Global City Discussion BUTLER/LEES or SIVAM

Which of these articles confirms or negates your view on housing availability and affordability?

ARTICLE: Butler, T. and Lees, L. (2006). Super-gentrification in Barnsbury, London: Globalization and Gentrifying Global Elites at the NeighbourhoodLevel. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 31, 467-487.

or

ARTICLE: Sivam, A. (2003). Housing Supply in Delhi. Cities 20 (2003): 135-141.

• Must begin with a quotation from either article (with page number);
• Must have at least 300 words (not including the required quotation) with proper spelling and grammar;
• Must include your explanation of how the quotation address one of the Meta-themes

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Blackwell Publishing Ltd

Super-gentrification in Barnsbury, London:
globalization and gentrifying global elites
at the neighbourhood level

Tim Butler and Loretta Lees

In this paper we argue that a process of super-gentrification, similar to that first
identified by Lees (2003

Urban Studies

40 2487–509) in Brooklyn Heights, New York
City, is occurring in the already gentrified, inner London neighbourhood of Barnsbury.
A new group of super wealthy professionals working in the City of London is slowly
imposing its mark on this inner London housing market in a way that differentiates it
and them both from traditional gentrifiers and from the traditional urban upper
classes. We suggest that there is a close interaction between work in the newly
globalizing industries of the financial services economy, elite forms of education,
particularly Oxbridge, and residence in Barnsbury which is very different from other
areas of gentrified inner London.

key words

super-gentrification London globalization global elites neighbourhood

fixedness

Department of Geography, King’s College London, London WC2R 2LS
email: tim.butler@kcl.ac.uk

revised manuscript received 16 June 2006

Introduction

As gentrification has become generalised so it has become
intensified in its originating neighbourhoods, many of
which have now moved into stellar price brackets and
now resemble established elite enclaves rather than the
ascetic pioneer gentrifier spirit of the 1960s and 1970s.
(Atkinson and Bridge 2005, 16)

With some exceptions (Bridge 2003; Butler with Robson
2003; Lees 2003) writers have tended to treat
gentrification as an un-socially and un-geographically
differentiated category glossing over differences
within the middle-class socio-spatial habitus. The
term ‘gentrification’ has broadly assumed the status
of a metaphor for the upgrading of the inner city
by higher professionals (Hamnett 2003). However,
as the opening quotation indicates, this is no longer
a sustainable position. Due to the social and geogra-
phical scale of metropolitan centres such as London,
New York and Paris, gentrification is more diverse
there than in smaller or non global/metropolitan
cities. Super-gentrification (Lees 2000 2003) is one

example of this diversification. At the other end of
the scale, Preteceille (2004 forthcoming) has shown
that the majority group in the ongoing gentrification
of Paris’ core arrondissements is the ‘ordinary’ middle
class. In other words, in understanding gentrification
we need to recognize that metropolitan structures
have important local articulations in which context,
place, locality and scale, all play a crucial role. Whilst
globalization has undoubtedly altered the scale at
which social structures are organized and experienced
(Rofe 2003), its implications for the geographical
(re)structuring and sociological stratification of gentri-
fication needs to be understood as a subject for inve-
stigation rather than a taken-for-granted assumption.

Ley (2004) discusses some of the limitations of the
globalization literature, particularly its economistic
tendencies and failure to focus on different forms
of agency. Globalization, he argues, has not created
subjects who transcend spaces. He is also critical of the

separation of the global and the local and the ascription
of mobility and universalism to the global and stasis
and parochialism to the local (2004, 151)

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which he sees as an oversimplification. Like Ley,
our aim in this paper is to

open up globe talk by animating certain agents of global
capitalism and cosmopolitan ideology, by highlighting their
distinctive and bounded territories, and by filling out more
fully their distinctive subjectivities. (Ley 2004, 162)

In so doing, we complicate the globalization
literature’s ‘world without borders’ by showing the
preference for a local and particular neighbourhood
by many who might otherwise be cast as global
masters of the universe. But where Ley focuses on
transnational businessmen and cosmopolitan pro-
fessionals, we look at a fraction of the latter class
who Lees (2000 2003) terms ‘super-gentrifers’ or
‘financifiers’. Our argument is that not all global
workers – or more accurately workers in globally
connected industries – are restlessly mobile
frequent-flying cosmopolitans, for super-gentrifiers
are actually very bound occupationally and
residentially to highly restricted quarters in the
central and inner city. As Ley puts it,

metaphors of domination need to be mingled with
metaphors of vulnerability, images of global reach with
those of parochialism, a discourse of detachment with one
of partisanship. (2004, 157)

The research presented in this paper underscores
the continuing significance of spatial and social
differentiation in a globalizing society and the
unexpected ‘fixedness’ of so-called global actors
(see Prytherch and Marston 2005, 98).

Whilst Ley’s (2004) discussion is a useful starting
point, particularly in distinguishing between the
literatures on globalization and global cities, he relies
on general empirics, often from other people’s
work, in his discussion. We offer a more detailed
empirical picture in which we focus on one class
fraction within the wider category of cosmopolitan
professionals – super-gentrifiers in the mature
gentrified neighbourhood of Barnsbury in inner
London. We show that super-gentrification has
particular causes and effects that are different to
those associated with the classic gentrification
that has progressively taken over much of inner
London over the last 30 or 40 years. We are sensitive
throughout our discussion to the similarities and
differences between super-gentrification in London
and New York, especially between two neighbour-
hoods with very similar temporal and spatial gen-
trification profiles – Brooklyn Heights (Lees 2003)
and Barnsbury (Butler 2002 2003; Butler and Robson

2003; Carpenter and Lees 1995; Lees 1994a 1994b
1996), and between super-gentrification in Barnsbury
and contemporary gentrification in other inner London
neighbourhoods (Butler with Robson 2003).

Drawing upon archival and our own research data,
we track the gentrification process in Barnsbury
from its beginnings in the late 1950s and compare
the previous rounds of gentrification with a new
wave of (re)gentrification. We identify crudely three
generations of gentrification in Barnsbury: first wave
or pioneer gentrification, second wave or corporate/
professional gentrification; and a third wave of
super-gentrification that is on-going. Whilst there
has been some outward movement by the original
gentrifying households, there is still evidence of the
co-existence of the gentrifiers associated with these
three generations of gentrification in Barnsbury
today.

The paper is structured as follows. First, we dis-
cuss why we use the term, and what we mean by,
‘super-gentrification’ and how it relates to the liter-
atures on globalization and global cities; second,
we discuss our data and methods; third, in what is
the substantive empirical section of the paper,
we discuss both the history of gentrification and the
on-going super-gentrification of Barnsbury. Com-
paring the different waves of gentrification in
Barnsbury is important in identifying how super-
gentrification is similar and /or different. Finally,
we conclude with a discussion on the process of
super-gentrification – on how Barnsbury differs from
other gentrified neighbourhoods in inner London,
on the similarities and differences between super-
gentrification in Barnsbury and Brooklyn Heights,
and on the continuities and disjunctures between
super-gentrification and its more traditional mani-
festations. We end with further discussion about
the relationship between super-gentrification,
globalization and global cities, and ask whether
super-gentrification might happen in other neigh-
bourhoods and cities.

Super-gentrification and globalization

We use the term ‘super-gentrification’ for a number
of reasons. It might be argued that, having become
so well-established, we are no longer witnessing a
process of gentrification in Barnsbury. Rather, it
might be argued, what has been going on over the
last decade is simply the consolidation of this part
of the inner London housing market with prices on
an ever upward trend. Barnsbury, on this view, has

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simply joined the ranks of elite districts in London
such as Chelsea, Hampstead, Blackheath, Fulham
and, more recently, Notting Hill. Gentrification
implies a transformation in a neighbourhood’s social
class composition and there is little evidence of
continued social displacement in Barnsbury – the
stock of suitable housing has long been converted.
But we have chosen the term ‘super-gentrification’
precisely because it describes a further process of
gentrification that has been occurring in Barnsbury
since the mid-1990s, a process that includes a
significant step change in social class composition
and evidence of social replacement (rather than
displacement) with a significant transformation in
community relations.

We use the prefix ‘super’ to demonstrate that this
is a further level of gentrification, which is super-
imposed on an already gentrified neighbourhood.
One that involves a higher financial or economic
investment in the neighbourhood than previous
waves of gentrification and thus requires a qualita-
tively different level of economic resource. In other
words, one in which the previous ‘ordinary’ pro-
fessional middle classes are slowly being replaced;
in Brooklyn Heights (see Lees 2003) many are cash-
ing in their properties, selling them to this new
breed of super-gentrifier. These new gentrifiers are
a qualitatively different group of very high salaried
‘masters of the universe’ who are able to buy over-
priced properties and entertain themselves in the
restaurants and expensive shops of Upper Street’s
(p)leisure zone. Many, if not most, of these gentrifiers
not only enjoy large salaries but can also aspire
to large, regular and reasonably predictable bonus
payments that enable them to afford large down
payments and will allow them to pay off mortgages
within a few years. Their investment in property in
highly valued locations, such as Barnsbury, is driven
by super-profits from the global financial world.

