some housing projects have been redeveloped to promote social mix. Concentrations of poverty do exist, especially in the early postwar suburbs, but have attracted little attention from the state. In terms of how governments now treat the built environment of urban neighbourhoods, then, there are both parallels and differences between the global North and South. The main differences are the higher profile of area-based programmes in the South, and the priority they give to local infrastructure. This reflects glaring sanitary deficiencies, coupled with the economic efficiency and completeness of area programmes there: the level of income segregation is high, and the boundaries between squatter settlements and middle-class neighbourhoods is sharp. An emerging similarity is that policy-makers recognize the need to integrate physical upgrading with broader initiatives. In a neoliberal era, this has involved efforts to promote economic growth across the urban area. Accompanying that, in principle, are improvements in transportation both between and, especially, within urban areas. Until the 1990s, the issue of accessibility was raised chiefly in the context of clearance projects that relocated residents to the urban fringe. It was rarely considered pressing in upgrading programmes. In the global North, areas that qualified for upgrading were mostly located near downtown, with its jobs for low-skilled workers. As metro areas expanded and jobs moved to ever-more-distant suburbs, commuting became problematic. Inner-city gentrification and the displacement of relative disadvantage to inner suburbs has made the situation worse. Central neighbourhoods are walkable and have good transit, giving ready access to shops and services as well as remaining workplaces. Inner suburbs grew up around the automobile, and households that must rely on transit find mobility a challenge. Recent regeneration projects have paid some attention to this issue, for example on suburban estates (Jones & Evans, 2013: 188–91; 204–7). To a surprising extent, however, accessibility is still often overlooked. A recent book-length survey, for example, devotes only half a page to the subject, and even then focusses mainly on interurban connections (Tallon, 2013: 116–17; cf. Aalbers & Van Beckhoven, 2010; Turok, 2008). But what has recently received sustained attention are the social needs of local residents.

domestic skills. Leisure activities, daycares and children's programmes were organized. The goal was to help immigrants assimilate and get ahead. In time, the state took over many functions but, initially, not in a geographically-focused manner. When neighbourhood upgrading programmes gathered momentum in the 1960s and 1970s they soon began to take account of social dynamics. As discussed in Section 7, this was driven in part by grass-roots pressure. In the United States, programmes were racialized as well as class-based (Light, 2009: 155–6). By the 1990s, it was accepted that the fate of neighbourhoods depended on a mix of physical and social influences, including any stereotyping by outsiders (Temkin & Rohe, 1996). On both sides of the Atlantic, policy-makers and researchers began to consider how to provide better opportunities for local residents by reducing crime, improving schools, providing skills training, and sometimes transit (Choi & Sloane, 2012; Johnstone, 2004; Sampson, 2012: 420–24; Stone & Stoker, 2015: xvi). Most recently, social issues have become a dominant concern. Instead of being labelled ‘substandard’, target areas are referred to as areas of concentrated poverty or multiple deprivation (Katz, 2004: 3; Johnstone & Whitehead, 2004: 9). The physical deficiencies of homes and neighbourhoods are no longer top of the agenda (Andersson & Musterd, 2005: 380). Several developments account for this shift. Physical conditions have been improved so that they are rarely an urgent issue; for many low-income households the problem is one of affordability. This requires a different physical response than in the past, perhaps involving the promotion of affordable housing through inclusionary zoning. At the same time, social challenges have increased. Until the 1970s, secure, well-paid jobs were available to those with barely a high school education. Increasingly, however, skills and credentials have become essential for many occupations, so that school quality has become vital. This is acknowledged variously, for example in the emergence of the concepts of human and social capital (Stone, 2015: xiv). At the same time, the opportunities for lower-income parents and children to prosper have deteriorated because of the rise of income inequality (Piketty, 2014). In a complex cause-effect nexus, this has been associated with family breakdown in the bottom third of the population, an issue first flagged in the United States in the 1960s by the Moynihan report (U.S. Department of Labor, 1965). Since