Punctured Vanity

Outcry in the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy and widespread anger at hubristic big-money schemes will strengthen London mayor Sadiq Khan’s hand as he attempts to address inequality in the UK capital.

- Francis Wade

Londoners awoke on the morning of 14 June to news of a disaster on a scale not seen in the city for decades.

The fire that had torn through Grenfell Tower in the west of the city in the early hours of the morning triggered a storm of criticism at the ruling Conservative Party government and the Conservative-run Kensington and Chelsea borough council.

To many watching as events unfolded, the inferno symbolised the discrimination faced by London’s urban poor in one of Britain’s wealthiest boroughs, where lavish apartment complexes stand alongside high-rise social housing blocks, and where the rich-poor divide is among Europe’s starkest.

The fire also shone an unflattering light on the trajectory of urban development in London in recent decades, and raised questions of where it should go from here.

The basic prescription for the UK capital had, since the middle of the last century, been one of building up rather than building out: housing the growing population in high-rise blocks to safeguard greenfield sites on the edge of the city.

It seemed a logical response to the city’s changing demographics, but the eventual outcome wasn’t to the benefit of all: those who weren’t forced into cheaper housing on London’s periphery were instead crowded into under-resourced estates, while planners pushed ahead with the gentrification of certain areas to a degree that accentuated the pre-existing class disparity.

That planted the seeds for today’s housing crisis, where demand for affordable housing within the city proper vastly outstrips supply, and which has come to dominate local politics in London.

The city’s population is growing at around 100,000 people a year, but in 2015, the number of registrations to build new homes only reached 26,000.