In defining super-gentrifiers as a specific group,
we follow earlier work by – for example – Ley
(1980) on liberal public sector workers and Zukin
(1988) on artists, where the cultural aspects of gen-
trifiers have been bound to specific social groups
and where profession is an important determinant
of the values, aspirations and residential needs and
preferences of the group. This connects to Castells’
(1989) argument about the increasing differentia-
tion of labour in the two most dynamic sectors of
the economy – ‘the information based formal economy’
(white university-educated workers) and the ‘down-
graded labor-based informal economy’ (poorly

educated ethnic minorities). Beaverstock

et al

.
(2004) argue that the key divide that gentrification
authors have long focused on – that between the
work rich and work poor – should concern us less
than the divide between the super-rich elite and
the rest (something that Lees’ (2003) work on
income changes over time in gentrified Brooklyn
Heights suggests but does not explicitly state).

We use the suffix ‘gentrification’ as a metaphor
for social change, here a new, more elite, more
globally connected gentry is moving into the
neighbourhood. This argument is largely founded
around Sassen’s (1991) argument about the crea-
tion of a new class of financial engineers who have
successfully commodified the financial services
industries creating new products and great wealth
for themselves. Her claim is that this has driven
both the creation of a new financial services indus-
try located in key global cities (notably New York,
London and – now to a lesser extent – Tokyo) and
of a consumption infrastructure which she equates
with residential gentrification. Her argument, which
has been subjected to much critical evaluation, is
that this has led to the emergence of a polarized
social structure in such cities. The critics have
argued (Buck

et al

. 2002; Hamnett 2003; Preteceille
2004, amongst others) that this claim is based more
on assertion than evidence. Whilst they agree that
there is growing income inequality in such cities,
they deny this is social polarization. The sceptics
argue that there is no evidence of declining
incomes amongst those in work, although they
tend to ignore the growing numbers, particularly
in Europe, dependent on state benefits (Burgers
1996; Burgers and Musterd 2002). Others point to
growing numbers of intermediate workers in cities
like London and Paris, whose growth in real and
percentage terms has outstripped that of the proto-
typical professional managerial gentrifying classes
(Preteceille 2004; Butler

et al.

forthcoming). What
they argue in common is that the linkages between
the forces of globalization and the dynamics of glo-
bal cities need to be spelled out much more clearly
(Buck

et al

. 2002). Preteceille (2004 forthcoming)
complains that Neil Smith (1996 2002), like Sassen
(1991), has similarly imposed an

a priori

Ameri

can

model of urban gentrification (see also Lees 2000,
who compares American and Canadian models)
in which the incoming revanchist upper middle
classes have laid waste to the inner city, on cities
across the globe irrespective of local context. This
point is well-made by Clark (2005) in a sharp aside

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about Smith demanding to see the (in Clark’s view
non existent at the time) ‘gentrification frontier’ in
Malmö, Sweden.

Most recently, Atkinson and Bridge have argued
that ‘gentrification today must be seen in the con-
text of globalisation’ (2005, 7), whilst glossing over
the causal links between globalization and gentrifi-
cation. Like Smith (2002), they link globalization
and gentrification by discussing neo-liberal urban
policy regimes, the hyper-mobility of global capital
and workers, the expansion and increased wealth
of the cosmopolitan class, and so on. But they pro-
vide little to no empirical or conceptual detail in
their discussion. The challenge is made even more
difficult by the fact that the globalization literature
and the gentrification literature have, to date, paid
little attention to each other. It is evident now that
this must change and, following Atkinson and
Bridge (2005), we begin here to draw together these
literatures, but future work needs to build on this.

In so doing, we take issue with a globalization
literature that has, we feel, over-emphasized (hyper)
mobility, unfixity, flow, dislocation, transnationalism
and cosmopolitanism. For super-gentrifiers, who
are part of the new global elite, do not necessarily
share these characteristics. The ones that we have
studied have formed ‘personal micro-networks’
(Beaverstock and Boardwell 2000) that centre on
residence and leisure space in Barnsbury. Super-
gentrifiers work in a ‘contact-intensive sub-culture’
(Ley 2004, 157) where co-location in the City and
face-to-face meetings are very important. For
super-gentrifiers this has influenced their choice of
residence too – they want quick and easy access to
the City and to be able to easily meet up and socialize
with their cohort in Barnsbury (on their doorstep)
or the West End (10–15 minutes away). Bourdieu
(2005) shows that there is a social class gradient in
the preparedness to travel long distances to work
and that it is the ability to match the propensities
and capabilities of the habitus that defines the
senior professionals in their housing choices, which
nearly always means living near to work and with
similar socio-economic fractions. This need to
socialize and live with their own cohort is probably
a function of the fact that

They worry a great deal about the threat of being out of
touch, about not keeping up with news, about not keeping
up with peers. (Gad 1991, 207, quoted in Ley 2004, 157)

Like Beaverstock

et al

. (2004), we draw a distinction
between a genuinely transnational faction of the

global elite (the super-rich), globally mobile managers
and those professionals who maintain the global
finance machine from their fixed bases in Manhattan,
the City of London and a very restricted list of B
grade cities. These differences within elite groups
can be spatially represented, as we argue later, by
geo-demographic software such as Mosaic or
Acorn. Super-gentrifiers are different from both the
traditional banking and stockbroking elites that
live in areas such as Chelsea, St John’s Wood and
more recently Notting Hill and the super wealthy
international bourgeoisie living in Mayfair, Park
Lane and much of Kensington. They can also be
distinguished from the global managers restlessly
roaming the world that have been identified by
Rofe (2003), who sees one of the major consequences
of globalization as having been the erosion of space
as a significant determinant of social relations. As
spatial barriers become increasingly permeable,
notions of community likewise become increasingly
fluid. Rofe quotes Waters (1995), who argues that
globalization means that territory will disappear as
an organizing principle for social and cultural life.
We dispute that this is necessarily the case and
argue that space does not always get eroded by
globalization. In Barnsbury it is being (re)produced
as a by-product of globalization. Super-gentrifiers
are not Rofe’s transnational elite; indeed Rofe
(2003, 2512) himself argues that not all gentrifiers
are members of the transnational elite. We agree
with Rofe that recognizing the

spatially fragmented and socially fragmenting nature of
globalization is vital if balanced critiques of globalization’s
impacts and the emergence of global elite communities
are to be achieved. (2003, 2517)

By focusing our research lens on the neighbourhood
of Barnsbury, we directly address the fact that, as
Atkinson and Bridge argue, ‘the literature on
globalization has not been geared towards the level
of the neighbourhood’ (2005, 7). There is little to no
detailed empirical research that ‘fixes’ globalization
at the local/neighbourhood level – most work
focuses on global nodes or networks or undertakes
ethnographies within the space of global flows.
Following Beaverstock

et al

. (2004), we argue that
tracing the ‘micro-networks’ and activity spaces
of the super-rich is pivotal to any understanding
of globalization. Second, we look at an elite group of
gentrifiers who have chosen not to colonize a
formerly working-class neighbourhood, but to re-
colonize an existing gentrified neighbourhood. These

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super-gentrifiers actively connect global capital flows
to the neighbourhood level not through their person-
ally mobile lifestyle but through their connections
with the City of London’s globally

connected

industries which have come to rely, to an extent, on
face to face contacts not just in the Square Mile but
also in the neighbourhood. In contrast to Rofe’s
(2003) argument that, in order to maintain a
distinctive identity, the gentrifying class as an
emergent elite projects its identity from the scale of
the local onto the global, we demonstrate the opposite:
elite super-gentrifiers are projecting a global
identity onto the local. Our point is that this global
identity is, to some extent, rooted in what might be
seen as rather place bound and traditional industries
which have nevertheless managed to make themselves
indispensable to the new accumulation regimes
which are centred in cities such as London and
New York. Rather than the erosion of space by
globalization, here we see the reconstitution of
(elite) space at the neighbourhood level.