then, the problem has grown worse (Rosin, 2012). These social trends are expressed geographically in the polarization of neighbourhoods and concentration of the poor (Grant, Ramos, & Walks, 2019). Apart from poverty itself, the most pressing issues in disadvantaged areas are now crime, drugs, and struggling schools. These are also issues for neighbourhoods in the developing world, but there they are usually overshadowed by basic physical needs, and often security of tenure. Squatters lack legal title to the land they occupy, while ‘pirate’ developers are rightful owners but lack official permission to build. Residents of both types of areas, especially the first, are vulnerable to dispossession, and the United Nations counts insecure tenure as part of the definition of a slum (United Nations Human Settlements Programme, 2003: 12). That is why even those who can often fail to make more than basic improvements. A Peruvian economist, Hernando De Soto (2000) has argued that the key to the prosperity of these areas is the awarding of legal title. ‘Titling’ is an old argument. When, in the early 1950s, Britain finally approved the settlement of Kenyan Africans in urban areas, it helped some to build their own homes arguing, with Africans and local churches, that tenure security was vital (African Unofficial Members Organization, 1953; Christian Council of Kenya, 1953; Harris, 2008b). In 1961, Peru's Law 13517 made provision for titling, an argument that others soon picked up (Collier, 1976: 84–85; United Nations, 1967: 24). De Soto raised the profile of the issue at a time when market thinking dominated, influencing governments and non-profits around the world, and arousing considerable debate (Gilbert, 2002; Werlin, 1999). In fact, evidence suggests that legal title can be important, but rarely critical (Fawaz & Moumtaz, 2017: 347–8; Gulyani & Bassett, 2007;Perlman, 2010: 291–6;

6.4. The social aspects of neighbourhoods Until the 1960s, neighbourhood upgrading meant improvement to the built environment. Some of the social aspects of the process were considered, notably forms of property ownership, but even such “vested interests” were often overlooked (Lewinburg, 1984: 13). Since then, however, policy-makers and researchers across Anglo-America have placed ever-greater emphasis on the social needs of residents. At the same time others have paid attention to legal tenure and social dynamics in cities in the South. Well into the twentieth century, many politicians, social observers, and eventually planners across Anglo-America were critical of the poor. They deplored the way slum residents lived and, at least implicitly, the life-choices they had made. It rarely occurred to them to try to improve those choices by influencing the options in the most deprived areas. It was those who founded and staffed settlement houses – mostly, middleclass women – who first tried to improve those options. The first of these, Toynbee Hall, was founded in Tower Hamlets, London, in 1884. It inspired imitators in Britain, and then the United States and Canada (Carson, 1990; James, 2001; Rodgers, 1998: 64). In New York City, German Jews funded settlements in the Lower East Side, but in general the movement was largely Protestant, indeed Methodist, coupling moral uplift and practical assistance. As J.S. Woodsworth (1972: 10), founder of Canada's first settlement house, declared in My Neighbour, “not only do we need to learn who our neighbour is, but also how we can help him”. Help was directed primarily at women and children, and involved education in the English language, the host culture, and 20

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Skinner et al., 1987: 227–245; United Nations Habitat, 2016: 62). Security of tenure matters, but titles can be annulled or overridden. Often the best guarantee is the provision of infrastructure. When a government makes that sort of investment it is in effect demonstrating that residents are safe from interference for many years, and perhaps indefinitely. But what is ‘indefinite’?

Anglo-America they would be wholly unsatisfactory, except briefly in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Most commonly, those who frame and implement upgrading projects assume that the outcome will last indefinitely, or at least decades. The costs are rarely depreciated as carefully as a landlord might when calculating whether to renovate. Besides, beyond a couple of decades, the future is unknowable. Indonesia's modern kampong programme provides an example. It was wound down in the 1980s, having been a success, But in 1981 the city began to acquire, demolish and redevelop kampungs (Silver, 2008: 147, 201). It refrained from providing more toilets and wells because it expected that quite soon a whole district would be removed for a waterfront project. Nothing is permanent; realistically, at least for physical upgrading, a plausible period is a generation.

6.5. The time horizon Although they rarely make this explicit, planners must make an assumption about how long upgrading is meant to last. The norm is for an indefinite period. Sometimes, however, measures are provisional. There are various reasons why proponents might view upgrading as temporary. It may be all that can be afforded for the foreseeable future. During the Depression, although Dutch-sponsored kampung improvement continued, more of the homes built or improved in Surabaya were “semi-permanent” (Dick, 2002: 68). In Kenya in the 1960s, assistance was offered to “temporary” buildings that used traditional methods because “permanent” structures built to western standards were unaffordable (Yahya, 1969). Alternatively, there may be an expectation that an area will soon be redeveloped, so that substantial investment would be wasteful. After World War II, Cincinnati's City Planning Commission (1946: 2) determined that, along with the 19 percent of its residential areas that were “badly deteriorated” and required “complete clearance” immediately, a further 12 percent should be “reconditioned temporarily” until such time as resources permitted redevelopment. Similarly, recent upgrading in Cape Town's slums has involved “an interim collaborative.. strategy” which assumed that eventually “permanent housing” will be available (Kiefer & Ranganathan, 2018). Usually, such calculations are rough and ready, but occasionally, planners make precise calculations. Many dwellings in Britain were destroyed or damaged by bombs during World War II. After 1945, the government initially opposed the “patching” of buildings, but soon relented. Cities responded variously. Birmingham decided that within a generation extensive areas would be redeveloped, but recognized that, meantime, people must be housed. It undertook “minimum weatherproofing” in buildings to be cleared within five years, and a substantial “graduated scale of repairs” for those that would have to last longer. Weatherproofing might mean fixing the roof; repairs included new flooring, electric lighting, piped water, and perhaps an extra toilet so that there would be one for every two dwellings (Pepper, 1971: 49). Such plans were a hostage to fortune: a changing economy (or a new council) might derail them. Partly for that reason, some have opposed temporary measures. Forty years earlier, Nettlefold (1908: 37) had argued for “thorough repair” instead of “patching”. Obviously, whether temporary upgrades are appropriate depends on circumstances, including the severity of conditions and current finances. Occasionally, programmes have been deemed temporary for residents, rather than for their neighbourhoods. In late nineteenth century London, several philanthropic societies worked in this fashion. Inspired by Octavia Hill, they fixed up existing apartment buildings, selected tenants carefully, and provided close supervision and guidance. The purpose was to “have sufficient reconditioned property to educate people up to ultimately going into the new” (quoted in Yelling, 1992: 100). This benevolent paternalism resembled the thinking of those who founded settlement houses. There is a more distant kinship with the modern Moving to Opportunity programme. This aims above all to foster social mobility within a short time-frame and also arguably embodies, in muted form, some patronizing cultural assumptions. All of these programmes are framed in terms of a decade or so. Of course, what counts as temporary can change. In Calcutta in the nineteenth century, standpipes and public toilets were state-of-the-art additions to bustees and expected to be there for as long as the bustees themselves. In parts of the developing world today, they may be viewed similarly, although in others they would be considered adequate for only a few years until better arrangements had been made. And in

7. Who should take charge? Up to now, I have implied that the municipality takes the lead in any project, and that it may be the sole agent. In the past, that was often the way, but in recent decades other people and organizations have become involved, as partners or occasionally as prime movers. Some have argued that the involvement of partners is in fact more important than any single thing that governments can do (Von Hoffman, 2003: 12–14). In Section 4.5 it was noted that coordination of these agents is vital. To be effective, it must involve the municipality, local residents, and property owners. The municipality has usually taken the lead because it has the greatest capacity, not to mention a large stake in the issue (Galster, 2019: 263–66). Councillors are elected to represent the interests and meet the needs of local residents. They levy taxes to that end. In principle, if they fail their constituents they lose their jobs. Meanwhile, if the municipality depends on property or land transfer taxes, the decline of a neighbourhood will hurt its revenues. It is bestplaced to prevent that, whether by investing in infrastructure, enforcing regulations, or judicious use of expropriation. It is likely to be the key player. But it cannot be effective on its own, a hard-won lesson. In AngloAmerica in the 1800s, and in colonial settings, municipalities paid little heed to the wishes of local residents. They either assumed that officials knew best, or that the views of residents did not matter. They recognized that owners controlled property maintenance, but they often treated them as objects of coercion. In the 1880s, Calcutta pushed the indigenous owners of bustee lands to install services and fix up properties, threatening expropriation for non-compliance (Harris, 2018). Half a century later, the Plan Commission of St. Louis (1936: 24) had a similarly jaundiced view, commenting that blighted districts “cannot be rehabilitated by the voluntary initiative of individuals”. Attitudes changed after 1945 as governments became serious about upgrading, as opposed to clearance. Initially, change was slow. As late as 1960, Osgood and Zwerner (1960: 