Data and method

The longitudinal nature of the primary empirical
data to be found in this paper is unusual in the
gentrification literature. We have drawn on a
portfolio of first hand research undertaken in
Barnsbury over the past 15 years – this includes
Lees’ PhD research undertaken in the early 1990s,

1

Butler’s ESRC

2

funded research undertaken in the
late 1990s/early 2000s – part of a wider study of
the gentrification of inner London around the turn
of the century (see Butler with Robson 2003) and
some additional research undertaken in 2005. In
this paper we have utilized a mix of quantitative
and qualitative methods – analysis of census data
and other socio-economic data, in-depth interviews, a
household survey, and archival research of docu-
mentation on first, second and third generation
gentrification. Finding qualitative evidence about
super-gentrification in Barnsbury has been relatively
straightforward – from survey and the associated
interview data; quantitative evidence has been
more difficult to collect. The research on super-
gentrification in New York City, undertaken by
Lees (2003), was able to use small scale US census
tract data on family income to show how Brooklyn
Heights had super-gentrified between 1990 and
2000; similar small area data on income is not
available from the UK census (see Bramley and
Lancaster 1998). As Beaverstock

et al

. (2004) point

out, there is a lack of data available for locating the
super-rich. Official government statistics provide
inadequate, or as is the case in the UK non-existent,
data on income. Neither does the UK census
provide information on house prices. In its place,
we use house price data from the Land Registry
and survey data we have gathered on residents’
incomes and on how they funded the purchase of
their property and in many cases remodelled it.

We also use the geo-demographic software pro-
gramme Mosaic to look at the types of gentrifiers
living in Barnsbury today. Geo-demographic soft-
ware is a relatively recent development which aims
to identify groups of people with their postcode
(Burrows and Gane forthcoming). The classifications
which have been developed are essentially ones
based around consumption characteristics and are
aimed at those running marketing campaigns. Mosaic
is one of the best known and accessible via postcodes.
The Mosaic classification is more detailed than
other programmes such as Acorn, and an analysis
of the 73 respondents in Butler’s household survey
demonstrates striking similarities to the Mosaic
description of Barnsbury’s postcodes.

The case of Barnsbury, Islington,
North London

The history of gentrification in Barnsbury

Barnsbury is a residential neighbourhood in the north
London borough of Islington, located approximately
two miles from the City of London (see Figure 1).
Barnsbury was built around 1820 as an upper middle-
class suburb on hilltop fields stretching northwards;
the housing is composed of terraces and detached
villas. Post World War II suburbanization fuelled
the abandonment of Barnsbury by the middle classes,
but where Americans fled from race, from people
of colour, the residents of Barnsbury fled from the
working classes:

A combination of class fear and railway engineering
turned a vast stretch of residential London into a no-man’s
land . . . Camden Town, Holloway, Islington, were
abandoned to the hopelessly entrenched working class.
It’s only in the last decade or so that a new middle
class, trendy and pioneer, have replaced these buffer
areas, between the nobs and the mob of N1 and NW1.
(Raban 1974)

As in the United States, the suburbanization of
London was facilitated by the state. Abercrombie’s

Greater London Plan

(1944), which became the blueprint

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Figure 1 Barnsbury

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for the post-war reconstruction of London, institu-
tionalized the valorization of the suburbs and the
devalorization of the inner city. This was further
entrenched by the 1952

New Town Development Act

which exported 30 000 Londoners to expanded
towns such as Bury St Edmunds. The properties
they left behind rapidly went into multi-occupation.
In post-war London the demand for housing was
greater than the available supply, but the pressure
caused by demand varied across London and
Barnsbury became one of the city’s areas of greatest
housing stress. In 1961, 62 per cent of Barnsbury’s
households lived in shared accommodation in
comparison to only 30 per cent in the County of
London (London Borough of Islington 1966, 6). In a
1968 pilot survey in Matilda Street, Barnsbury, out
of 160 households interviewed: 127 had no access
to a bath, 138 shared a toilet, 15 had no kitchen
sink and 25 were living in overcrowded conditions
(London Borough of Islington 1969, 13).

Gentrifiers first began moving into Barnsbury in
the late 1950s. In the 1960s there was a shift from
urban redevelopment to urban renewal which
meant that the improvement of inner city areas
became the job of the private market, i.e. owner
occupiers and landlords (Williams 1978, 31). This
shift can be associated with the beginnings of
gentrification in Barnsbury. The first main influx
occurred between 1961 and 1975. The first generation
of gentrifiers were the left leaning liberals that Ley
(1996) identifies. They were architects, planners,
university lecturers, comprehensive school teachers,
social workers, medical technicians and so on; they
were also overwhelmingly Labour (party) voting
(Bugler 1968). As one pioneer gentrifier put it:

I like the place because there’s such a lack of the products
of English public schools. My man, and all that. People
aren’t affected here as they are in Chelsea, Hampstead
or South Kensington. (Anthony Froshang, graphic
designer, in Carson 1965)

It was the value gap

3

and its attendant tenurial
transformation that was the main initiator of
gentrification in Barnsbury (see Lees 1994a, on the
uneven temporal and spatial operation of the value
gap in Barnsbury). The value gap became important
in Barnsbury in the late 1950s and especially the
1960s; landlords were getting a decreasing return
on their rented property whilst developers were
realizing capital gains by buying up rented property,
evicting the tenants and selling it in a vacant state.
The middle classes were a captive market and

building societies were releasing more funds to
inner city property (Pitt 1977, 9). The turning point
for Barnsbury came with the 1957 Rent Act which
decontrolled unfurnished tenancies during a time
of increasing home ownership. As a result, Barnsbury
suffered many cases of ‘winkling’, where tenants
were forced to leave as a consequence of bribery
and harassment by unscrupulous landlords. The
1969 Housing Act demonstrated a new commitment
from government to rehabilitation instead of just
renewal. The Act provided local authorities with
the power to allocate discretionary improvement
grants; as the grants had to be met pound for pound
by the improver, they automatically favoured the
more well-off improver or developer (Hamnett
1973, 252–3) and aided the gentrification process in
Barnsbury. In 1971, 56 per cent of all Islington’s
improvement grants went to the wards of Barnsbury
and St Peters (Power 1972, 3). The rapid tenurial
transformation that ensued in Barnsbury is quite
striking (see Table 1).

4

Williams (1978, 23 – 4) argues that building socie-
ties only began to take an interest in lending on
inner city properties in Islington after 1972, by
which time increasing numbers of middle-class
professionals had bought properties in the area.

The change in the area has been phenomenal. I was the
first gentrified house in the street, I was too naïve to realise
just how dangerous it was then (there was a brothel
opposite, everything was tumble down and ruined).
Gradually people came in and turned these wrecks into
very nice houses, though we have lost some characters
(not all of whom I miss). (Mrs Stanley, 75)

5

As more and more middle-class people moved into
Barnsbury, property prices rose year on year – the
average sales price of all houses in Barnsbury

Table 1 Tenurial transformation in Barnsbury, 1961–
2001

Tenure (%) 1961 1971 1981 1991 2001

Owner occupier 7.0 14.7 19.0 28.9 34.0
Council 15.0 18.7 56.0 48.7 47.8
Furnished rent 14.0 16.8 7.1 7.7 16.6
Unfurnished rent 61.0 48.4 6.8 3.0

Source: UK Census, 10% sample
Note: In 2001 the unfurnished category was not enumerated
and the council sector contained 21.2% renting directly from
the council and the remainder from other registered social
landlords. There were also significant boundary changes
between 1971– 81 and 1991–2001

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rising from £1200 in 1955 to £208 125 in 1991 (Lees
1994b, Table 5.10, 174); then – mirroring discussions
of recession elsewhere (see Hackworth and Smith
2001) – dropped to £185 500 in 1992. The late 1980s/
early 1990s recession constricted the flow of capital
into Barnsbury but, from 1993/4 onwards, the pace
of gentrification resumed as we discuss in the next
section.

Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, a
second wave of gentrification occurred throughout
Barnsbury. This second wave of gentrification was
enframed by wider changes taking place in the
City of London (Fainstein

et al.

1992). The City of
London’s function as a banking and finance centre
became more pronounced with the de-regulation of
the Stock Exchange in 1986 and the full internation-
alization of securities dealing. A new wave of ‘City
types’ began to move into Barnsbury. This second
generation of gentrifiers were, in some respects, a
transitional group between the first and third gen-
eration gentrifiers. They were a wealthier group of
professionals than the pioneer gentrifiers and were
overwhelmingly represented in Social Class 1
(Higher Managerial and Professional). Table 2
shows that in Barnsbury Social Class 1 increased
by 2.5 percentage points between 1981 and 1991 –
taking into account changes in the enumeration of
the economically inactive, this was a real growth of
some 14 per cent. By 1991, Social Class 1 in Barns-
bury was nearly twice that in Islington as a whole.
All other social class groups in Barnsbury actually
decreased over the same time period. The ‘City
types’ who were beginning to move in during this
period were drawn from the upper professional
strata, as Sassen noted:

The most central areas of London have undergone a
transformation that broadly parallels Manhattan’s . . . We
see a parallel increase in the stratum of what Brint (1988)
has described as upper professionals, a group largely
employed in corporate services, including finance. The
sharp growth in the concentration of the mostly young,
new high-income professionals and managers employed in
central London represents a significant change from a dec-
ade ago. (1991, 265)

As gentrification in Barnsbury matured, corporate
participation increased. This was especially evident
in the commercial gentrification of Upper Street. In
the late 1980s, Upper Street was still rather ‘down
at heel’ but, by the late 1990s, it had become an
upscale consumption playground for the rich
living in its adjacent streets and squares. Islington
Borough Council (in partnership with London
Underground in the case of the redevelopment of
Angel tube station) subsidized the redevelopment
of Upper Street and, as its reputation grew, it
attracted increasingly more expensive shops and
restaurants. The redevelopment of the old
Agricultural Hall on Upper Street into what is
now the Business Design Centre symbolized this
corporate investment in Barnsbury (see Plate 1).