719) could argue that inadequate code enforcement was the main reason why neighbourhoods declined. But soon, speaking for his Urban Renewal Administration, Slayton (1966: 214–5) observed that rehabilitation requires a “high degree of participation by the local citizenry”, and that the municipality must educate owners “how to go about getting the job done”. Osgood and Zwerner (1960: 730) themselves elaborated the point, arguing for a “home improvement counsellor” who “could advise on financing, code requirements, architectural design … reliable contractor availability, material and labour sources, costs, and the many related questions”. Clearly, education involved persuasion. Getting landlords to invest is difficult in low-income areas, above all because of the prisoner's dilemma described in section 4.5 (e.g. Nash, 1957: 108). They have a substantial investment at stake, but they often need advice, education, and incentives in order to commit. Others have stakes in a neighbourhood. Although tenants are mobile, they too care about their environment, especially public safety and environmental pollution, as well as access to services, stores, transit, 21

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and often good schools. The notion that they should have a say came late. As Peter Smith (1980: 110) comments, in late-nineteenth century Edinburgh “slum residents themselves were never heard from in the planning exercises, nor were they expected to be heard from”. In many cities, they did not even get the municipal vote until after 1945, as late as 1972, for example, for some in the province of Ontario. This acknowledged that, through their rent, tenants, too, pay property taxes and should have a say in what happens locally. It was in the 1960s, across Anglo-America, that all-inclusive ‘citizen participation’ came to be viewed as a “necessity” for effective rehab or regeneration projects (Keyes, 1969: 5). As part of its War on Poverty in 1964, the U.S. Congress passed the Equal Opportunity Act which famously – if vaguely – required “maximum feasible participation”. For planners, Sherry Arnstein (1969) implicitly endorsed this in an article that had both academic and practical impact. Putting this into practice was messy. Projects rarely, if ever, met this symbolic goal, and that might not have been altogether a bad thing, if only because the more powerful and articulate easily dominated (Blokland, Hentschel, Holm, Lebuhn, & Margalit, 2015; Fagotto & Fung, 2006; Peterman, 1998). In very unusual cases, as with the Over-the-Rhine district in Cincinnati, successful resistance by lower-income residents doomed areas to a continuing downward spiral (Miller & Tucker, 1998). But by the 1970s there was wide recognition that projects should engage all residents, not just property owners. The CDBG programme, introduced in 1974, required the involvement of community-based organizations that included representatives of local low- and moderate-income populations, many of whom were tenants (Scally, 2012: 66). That has been typical of subsequent neighbourhood-based programmes. The same has been true in Britain, Canada, and Australia. Britain's Community Development Projects of the late 1960s were modelled on the American legislation (Alcock, 2005: 324). Canada's Neighbourhood Improvement Program required the involvement of local residents (Filion, 1988). Thirty years later in Britain, New Labour's urban and neighbourhood initiatives emphasized “community consultation, participation and cohesion” (Johnstone & Whitehead, 2004: 10). There was even an element of compulsion, or at least moral suasion. As Whitehead (2004: 65) has observed, the rhetoric was that “being a good neighbour involves getting involved, participating, and making things happen, not simply letting urban policies happen to your neighbourhood”. But, for all that, in most cases the initiative for upgrading came from the government, whether local or national. The same has not been true in the developing world. There, authoritarian governments were rarely receptive to grass-roots pressure. That may be why some have persisted with clearance, where residents can be ignored, instead of upgrading, the success of which depends on cooperation. What nudged many governments towards upgrading were the pressure and financial incentives offered by international agencies, notably the World Bank, from the 1970s. Kenya is one example among many (Dill & Crow, 2014). In other cases, local organizations – often with outside help – have tipped the scales. An example is The Alliance, which formed in India when three organizations combined to promote upgrading: SPARC (the Society of the Promotion of Area Resource Centres), Mahila Milan (women's savings collectives), and the National Slum Dwellers Federation. With international assistance, the Alliance built hundreds of “community-designed, built and managed toilet blocks”. Having established a track record, it received municipal funding and inspired a national programme of upgrading (Burra, 2005: 82–83). The Alliance was unusual in its scale and efficiency, but similar examples of community engagement have been widespread (Skinner, 1983; Beard, 2012). Projects in Sri Lanka, for example, have leveraged international funds to upgrade areas which had already seen some grass-roots activism (Jayaratne & Sohail, 2005: 57). In Nairobi, NonGovernmental Organizations (NGOs) have built pay-for-use toilets and shower blocks (Dill & Crow, 2014: 191). In Indonesia, local initiative created a community-planned library (Beard, 2012). Referring to local

organizers and leaders as ‘citizen planners’, Beard (2012) argues that their prevalence in the developing world reflects the rapid pace of urbanization and the extent of informal settlements. Municipalities have been overwhelmed, lacking the resources and expertise to initiate or lead upgrading projects. Some were pressed into accepting help while others have been pleased to allow others to take charge. Whoever takes charge must decide whether they aim to help existing residents or to facilitate upgrading as far as possible. These goals are incompatible. Again and again, upgrading has produced an influx of households with higher incomes. This has been described in places as different as Britain (e.g. Kirby, 1979: 50; Gibson & Langstaff, 1982: 69), India (Schenk, Holder, & Mulders, 1989: 117), Brazil (Mathéy, 1978), Indonesia (Karsten, 1958: 20), South Africa and Kenya (Huchzermeyer, 2004: 5–6). Often, the change was neither intended nor foreseen, and if market pressures are strong it can hardly be prevented. But steps can be taken to minimize its likelihood. Government-led programmes find it difficult to generate meaningful participation in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. This is as true in the United States (e.g. Teaford, 1990: 115–118) and Britain (Shapely, 2017) as in the developing world (Mansuri & Rao, 2004: 1). Residents lack the time, skills, and confidence to speak out, and are understandably skeptical that their input would have much effect. As Shapely (2017: 319) says of British programmes, these were areas of “widespread apathy and low morale … communities with no leadership, and few people who possessed the social capital needed to engage in the political process”. Those who do come forward are the better-educated and the better-off – property owners rather than tenants – with their own priorities. The results may not help the needy, but may mesh well with the goals of planners and politicians. As Wilson (1966: 418) comments, if we are serious about getting input from existing low-income residents then “we had better prepare ourselves for a drastic re-evaluation of the impact” that a programme of renewal or rehabilitation will have. He continued: “the central city may have to abandon the goal of re-colonizing itself with a tax-paying, culture-loving, free-spending middle class …”. Fifty years later, a study of Baltimore found that low-income minorities in ‘distressed neighbourhoods’ wanted jobs and job-training while middleclass whites emphasized a sense of community, education, and freedom of choice (Lung-Amam, Knaap, Dawkins, & Knaap, 2018). For incumbent upgrading, especially, jobs are vital, but there are evidently different priorities for improvement (Turok, 2004: 407). If programme leaders wish to maximize their chances of articulating the preferences and meeting the needs of existing residents, they must work hard to receive input from all quarters. Gulyani and Bassett (2007: 486) speak of the need to establish rules of access, while Mansuri and Rao (2004: 1) argue the need to ensure the “accountability of leaders to their community”. Income is not necessarily the most important criterion. After noting that participation is often dominated by local “elites”, Jayaratne and Sohail (2005: 58) suggest that a good goal might be to require half of all participants or leaders to be women. This is reasonable, given that in most urban settings women spend more time in and around their homes than their menfolk. They are likely to care most about, and are best-attuned to, local needs. In many contexts, it may be equally important to work to ensure the representation of tenants, or of ethnic and racialized minorities, as Minneapolis is currently proposing (Lee, 2019). These are large challenges, requiring skills that government agencies often lack (Skinner, 1983). 8. Historical trends At various points, I have noted short-term historical shifts and hinted at broader trends. The timing and nature of the latter have varied. Anglo-America has a long history of urbanization and improvement; it has a correspondingly extended trajectory of programmes. But, for all the differences, there have been basic similarities in the changing profile, content, and perhaps especially the methods of upgrading. 22

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Almost everywhere its profile has risen, absolutely and relative to the alternatives. Neglect, the easiest option, has become difficult to justify. In the developed world, electorates rarely tolerate it and most countries in the developing world feel pressure from international agencies and donors to do something. Clearance, always expensive, has been repeatedly discredited. Although demolitions are still common, they are no longer the default, as they were through the 1960s. And, where carried out, there has been greater pressure for government to rehouse those displaced, adding to the expense. As John Turner (1968: 199) – admittedly a biased observer – once said, “the basic problem of the slum areas in the developing countries … is not to eradicate them but how to make them livable”. We hear more about upgrading, too, because the urban experience that frames it is now ubiquitous. Britain became the world's first urban nation in 1850, when most countries were overwhelmingly rural. North America, Europe and Japan crossed the urban threshold in the early twentieth century, followed by Latin America in the 1950s and 1960s and China in the 2000s. The world as a whole became urban in about 2010, at a time when global population had reached an unprecedented level. In absolute and relative terms, there is more urban territory than ever, which means more built environment to be maintained. Population growth and urbanization has also created a new reason why upgrading should be prioritized. We have become conscious of the global side-effects of energy consumption. Rehabilitating the existing built environment is usually less energy-intensive than wholesale redevelopment. It is part of what is now, rather vaguely, referred to as ‘sustainable’ urban development and renewal (Zheng, Shen, & Wang, 2014). As Anne Power (2008: 4488) recently concluded, “upgrading the existing stock is likely to gain in significance for environmental [as well as for] social and economic reasons”. In the field of public health, which for decades drove improvement programmes and in many places still does, the late 1980s were a tipping point. International