Table 2 Social class change in Barnsbury and
Islington, 1981–1991

Social class

Barnsbury Islington

1981 1991 1981 1991

1. Professionals 6.9 9.4 4.6 5.

7

2. Managerial and technical 26.0 20.0 19.3 19.1
3NM. Skilled non-manual 13.3 7.7 13.3 8.5
3M. Skilled manual 24.3 14.1 29.6 12.8
4. Partly skilled 17.9 4.4 20.7 9.0
5. Unskilled 7.9 4.9 8.8 4.6
Others 3.7 6.5 3.7 5.9
Economically inactive 33.0 34.3

Source: UK Census, 10% sample Plate 1 The Business Design Centre

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During this second wave of gentrification, there
was a slowdown between 1987 and 1992. This was
the result of a number of factors – the 1987 Stock
Market crash, the fact that the then Chancellor
Nigel Lawson increased interest rates to control
inflation thus forcing mortgage rates up, and the
announcement that multiple mortgage tax relief was
to be abolished, Also, interestingly, the redevelop-
ment of Docklands was a factor:

I think that the main change for Islington as a whole
was when Docklands started up, we probably lost a
little bit of business to Docklands because Docklands
was pricing itself at the top end of the market, and
Barnsbury for Islington is the top end of the market.
I’m sure Barnsbury suffered. But really Docklands has
gone flat now, you know it doesn’t affect us at all, in
fact there may even be a shift back from Docklands to
Islington. They’re both well placed for the City so we
weren’t really after the same sort of people. (Interview
with real estate agent, 1992, in Lees 1994b)

In the next section we see the ‘sort of people’ that
Barnsbury was to attract, the super-gentrifiers that
came with a third wave of gentrification that began
in the mid-1990s and is on-going today.

In 1993, the Blairs, having moved to another part
of Islington in 1986 from their original house in
Hackney’s London Fields, arrived in Barnsbury.
This was towards the end of this second phase of
gentrification and coincided with the tail end of the
negative housing equity recession of the late
1980s/early 1990s. By the time they sold their Rich-
mond Crescent house in 1997, it had nearly dou-
bled in price (to around £700 000) and has probably
doubled again since then. When the Blairs moved
in, it was still possible for successful professionals
to buy a family property in Barnsbury. By the time
they sold, it was really only those working at the
top end of the legal professions and the financial
services industries and the otherwise wealthy who
could buy such houses.

Super-gentrification in Barnsbury

In the mid-1990s a new process of post-recession
gentrification emerged. This super-gentrification
in Barnsbury is connected, we argue, to post-
deregulation developments in the City of London
and to the increase in London’s global city functions.
Deregulation of the Stock Exchange in 1986 brought
about a big expansion in City employment, but
deregulation had another effect that was perhaps
more significant for super-gentrification. In the 1990s,
because deregulation had been insufficient to

invigorate the rather conservative British finance
houses, these firms were taken over, largely by
foreign, mainly US-based financial mega-players –
this led to large numbers of very high salaries and
to the increased internationalization of the workers
in these firms, which now make up about a third of
City employment (Buck

et al.

2002, 112). By 1997
there were 479 foreign banks in London, by the
late 1990s the number had increased again to 550
(Hamnett 2003, 38). The 1990s marked a boom
period for job growth in merchant banking,
investment banking, and equity sales and research.
Between 1995 and 2001 international banking
increased by 43 per cent, international securities
trading by 167 per cent, derivatives by 78 per cent,
corporate finance by 36 per cent, and professional
services by 41 per cent (Lombard Street Research
Limited 2003, 47). Other global activities were
important too, law and accountancy in particular,
both heavily concentrated in the City and
Westminster, saw a rapid growth in their
international business. City employment in financial
services grew annually by 1.1 per cent between
1971 and 2001, but the 1990s were the most
dynamic period, when annual increases were 2.6
per cent, compared to below 1.5 per cent in the
1970s and 1980s (Lombard Street Research Ltd 2003,
17). From the mid-1990s earnings grew sharply (see
Figure 2) in response to the internationalization of
salaries (which meant paying City workers salaries
akin to their equivalents in New York) and a
‘bonus culture’ which spread to the City from the
US (Hamnett 2003, 84 –5). From 1968 until 1980, the
average earnings of a male non-manual worker in
the City exceeded the national average by 20 –30
per cent. The differential rose to 40 per cent by the
middle of the 1980s and to over 60 per cent by 1990.
During most of the 1990s, it continued to increase,
reaching almost 90 per cent by 1998 (Lombard
Street Research Ltd 2003, 19).

Third wave gentrification in Barnsbury was of a
different type and magnitude to the previous
waves. As Hackworth (2001, 879) notes, in its third
wave the process of gentrification began to change
both quantitatively and qualitatively. Whereas
elsewhere in inner London, according to Butler
(Butler with Robson 2003), even in Conservative
voting Battersea, parents sent their children to the
local primary school, in Barnsbury a majority had
withdrawn their children from the local, well-
performing primary schools by the age of seven to
prepare them for entry into the private sector.

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The previous generation of gentrifiers now see a
new, much wealthier, type of gentrifier moving in,
with themselves becoming squeezed between the
new ‘have lots’ and the existing ‘have nots’. We
note some of the accounts given by different genera-
tions of gentrifiers in Barnsbury from interviews
undertaken in 2000 by Butler (Butler with Robson
2003). These interviews form the foreground for a
more rigorous subsequent analysis of the surveyed
population later on in this section. What is interest-
ing about these interviews is how the different
accounts can be broadly related to their age and
when they arrived in Barnsbury. These short
excerpts provide some important nuances to the
subsequent analysis of the survey data. This juxta-
position of views comes across clearly in the
following three accounts by Mr White (aged 63)
a first-generation gentrifier, Helen (aged 44) a
second-generation arrivee, and Martin (aged 30) who
represents the recent super-gentrifying cohort:

The most striking thing about the area recently has
been the dramatic increase in house prices. The people
now coming in are very different from those who could
afford it when we came – gentrification is not new, but
it is now much more wealthy people coming in. (Mr
White, 63)

More and more colonization by the upwardly mobile,
even in the three years that I’ve been here . . . There’s been

a big increase in foreign accents around, more upwardly
mobile foreigners, and this is accelerating. This is the
globalization of the workforce and Islington has changed,
being so central, because of this. (Martin, 30)

The new super-gentrifiers are talked about in very
similar ways to those displaced by an earlier
generation of gentrification:

In the last two years the red Porsches have arrived, new
people have been coming in. They want to change things
straight away regardless of what’s already there. Very
arrogant. Not friendly or community minded – they put
nothing into the fabric of the community, only money
into the commercial infrastructure rather than their
personalities or talents. They are making a new economy,
but are absent from the community. (Helen, 44)

This, of course, is precisely how the pioneer gentrifiers
40 years previously appeared to Islington’s working
classes.