health agencies had focused on rural areas (Brockerhoff, 1993). In 1988, however, a global survey noted, belatedly, that squatter settlements were a major public health issue (Harpham et al., 1988: vii). The World Health Assembly in 1991 marked a shift of concern to urban areas (World Health Organization, 1993: 1). Observers argued that housing was key, if understood and addressed in its physical, environmental context (Brockerhoff, 1993: 10; Cairncross, Hardoy, & Satterthwaite, 1990: 18–24). In effect, observers were re-stating the case that Anglo-American sanitarians had made a century earlier, albeit armed with better medical knowledge and on a larger scale. Contributing to upgrading has been the rise of the state, including urban planning. This happened across Anglo-America but the fullest account of how this affected participation in planning is for Canada (Hasson & Ley, 1994). Governments are expected to do much more now. In the 1800s, sanitary concerns raised new questions about the proper balance between the rights of property and those of the larger community (Benevolo, 1967; Tarn, 1980: 82). In the twentieth century, governments developed programmes for education, public safety, health and welfare. In the form of social work, for example, these displaced the many functions of the settlement houses (e.g. Pitsula, 1979). With a more sophisticated understanding of housing investment and filtering, our understanding of neighbourhood dynamics improved. Eventually, this enabled governments to engage with, rather than merely regulate, local housing markets (c.f. Jones & Watkins, 2009: 111). Municipalities and local agencies are expected to provide piped water and sewer systems, to pave streets, run schools, maintain police forces, provide libraries and community centres, regulate land use and construction. They have developed ‘urban’ policies that try to integrate these in particular places. It is in that context, or of stand-alone programmes, that upgrading initiatives have been launched. In North America, the most significant leap occurred after 1945, when municipalities established planning departments. These developed

comprehensive zoning plans, while prosperity enabled governments to regulate, clear, or improve on an unprecedented scale. Substantial planning bureaucracies grew up (c.f. Shapely, 2017: 325). While the profile of upgrading programmes has generally risen their content has changed, at least in Anglo-America. An obsession with sanitation gave way in the early 1900s to a concern with housing and then, suddenly in the 1980s, with poverty and social inequality. This shift reflected changes in the urban environment, as well as the larger society. Sanitary services had become almost ubiquitous in cities by the 1920s, while the worst housing had been demolished or upgraded by the 1970s. Employers were now demanding higher levels of formal education so that areas with mediocre schools, and social pressures to drop out early, put residents at growing disadvantage. Challenges were compounded by rising income inequality and the polarization of residential areas, creating larger districts of deeper, concentrated poverty. It was in this context that debates arose as to whether it made most sense to improve neighbourhoods, or the opportunities of their residents to obtain job skills or to move to less disadvantaged areas. Currently, if sometimes too easily, the answer is ‘both’. But nothing has changed more dramatically than the way upgrading is undertaken. Falteringly, democracy has widened and deepened. Today, many observers see China as a threat, both real and symbolic, to western democracies. Certainly that country has achieved economic miracles under autocratic rule, while its treatment of dissent and minorities is often shameful. But a growing middle class is demanding more say in what government does, and how. The outcome is unclear, but experience elsewhere suggests that, eventually, the result will be a more democratic regime. For decades, western governments, too, acted as if they knew best, expecting citizens to fall in line. Until the twentieth century, most urban residents had no direct say in national policy–women and many workers could not vote–and until mid-century tenants were second-class citizens at the municipal level. As expanded franchises were won, more voices were heard. Things came to a head in the 1960s, when the schemes of new planning bureaucracies met the expectations of a rising, prosperous, and newly-enfranchised generation. Citizen participation in many spheres, including the local and residential, was the upshot. If anything, changes in the global South have been even more dramatic. Until the 1950s, much of it was under colonial rule. Believing in the cultural and technical superiority of Europeans, rulers assumed that indigenous peoples needed control and guidance in how best to live, especially in urban areas. Rapid decolonization changed the rules of the game. In Surabaya, Indonesia, for example, after independence, kampung improvement continued but the emphasis and dynamic changed. The “strong top-down approach” and “obsession with neatness” of the Dutch waned, while planners showed a new sensitivity to the needs and interests of local residents (Versnel & Colombijn, 2014: 124; Dick, 2002: 368). This sort of change did not always happen, or not immediately, and some countries slid into authoritarian rule. Here, again, it would hazardous to make predictions. But decolonization has created new hopes and possibilities. Commonly, changes within residential areas have also contributed to more democratic, participatory governance. In 1900, most residential properties were renter-occupied: in North America the proportion was at least thirds; in Britain, nine tenths (Harris & Hamnett, 1987: 177). The average neighbourhood was one of tenants. Today, in all three countries those proportions have reversed, and in Australia the level of homeownership is higher still. This trend has probably made organized upgrading less necessary. The rise of home ownership has contributed to a decline in residential mobility (Tobey, Wetherall, & Brigham, 1990). Flux on the average block has declined; more people have a long-term stake in what happens locally. For that reason, and because they get to enjoy the fruits, home owners maintain their properties better than absentee landlords, a difference that may matter most in areas threatened by decline. In areas that do face challenges the presence of more homeowners 23

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makes upgrading easier: it is possible to appeal to motives other than the purely economic. And in most neighbourhoods rising home ownership has increased the number of people who want and expect to influence how municipalities govern. The cliché that homeowners participate more in local politics is based on fact and so, for this reason too, citizen participation has reshaped the manner in which upgrading must be carried out (Galster, 2019: 276–8). There is one important qualification. The trend towards greater engagement is least apparent in lower-income areas, in part because these contain high proportions of tenants. The contrast between residential areas may have increased over time, undercutting the pressure on municipalities to assist the most disadvantages areas. This, then, is an important exception to a general cultural shift. The story in the developing world is uneven and can be overstated, but is broadly similar. There, hundreds of millions of squatters in ‘arrival cities’ have acted more like homeowners than tenants: when their resources and local economies have allowed, they have improved structures that they themselves built, especially where legal title or public investments have offered security of tenure. The millions with slightly higher incomes who purchased and completed ‘shell’ homes in pirate settlements have done likewise. Residents of these slums and settlements of hope have needed little encouragement to upgrade (Turner, 1968). Indeed, squatters often preferred to be left alone. The point can be overstated. Such settlements contain many tenants, who are often highly mobile, who have a limited stake in local affairs, and whose needs are often overlooked (Gilbert, 2012). Other settlements, effectively slums of despair (Stokes, 1962), consist largely of tenants or face daunting environmental and economic challenges. Here, fatalistic resignation may be more common than engaged activism. We do not have good historic evidence, or even an appropriate calculus, to speak confidently about long-term trends. But it is clear that the residents of many global settlements are now demanding to have a say in their fate. In one respect, the experience of countries in the global South has been unique. There has always been an asymmetry in national power. Under colonial rule, power boundaries were sharply drawn: colonizers brought and imposed ideas and practices, good and bad. The examples of Calcutta and the Dutch Indies illustrate the sway of western ideas about sanitation and citizen participation. Slowly, rule gave way to influence. In the late colonial era, Britain paid more attention to indigenous housing and, apart from public housing, developed schemes for the improvement of private homes (Arku & Harris, 2005). Decolonisation continued this trend but did not eliminate influence. After 1945, philanthropic organizations took an interest in urban housing in the developing world. The most active was the Ford Foundation, which promoted citizen engagement both abroad and at home (Clinard, 1966; De, 2017; Kwak, 2015: 98–99; Marris & Rein, 1973). More significantly, the US government promoted home ownership (Arku & Harris, 2005; Kwak, 2015). It was especially influential in Latin America (e.g. PanAmerican Union, 1953). Increasingly, under the auspices of the United Nations, international agencies learned communicated and coordinated (Angel, 2000: 56–59; Harris & Giles, 2003). By the late 1960s, the U.N. was exerting moral and intellectual leadership, signalled in 1978 with the establishment of its Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). By then, the World Bank had stepped in, backing the ideas of western experts and governments with money. And so, by the 1980s, a survey of settlement upgrading in four countries could report a “global technocratic paradigm of recommended action” (Baross, 1983: 156). Since then funding, and the sources of influence, have waxed and waned (Tibaijuka, 2009: 35–82). In India, for example, the Ford Foundation and World Bank were displaced by government funding and NGOs, although lately the latter have stalled (De, 2017). Mumbai, in particular, has had limited success with upgrading and has re-committed to slum clearance (Mukhija, 2016). In addition to organizations founded in the developing world and now receiving international assistance, western-based NGOs are active. Many have influenced policy with respect to slum settlements, and promoted upgrading. Mostly, the

effects have been beneficial, more so than under colonial rule and certainly with more input from local residents. But, whatever their impact, they exemplify a continuing asymmetry in the international flow of urban ideas and practices. Those sensitive to current trends may question the generally upbeat interpretation that I have offered. It is not obvious that democracy is generally on the increase and, with it, an openness to resident participation in urban programmes. Two leading British and American publications have recently enumerated the challenges that authoritarian populism pose for liberal democracies (Economist, 2018; Atlantic Monthly, 2018). It is also unclear that economic and social conditions are getting better, at least in Anglo-America, or indeed in Europe. Real incomes are stagnating along with the rise of precarious employment. Social inequality has been growing, and helping to produce concentrations of stigmatized poverty (e.g. Bishaw, 2014; Cortright & Mahmoudi, 2014; Grant et al., 2019). At