These interview quotes from Barnsbury gentrifiers
are almost identical to the comments made by
Brooklyn Heights residents (see Lees 2003). In par-
ticular, gentrifiers from a previous round comment
on the new gentrifiers’ lack of commitment to the
area and community, their aggressive emphasis on
monetary values, and the sense that new tensions
have emerged. As in Brooklyn Heights, it has had
implications for the consumption infrastructure
(notably Upper Street – see Figure 1), which has

Figure 2 Average salaries in the City of London 1980 –2003
Source: Lombard Street Research Ltd (2003, 51). Average annual earnings of full-time, male, non-manual worker

in the City. Data derived from New Earnings Survey

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become even more exclusive, as a third-generation
gentrifier explains:

It’s now very vibrant, with a great ‘street’ life – a choice
of restaurants, bars, theatres etc. . . . recent gentrification
is a result of changes in the City. It’s more attractive
now for young singles, lots more businesses attracted
to the area, which has benefited wider populations and
the whole area is much smarter. (Isobel, 49)

And more polarized:

Shops are either really expensive, for example the
trendy bakeries and chi chi delicatessens, or very poor
quality, as in the Cally. There is not much in between,
and this is an imbalance. (Diana, 52)

The 2001 Census (see Table 3 and Figure 3) shows
that, between 1991 and 2001, managers in large
organizations (SEG 1.2) in Barnsbury grew by 1243
heads of households, from 242 to 1485 and in the
case of employed professionals (SEG 4) by 1160 heads
of household from 420 to 1580. At the same time,
we should note the large and continued expansion
of SEG 5.1 (the middle ranks in the social scale)
suggesting that the super-gentrification thesis is one
of relative rather than absolute transformation and that
we are witnessing, as is suggested in some of the
survey responses, a tripartite class division between
super wealthy professionals and managers, middle-class
professionals, and the working class/economically
inactive. The latter are largely confined to the social
housing sector in Barnsbury. At the scale of the

neighbourhood then Barnsbury largely supports
Fainstein’s (1999) argument that Sassen’s (1991) social
polarization thesis of ‘a disappearing middle’ does
not seem to hold up, except in the sense that the
shares of all income quintiles are declining relative to
the top. The growing inequality that is occurring is
the result of the very large increases in individual
earnings and household income at the top.

Fifty-two per cent of survey respondents in
Barnsbury were in the higher managerial profes-
sions, with a further 32 per cent in lower manage-
rial professions. An analysis of the respondents’ (or
their partners’) occupations showed that, amongst
the more recent residents, the newer professions of
investment bankers and City lawyers predomin-
ated; whilst journalists, civil servants and medical
professionals were found amongst the second
generation as well as the first, which also had more
routine and lower paid professionals, including
those in welfare and academia. This group of
respondents is therefore somewhat exceptional –
compared to the population as a whole, but also to the
other middle-class gentrifiers interviewed by Butler
across London as a whole (Butler with Robson
2003). Respondents in Barnsbury, unlike those
elsewhere and those who have lived in Barnsbury
for more than 10 years, have focused on the key
professions which have benefited from the expan-
sion of the City of London – banking, financial
services and law. Their reference points are an

Table 3 Social class change in Barnsbury and Islington, 1991–2001 (% SEG 1–15)

SEG

Barnsbury Islington

91 01 ppc 91 01 ppc

1.1 Employers large orgs 0 0.6 0.6 0 0.6 0.6
1.2 Managers large orgs 4.7 9.9 5.2 4.5 9.1 4.6
2.1 Employers small orgs 1.7 2.4 − 0.7 1.8 2.4 − 0.6
2.1 Managers small orgs 9.7 5.2 − 4.5 8.7 5.0 −3.7
3 Professionals – self employed 2.9 3.4 0.5 1.7 2.7 1.0
4 Professionals – employed 8.7 10.5 1.8 6.3 9.5 3.2
5.1 Intermediate non manual 16.3 25.4 9.1 16.8 25.6 8.8
5.2 Intermediate supervisory 0.6 3.8 3.2 0.6 4.0 3.4
1–5 44.6 61.2 16.6 40.4 58.9 18.5
6 –15 56.2 38.8 17.4 59.6 41.3 18.3

Source: 1991 and 2001 Census data (but see note below). We are grateful to Mark Ramsden for undertaking the work to make
the two census years compatible both in geography and social class terms
Note: We compare 1991 and 2001 using a common geography based around post code sectors and having recoded the 2001 data
in terms of SEG. There are some problems with the category of 1.1 for 1991 because it was based on a 10% sample which
reduced numbers to a level where they were recoded for purposes of maintaining confidentiality

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increasingly globalized economy in which lawyers
and investment bankers can expect salaries in
excess of £250 000 on becoming partners in one of
the major law firms or ‘taking silk’ in many of the
barristers’ chambers or on reaching a director level
in one of the banks.

Turning to house price data over the last five
years, Figure 4 indicates the rate of growth for
terraced houses in the study area, Islington and
Greater London. The rate of increase in Barnsbury
(123%) is marginally less than that for Islington
(130%) and Greater London (129%) over the same
period; the rate of increase for flats and maison-
ettes is only 73 per cent compared to 103 per cent
for Greater London over the same period. This
suggests a consolidation of Barnsbury as an area
in which single-family houses (which are the
most expensive) as opposed to flats are being re-
gentrified. The important point, however, is the
absolute increase in prices: whereas in 1999 houses
in the study area were selling for an average price
of £308 102, by 2005 this had risen to £685 708 –
such prices can now only be afforded by those
with very large salaries and particularly City-type
bonuses. The most rapid rise in prices occurred
between 1991 and 2001, when houses in the study
area increased by 65 per cent compared to 44 per
cent in the rest of Islington and 46 per cent in
Greater London. In Islington and Greater London
the number of sales was roughly similar in 2001

and 2005, but about one third lower in 1999; in
Barnsbury, however, the number of transactions in
2001 was roughly double that at the same period in
1999 or 2005. This suggests that, during the early
years of the twenty-first century, whilst there was a
slowdown in the City and stock prices, there was
nevertheless a major, sustained and atypical prop-
erty boom in Barnsbury. The rate of increase has
slowed since, but nevertheless absolute prices and
the frenetic activity between 1999 and 2001 indicate
that this was a process of super-gentrification in
which salaried professionals in traditional areas of
employment would not have been able to partici-
pate even if they had previous property assets to
upgrade. Academics, doctors, journalists and civil
servants are simply unable to afford to operate in a
housing market where the average price for a
house is £680 000. Even a household income of
£150 000 a year would make it difficult for those
without considerable assets to purchase such a
property and maintain a lifestyle that probably
would include paying private school fees as well as
living in a high consumption neighbourhood.

In 2000, a quarter of survey respondents had a
household income in excess of £150 000 a year
and a further 18 per cent reported it being between
£100 000 and £150 000. This was considerably
higher than the other areas studied, including the
wealthy area of Battersea.

6

Interestingly, only in
one household did

both

partners report an income

Figure 3 Social change in Barnsbury, Islington, Inner and Outer London, 1991–2001
Source: Census data used in Table 3

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in excess of £100 000 supporting the view that, for
most households, one partner’s (for which read
male) salary was enough for the other to give up
work at some stage when young children were
demanding attention not compatible with the long
hours of work in the City.

The data presented in Tables 4 and 5 suggest that
the more recent residents tend to have higher

incomes and are more likely to invest in stocks and
shares. The data give no indication of the extent of
their wealth, but do indicate quite clearly posses-
sion of wealth and the potential to accumulate
more over a work life projected over the next 25
years. The higher incomes of more recent residents
is to some extent simply a function of the rise in
house prices in that higher incomes are required to

Figure 4 House price increases 1999–2005
Source: Land Registry

Table 4 Household income in Barnsbury

0 –5 years

%

5 –10 years
%

10 –20 years
%

More than 20 years
%

Under £50k 12 11 61 71
£50 –100k 38 21 11 29
£100 –150k 23 26 11 0
More than £150k 27 42 17 0

100 (n = 26) 100 (n = 19) 100 (n = 18) 100 (n = 7)

Source: 2000 survey

Table 5 Share ownership in Barnsbury by length of residence

Share ownership
0 –5 years

%
5 –10 years

%
10 –20 years

%
More than 20 years

%

Yes 72 67 63 57
No 28 33 37 43
Total 100 (n = 18) 100 (n = 18) 100 (n = 16) 100 (n = 7)

Source: 2000 survey

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service the larger mortgages, but it is also indica-
tive of the level of income now needed to buy a
house in Barnsbury and therefore of the social
nature of its gentrification. Tables 6, 7 and 8 largely
support this picture of high incomes, but also of
considerable asset accumulation by those living in
the area which are also largely in line with the pub-
lished data on house prices presented in Figure 4.

Of the nine households with a negligible mort-
gage (less than £10 000), five had lived in the area
more than 20 years. The mean mortgage was £88 370
for those living in houses (i.e. excluding flats and
maisonettes); those who bought their houses in the
1990s were relatively more highly geared whilst,
perhaps not surprisingly, those who had lived in
the same house for more than 10 years had a small
outstanding mortgage debt. A combination of high
salaries, large bonuses and rising house prices have
meant that the debt to asset ratio is relatively low
for most respondents in Barnsbury.

Overall, these figures suggest that respondents
had considerable housing equity in a market in
which property prices have nearly doubled since
the research was undertaken in early 2000. We asked
how the difference between the purchase price and
mortgage was managed and whilst three-quarters
had financed this from the sale of previous property,
the rest had funded this from ‘savings,’ most of
which were accumulated from work – no respondents

reported having inherited money at the time they
were funding their property purchase. In addi-
tion, approximately half of those owning houses
(as opposed to flats) had undertaken improvements,
the mean cost of which was £64 000, but this included
some relatively trivial amounts – less than £10 000;
whilst 20 per cent of respondents had spent over
£100 000 on their houses. Almost all had funded
these repairs and improvements from their current
income or savings. We suggest these data support
our general contention that the gentrification pro-
cess in Barnsbury in the 1990s has only been pos-
sible because of the super charged nature of the City
of London labour market in the last 10 years, which
has resulted in salaries and bonuses that enable at
least some of its professional workers to buy a single
family dwelling that had a base price of approxi-
mately £600 000 in 2000.

Census and official house price data suggest that
there is a process of upgrading occurring in Barns-
bury, but this is only indicative of change. Given
the inability to discriminate at the top end of the
income and wealth scale, we have attempted to
triangulate these findings by reference to data from
Mosaic. In the survey research that Butler under-
took in Barnsbury in 2000, respondents’ postcodes
were coded with Mosaic classifications. Two-thirds
of respondents were in Group A ‘Symbols of Suc-
cess’ and in two subgroups ‘Global Connections’
(51%) and ‘Cultural Leadership’ (16%); the remainder
(30%) were almost all in Group E ‘Urban Intelli-
gence’ – which is normally associated with areas of
inner London gentrification. These types are mainly
London based; over 90 per cent in the case of Global
Connections and Counter Cultural Mix, and around
two-thirds for Cultural Leadership and New Urban
Colonists. Thus, whilst the Global Connections
category only constitutes 0.72 per cent of all UK
households, it represented half of our respondents
in Barnsbury. Both groups represent key notions of

Table 6 Price of property (excluding flats) £000s
when purchased

Length of residence Mean N SD

Up to 5 years 338.7 19 152.0
5 –10 years 276.0 15 81.9
10 –20 years 150.6 15 120.3
More than 20 years 17.9 9 13.6

Source: 2000 survey

Table 7 House price value in 2000

Length of residence Mean N SD

Up to 5 years 533.9 18 288.7
5 –10 years 603.4 16 212.7
10 –20 years 576.3 15 328.7
More than 20 years 600.0 8 413.2
Total 573.9 57 294.4

Source: 2000 survey

Table 8 Amount of mortgage

Length of residence Mean N SD

Up to 5 years 134.7 18 96.2
5 –10 years 108.4 14 79.9
10 –20 years 55.5 14 46.9
More than 20 years 6.6 8 7.9
Total 88.4 54 84.9

Source: 2000 survey

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economic and cultural leadership in the new econ-
omy, with its emphasis not just on formal economic
processes, such as are now mediated through the City
of London, but also as leading cultural intermedi-
aries working through the top ends of journalism
and the new digital media.

Barnsbury and the borough of Islington are not
traditionally seen as upper class areas or the ones
normally described as the habitat of London’s
investment bankers and media moguls. These tend
to be the more traditional areas such St John’s Wood,
Hampstead, Chelsea and more recently Notting Hill.
Barnsbury is different from these typically upper
class areas; almost none of the buildings in which
respondents live are the mid-rise apartment block
with a guarded entry common to these elite areas.
They are, for the most part, single-family dwellings
and mainly, but not exclusively, terraced houses.
Moreover, whilst it is distinctive from the tradi-
tional upper class areas, Mosaic marks Barnsbury
off from other gentrified areas of inner London too.
Table 9

7

gives the Mosaic classifications for all the
gentrified areas in inner London studied by Butler.

Barnsbury is not the same as other gentrified
areas, despite the fact that many model themselves
on Barnsbury as the archetypal gentrified area of
inner London. The demographic description of
Global Connections is also tantalizing in the way it
points to similarities but also differences to our
observed behaviour of Barnsbury residents:

This Type contains many very wealthy people who, for
one reason or another, want to live as close as possible
to the centre of a global city. Many of them are wealthy
foreigners who find it convenient to have a London
pied-à-terre, others are managers with international
corporations on temporary assignment to the United
Kingdom. Some are very wealthy British people who
enjoy proximity to the variety of restaurants and

entertainment opportunities available in London’s West
End. Some are people involved in the cultural agenda
of the nation, whose working lifestyles make a central
London residence a necessity. An increasing proportion
of the population are older divorcees who have
exchanged expensive suburban houses for smaller central
London flats. . . . They work locally in commercial
rather than public sector occupations, and in service
industries, particularly in banking and in commerce,
rather than in manufacturing. Many directors of large
companies live in these areas which provide convenient
access to corporate headquarters, but there is also a
significant number of people who are self-employed.
(Source: Mosaic demonstration CD)

Barnsbury therefore differs from the mainstream of
inner London gentrification which research evidence
suggests is made up largely of the group described
by Mosaic as ‘Urban Intelligence’ (Group E). Yet it
does not share the same kind of longstanding
relation to wealth and commerce that appears to
typify the ‘Symbols of Success’ (Group A)
classification, and it draws from a younger rather
than older population who are ‘making it’ as
opposed to ‘having it made’ or ‘having made it’.
Residential space continues to be a key arena in
which people define their social position and
identity (cr. Savage

et al

. 2005, 207).
Our argument then is that the super-gentrification

of Barnsbury distinguishes it from existing areas of
extreme wealth and areas of ongoing gentrification
by the fact that these are not the global

entrepreneurs

such as are described in the Mosaic typology of
Global Connections but are very globally

connected

,
mainly through their employment in the increasingly
internationalized financial and legal professions in
the City of London. Many of these connections stem
from a shared university education at Oxbridge
(rather than the elite public schools of the more
traditional West London elite):

Table 9 Mosaic classifications for respondents

Location Barnsbury Battersea Brixton Docklands
London
Fields

Telegraph
Hill

A01 Global Connections 36 2
A02 Cultural Leadership 11 11
D27 Settled Minorities 7 10
E28 Counter Cultural Mix 7 42 39 27
E29 City Adventurers 2 9 5 61 10
E30 New Urban Colonists 11 49 28 5 19 26
Others 2 6
Total 69 69 75 68 71 73
Survey totals 73 75 75 70 72 75

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I’m always bumping into people I was at university
with, who are now living in the area. This is common
here, my husband and another friend have had the same
experience . . . the area is absolutely full of barristers
and solicitors, who are less likely to be prepared to
commute, and who I think are much less concerned
about address than bankers, they just want convenience.
(Christine, 38)

As Table 10 shows, with two exceptions, all
respondents were university graduates (as were
their partners) and one-third had been to the elite
universities of Oxford or Cambridge (Oxbridge); of
those living with a partner, nearly half of those
partners had also been to Oxbridge.

8

Despite some
interesting nuances of gender, what is striking is
the way in which Oxbridge dominates and it is
this we suggest that ties in occupations in the City
to residence in Barnsbury. These trends match
McDowell’s (1997) finding that the leading invest-
ment banks focus their graduate recruitment efforts
on Oxbridge, London, Bristol and Durham. This form
of elite recruitment might, of course, be thought to
represent a degree of meritocratic virtue by the
‘new city’ – the graduates of Oxbridge and selected
‘redbrick’ universities representing the brightest
and best output from the UK higher education
system. However, an examination of respondents’
backgrounds in terms of their fathers’ occupations
and their type of schooling shows that two-thirds
came from higher professional and managerial
backgrounds and that 40 per cent of respondents
went to a fee-paying school – eight times the
national average – and a similar proportion went to
a selective form of secondary school. Eighty per
cent were brought up in homes in which their
parents owned their house. As Massey (1993)
argues, those social groups most empowered by
globalization are often pre-existing elite groups.

Conclusions

The process of super-gentrification that is on-going
in Barnsbury is a relatively recent and incomplete
phenomenon. Whilst much of London has now
become middle class and much of inner London is
largely gentrified, Barnsbury is clearly in transition,
and currently being re-gentrified. Barnsbury is dif-
ferent to the other gentrified inner London neighbour-
hoods studied by Butler (see Butler with Robson
2003) and these differences, we suggest, are becom-
ing greater – similarities Barnsbury shares with
the super-gentrifying neighbourhood of Brooklyn
Heights, in New York City (see Lees 2003). Three
generations of gentrification have become sedimented
in Barnsbury, although the layers have not yet become
entirely settled; however, the most recent layer – laid
down by super-gentrification – is creating divisions
within the Barnsbury and Islington middle classes,
whom it is increasingly difficult to see as a single
undifferentiated class fraction. Super-gentrifiers, like
the super-rich, have the potential to amass personal
wealth due to globalization but, are for the most
part, relatively young and much of this accumulation
is currently going into consumption – notably
housing, domestic help and private education. As
they progress in their jobs and their children go
through their education, they will be able to divert
increasing proportions of their incomes into discre-
tionary wealth. It will be interesting to see how this
plays out socially, spatially and economically as
this generation of super-gentrifiers age.