the same time, many governments have pulled back, a trend often labelled neoliberal. Even traditionally progressive parties, such as Labour in Britain and the Democrats in the United States, have framed urban policies within this mould. Analogous thinking has shaped policies for the developing world. The World Bank, as part of the ‘Washington consensus’, threw its support behind ‘market enabling’ in the 1980s (Buckley & Kalarickal, 2006; Tibaijuka, 2009). Increasingly, urban projects have come to be judged by their impact on economic development as well as, and sometimes more than, their contribution to social welfare and public health (c.f. Kessides, 1993a, 1993b). Lately, for example, there has been talk of making “an investment case for health-promoting urban environments”, or of creating ‘bankable slums’, attractive to investors (Ogawa, Shah, & Nicholson, 2018: 67; Jones, 2012). There is much to be said for promoting investment and employment opportunities for disadvantaged areas (e.g. Kigochie, 2001; c.f. Turok, 2004: 407). But, in an era when cities feel pressured to compete, such thinking can give way to support for programmes of urban regeneration that favour redevelopment and growth, willy-nilly. Such sweeping efforts may be needed in certain times and places, but applied generally they will brush aside neighbourhoods for which kinder, gentler upgrading would be more beneficial (c.f. Leary & McCarthy, 2013; Porter & Shaw, 2009; Ruming, 2018). From her survey of the Anglo-American experience, Naomi Carmon (1999: 155) concluded that we should go gradually, treating each place on its own terms; recently, Galster (2019: 291–3) has argued much the same: be circumspect. That sounds like good advice. 9. Concluding discussion The record shows that, by any name, neighbourhood improvement is not new and never easy. The first programme was launched a century and a half ago. Early initiatives were forgotten after they were dropped. Mistakes had to be relearned; sources of inspiration and encouragement were lost; the very idea had to be reinvented. Even so, some important lessons have been learned: programmes for people and places should complement one another; engaging property owners and residents is essential; concentrating resources on particular neighbourhoods is more effective; in the global North, they should often be the poorest; we need to be very cautious about investing in disadvantaged areas that are located in urban regions that themselves are struggling. Some areas, regrettably, are beyond hope. The biggest message is that the devil is in the details. Carrying through an upgrading programme is inherently difficult. Clearance, even redevelopment, hinges on limited variables. Improvement involves many more, and there is no template: goals, scale, and tactics must be adapted to local circumstances. Sanitary services are basic and must be the priority if deficient, unless an experimental portable toilet is perfected (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, 2018). Tenure security is vital, too, for both owners and tenants, though need not be formalized. The scale of operation should recognize local conditions and use 24

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boundaries (and, where relevant, names) that are meaningful to local residents. If the latter are not already clamouring for action, they should be consulted and engaged. That is especially true of property owners, for their investment decisions will determine the future of the area. If the main purpose is to help residents rather than repair buildings, it is important to coordinate with the agencies that deliver social programmes. And, unless the goal is to achieve a physical upgrade regardless, for a programme to be both fair and successful an effort must be made to gain the input and ongoing involvement of the most disadvantaged. That means keeping an open mind about goals. One of the trickier decisions – often involving a negotiation – is who should lead the process. For decades, by default, municipalities or other state agencies took charge. Lately they have partnered with developers and/or community groups and organizations. Developers will be important if many sites require development; where present, community groups are invariably important, both as vehicles for the articulation of local concerns and also to obtain legitimacy. The difficulty is that developers are usually concerned with making a profit, which may not mesh well with felt needs, while few community groups are fully representative, and frequently contain competing voices that can stymie decisions. Negotiating this political minefield requires a rare combination of firmness, tact, and flexibility on one side, trust on the other, and overall a willingness to compromise. The whole process, in other words, is tricky politics. But if neighbourhood improvement is neither new nor easy it is necessary. Settlements in need of upgrading are everywhere, and have never been more extensive. These days, conversations about neighbourhoods are dominated by references to the very worst places or to debates about gentrification. In reality, stability or gentle decline is the norm, and it is above all to the latter that we should pay attention (Landis, 2015; Mallach, 2018; Howell, 2018). In most cases the alternatives to upgrading are non-viable. Politically, laissez-faire will not do. Clearance generates opposition and bad press; on a scale to be effective it is simply too expensive. The positive reasons for upgrading, including the environmental, have never been stronger. Someone, usually the municipality, must consider this option. If nothing else, the historical record is encouraging in that it demonstrates that many have gone before, often with useful effect. That may not sound stirring: it does not lend itself to sweeping visions of progress and prosperity. But, as planning and policy initiatives go, its record and promise is better than average.

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