The empirical research on super-gentrification
detailed here marks a break from conventional
views found in the globalization, global city, global
elite and gentrification literatures. First, the super-
gentrification of Barnsbury shows that fixity/fixed-
ness and globalization

can

go hand in hand, and
that there is a need to counterbalance arguments
that have gone too far down the ‘unfixity’ route (cf.
Lees 2002, on rematerializing urban geography).
Super-gentrifiers as a class fraction are the product
of the globalization of financial and related services
which has been responsible for the emergence of a
new ‘global pay grade’, but this is not the same as
arguing that they are necessarily themselves globally
mobile in the manner suggested by Rofe (2003) and
others. The research reported here suggests that
they are in fact largely the product of Britain’s elite
education system and are closely tied to a highly
restricted area of London from which they venture
relatively rarely. These are not the globally mobile

Table 10 Higher education institution

University

Respondent Partner

Frequency % Frequency %

Oxbridge 23 32.4 21 46.7
London 7 9.9 2 4.4
Redbrick 26 36.6 12 26.7
Plateglass 5 7.0 2 4.4
Polytechnic 2 2.8 1 2.2
Other 8 11.3 7 15.6
Total 71 100.0 45 100.0

Source: 2000 survey

Super-gentrification in Barnsbury, London

483

Trans Inst Br Geogr

NS 31 467–487 2006
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business-class executives who restlessly quarter the
globe, they are globally connected but occupation-
ally localized. To this extent, it matters that they
share a common education (notably at the universi-
ties of Oxford and Cambridge), work in a few large
firms of solicitors (‘the big six’), Inns of Court or
investment banks and live in Barnsbury. Barnsbury,
in this sense, has become a case study for how
‘place matters’ (Massey 1984).

Second, Rofe (2003) and Atkinson and Bridge
(2005) identify a transnational set of elite gentrifiers
that has been created by the expansion of financial
services in certain global cities and the real estate
investment that exploits these changes in the
labour market. We agree that such a set of elite
gentrifiers has been born, but we would argue that
within this group are different types – and that
super-gentrifiers are a particularly distinctive type
(on different

types

of gentrifiers see Butler and
Robson 2003b; Bridge 2003). The transnational set
of elite gentrifiers that Rofe (2003) and Atkinson
and Bridge (2005) identify are cosmopolitans who
show a willingness to surf the flows of the global
economy – seeking out and living in new places, often
in new build and ‘edgy’ apartments (see Davidson
and Lees 2005). As such, they reject a suburban-
orientated identity, a sense of history and tradition
and a traditional architecture; they are really the
grown up version of the pioneer gentrifier – the
new class that David Ley (1996) discusses. The
super-gentrifier is a different species, s/he has
more conservative values, is focused on social
reproduction and is less interested in socio-cultural
diversity than s/he might once have been – for
example, Barnsbury super-gentrifiers do not send
their children to state primary or secondary schools,
their investment in space (the neighbourhood) is
economic as well as cultural (see Butler 2003).
Their economic values can be seen in the purported
complaints to the makers of the Monopoly board
game requesting that the Angel in Barnsbury be
taken out of its low rent category and moved near
the top end of the board (

The Independent

2000)!
Super-gentrifiers are not a leisure class freed from
the need for employment as are the super-rich that
Beaverstock et al. (2004) discuss. The super-rich
they study are not recognizable by their occupation
but by their conspicuous consumption patterns. By
contrast super-gentrifiers are defined first and
foremost by their occupation and education and
only secondarily by their consumption of already
gentrified property in Barnsbury.

Bourdieu (2005, 185 – 9), in his discussion of
housing in France, has argued that the French petit-
bourgeoisie were unable to match their aspirations
to their capabilities in realizing the dispositions of
their chosen habitus. This also applies to many
gentrifiers in London, but not to Islington’s super-
gentrifiers who are, in effect, buying out the gentri-
fication infrastructure of a previous and more
humble first and second generation of gentrifiers,
and purchasing the image at least of a socially
capital-rich gentrified environment which many of the
earlier gentrifiers created with their social involve-
ments (Butler and Robson 2003b). Their forms of
consumption are less obvious than those of pioneer
gentrifiers (on earlier forms of consumption in
Barnsbury see Carpenter and Lees 1995; Lees 1996)
because they are so ‘normal’: restaurant meals,
nannies, private education and second homes.
However, the lives of the super-gentrifiers are at
least as foreign to the other middle classes who
continue to live in Islington as were those of the
new middle class (teachers, academics, journalists,
architects etc.) who settled there in the late 1960s to
the working-class residents. Amongst the more
recent incomers, many are women, who often share
their partners’ elite education but have recently
given up work themselves to manage the house-
hold and their children’s education and develop-
ment, which is in sharp contrast with almost every
other area of gentrification in inner London where
Butler with Robson (2003) found that both partners
in two adult households were fully involved in
paid employment; the partial exception to this was
Battersea where many people – mainly again men –
worked in the City but more as financial techni-
cians than professionals. This distinctive gender
division of labour in which the female partners,
who are highly educated and have often had high-
flying careers in similar jobs to their husbands,
tend not to work, harks back, at least superficially,
to the traditional suburban ‘stay at home mom’.
The gender roles are quite different to those of
first and second wave gentrifiers, where women
working in paid full-time employment was an
important part of their identity (Rose 1989; Bondi
1991 1999). They are also very different to the
egalitarian gender relations that Bondi and Christie
(2000) found to be closely associated with the
lifestyle and consumption choices available to
higher income and highly mobile women. Super-
gentrification entails quite different processes of
gender constitution.

484 Tim Butler and Loretta Lees

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Third, it seems that a regressive sense of space is
emerging from the progressive sense of space asso-
ciated with first and second wave gentrification (cf.
Massey 1991, on global sense of place). Where first
and second generation gentrifiers actively sought a
socially mixed neighbourhood in which they would
become socially involved, super-gentrifiers like the
idea of social involvement but not social mixing. At
the heart of this tension lies the wish of super-
gentrifiers to articulate that they are essentially merito-
crats who got there by hard work and diligence,
who continue to value and sustain the cachet of
social involvement in the local community left by
previous generations of gentrifiers. A ‘sense of
belonging’ to the neighbourhood is important even
if it is entirely belied by their behaviour in sending
their children to selective private schools, eating in
signature restaurants etc. Having themselves real-
ized the benefits of an elite education, it would be
unthinkable to deny it to their children in Islington
– the worst-performing education authority in the
country. Despite often working as functionaries of
global neo-liberalism in which the legal contract
replaces the social contract, some (but not all) hold
a general belief in the values of New Labour and
communitarianism. As they see it, it is the failure
to deliver on this which forces them to live their
lives apart from their less fortunate neighbours. It
is, they reason, their pressured lives and the low
quality of public services which forces them apart
from earlier gentrifiers and ‘genuine locals’. We
argue then that they represent an emerging class
fraction at the top of the professional middle classes
whose distinctiveness lies not only in their occupa-
tional status and stellar incomes but in their housing
and consumption practices which, to an extent, can
only be realized within a highly bounded socio-
spatial milieu of ‘people like themselves’.

Bauman (2000) argues that super-rich consump-
tion occurs in spaces that for the most part exclude
those who might disturb the ambience of affluent,
leisured consumption – this may explain why
super-gentrifiers have sought out neighbourhoods
that have already passed into a state of mature
gentrification; they are safer, more homogenous
and they don’t especially want contact with the
‘ordinary’ dwellers of cities (Butler 2003). They are
not urban cowboys so much as urban ranchers
ranging across an extensive social, cultural and
consumption infrastructure – a frontier that has
been tamed by the previous stages of gentrifica-
tion. However, super-gentrifers equally do not

want to live in the more fortified and gated (cf.
Flusty 2001) urban elite enclaves of Chelsea or in
the suburbs, they prefer the more subtle spaces of
cosmopolitan consumption, spaces made available
due to first and second wave gentrification. They
prefer a sanitized form of difference and diversity.
They are a contradictory class fraction – one looking
in two directions – towards the traditional urban
upper classes and towards traditional gentrifiers.

It is no coincidence that super-gentrification has
been found in New York and London, in what
Beaverstock et al. (2004) call the ‘NY-LON’ nexus’,
given they are the acknowledged centres of the
global financial system and key sites of consumption.
Indeed, the similarities between super-gentrification
in Brooklyn Heights and Barnsbury are numerous.
What attracts super-gentrifiers to both neighbour-
hoods is the same – location with quick and easy
access to Wall Street and the City of London
respectively, the valuing of a socially rich neighbour-
hood that is so because it has already reached a
stage of mature gentrification, and the availability
of good sized single-family houses that can be
renovated to provide up to date living space, and a
local consumption infrastructure. Here we see the
importance of local context with respect to super-
gentrification; the process is unlikely to happen in
neighbourhoods without these characteristics. The
super-gentrifiers themselves are similarly educated
at the elite universities in the UK (Oxbridge, etc.)
and the US (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia,
etc.) and employed in similar professions. Even the
contradictions are the same – seeking out a distinc-
tive neighbourhood/community in which they
have almost no involvement largely because of the
pressures they are experiencing in their work lives.

Urban researchers can no longer discuss con-
temporary gentrification without also discussing
globalization and connecting this to local-scale
neighbourhood change. The distinctive nature of
super-gentrification in Barnsbury is to be found in
the interaction between home and work that has
been mediated by the City of London labour market
and the Islington housing market. Whilst the
in-movement of further numbers of well-heeled folk
is bound to happen in already gentrified neighbour-
hoods elsewhere, no doubt with similar dis/
replacement effects for the existing middle class,
the nature and consequences of this will depend
in large part on the changes that take place in the
global economy, and how London continues to be
positioned in that, as well as on the context of the

Super-gentrification in Barnsbury, London 485

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specific neighbourhood itself. We can probably no
longer take the settled nature of London’s housing
market for granted, which implies that gentrifica-
tion will remain a dynamic rather than mature phe-
nomenon. This contradicts those stage models that
assume an end point to the gentrification process at
a stage of maturity (cf. Lees 2003, 2491). We suggest
there can be further gentrification beyond maturity
and would argue that the nature of the gentrification
process in maturing global cities needs to be more
clearly and critically addressed:

Only by taking structural forces and cultural and social
practices seriously can one understand how the new
connections that bind people and places together are
materialized and made meaningful. (Prytherch and
Marston 2005, 98)

Notes

1 This research was funded by DENI, see Lees (1994b).
2 This research was carried out as part of the ESRC Cities

Programme (Competitiveness, Cohesion and Govern-
ance) grant number L13025101. Tim Butler wishes to
acknowledge the contribution of Dr Garry Robson
who worked on the project over its lifetime between
1998 and 2001.

3 The value gap is the relationship between a building’s
tenanted investment value and its vacant possession
value, the former being a measure of the rented
building’s annual rental income, the latter a measure
of the property’s future sale price when it is con-
verted into owner-occupation – the landlord sells off
the building when the gap has widened sufficiently –
see Hamnett and Randolph (1984 1986).

4 Barnsbury, in common with most of gentrified inner
London, remained dominated by social housing as
indicated in Table 1. In 2001, the social housing sector
still comprised 47.8 per cent of the population – 21.2
per cent renting from the Council and the remainder
from other social landlords. Butler with Robson (2003)
describe how these housing estates remain quite discrete
and hidden away from the mainly owner occupied
streets of terraced housing. As Tables 2 and 3 show,
there has been a dramatic increase in the proportion
of residents in professional and managerial jobs – the
3 percentage point increase 1981–91 is in fact a 14 per
cent real increase when we take account of the way in
which the economically inactive are counted in 1991.
Table 3 indicates that there has also been a dramatic
increase in the intermediate social groups 1991–2000
(the old SEG 5.1 and new NS_SeC 3). The economically
inactive population, largely living in social housing, has
also remained large. The decline has been amongst the
manual working-class groups which whilst still numeric-
ally large saw a drop of approximately 17 percentage

points in its share of the population of Barnsbury and
slightly more for Islington as a whole. We are grateful
to a referee for reminding us of the need to stress how
gentrification, even in a prototypical area such as
Barnsbury, needs to be seen in a relative perspective.

5 Names have been changed and the figures refer to
the respondent’s age at the time of the interview.

6 With the benefit of hindsight, the maximum category
of £150 000 was set too low.

7 Four hundred and forty interviews were completed,
but for various reasons – such as interviews being
conducted at a workplace and home postcode not being
recorded, the numbers are less for the Mosaic data.

8 This is probably explained by the fact that in Barnsbury
respondents were more likely to be female and their
partners were male – there were very few cohabiting
same sex partners that were referred to as such.

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Viewpoint

Housing supply in Delhi
Alpana Sivam1
Institute of Social Research, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne,
Australia

Delhi is experiencing the highest population growth rate among mega cities in India. By 2021 its
population is projected to be around 27 million. The consequence of rapid increase in population
and the changing socio-economic pattern in Delhi has resulted in an acute shortage of housing and
related infrastructure especially for the poor and low-income households. Nearly half the population
however lives in conditions of miserable poverty, crammed into overcrowded slums and hutment.
Delhi’s informal housing is a reflection of a poor and inappropriate urban planning system, with a
lack of public investment and restriction in the formal land and housing market. This paper reviews
the housing delivery system and the problems associated with the housing delivery system in Delhi
and presents a broad guideline for policy makers to improve the housing delivery system in Delhi.
It was found that to improve the housing delivery system of Delhi multiple sectoral approaches are
required. The study demonstrates that the informal housing sector and its quality can be improved
and transformed into formal housing by improving the essential infrastructure.
 2003 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Informal housing, India, Reform

Introduction

India has the second largest population
in the world. In 2001 it was 1027
million, which constituted nearly 17
percent of the world’s people (Census
of India, 2001). Growth of population
in urban areas is about twice as fast as
that of the total country. The population
of the National Capital Territory of
Delhi, consisting of urban and rural
Delhi, was 6.2 million in 1981, 9.4
million in 1991 and 13.8 million in
2001. This accounts for about 1.34 per-
cent of the country’s total population.
Delhi has been experiencing this rapid
population growth because of its func-
tional importance. The city still has the
highest growth rate among the mega
cities in India, and by 2021 its popu-

E-mail: alpanasivam@yahoo.com
1When this paper was written, the author
was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Urban
Studies Research Programme, National Uni-
versity of Singapore.

135

lation is expected to be around 27
million (Kumar, 1996).

Delhi became a full-fledged state in
1994, and the name changed from
Delhi Union Territory (DUT) to
National Capital Territory of Delhi
(NCTD); it is not only an administrat-
ive city but also a place for commerce,
education and health-care provision. It
is also of great historical significance.
Delhi has served as a capital for several
centuries because of its strategic
location. It is a unique city, a kaleido-
scope of old tradition and new forces.
It is believed to be one of the oldest
cities in the world, stretching from
Indraprastha (10th century BC) to
imperial New Delhi (Jain, 1989) and
through to the modern republican capi-
tal.

The present formal system has failed
to provide housing for everyone in
Delhi. The most visible manifestations
of the failure of city authorities are the
numerous unauthorized housing settle-

ments scattered around the city. The
phenomenal growth and development
of these informal settlements is a testa-
ment to the drive and initiative of the
poor, and their ability to forge afford-
able housing solutions. Forty-seven
percent (DDA, 2000) of the population
lives in the informal housing sector
(Sen, 1998). First, this paper reviews
the housing delivery system and the
problems associated with the failure of
the city authorities to provide housing
for everyone. Second, it presents an
open guideline for policy makers to
improve the housing delivery system
in Delhi.

The present housing delivery
system

Delhi has three types of housing devel-
opment, formal, informal and organic.
These are similar to those in other
developing countries (Pugh, 2000).
Most of the formal housing efforts,

Viewpoint: Alpana Sivam

especially since independence, have
catered only to the middle classes and
above, so that the only recourse left for
lower income groups has been to live
in the “hutments” commonly referred
to as “slum” housing. The lower costs
of housing in these settlements match
their needs to minimize their housing
expenditure. Formal developments are
those that have the legal sanction of the
planning agency prior to the develop-
ment, have been developed within the
framework of government rules, regu-
lations and controls and have a mini-
mum required standard of environmen-
tal quality and infrastructure. Informal
developments are illegal and are com-
posed of unauthorized colonies and
squatter settlements. These have mostly
emerged because of non-availability or
unaffordability of housing in the legal
housing market. The common charac-
teristics of the informal sector are
insecurity of tenure and low standard of
infrastructure and facilities. The major
distinction within the informal sector
may be made in terms of the methods
used to gain access to land. Households
living on illegally appropriated land are
termed squatters, whereas housing
developed on legally owned or rented
land, but without the necessary per-
missions from the local authorities, is
referred to as quasi-legal. These distinct
systems may be distinguished via a set
of characteristics. The basic difference,
however, underlines the motivations
and legality of tenure and development
(Mehta and Mehta, 1989).
The unauthorized and squatter settle-
ments have been much more pervasive
on the eastern side of the city. On the
south side, the private sector played a
major role before the Delhi Develop-
ment Act of 1957 was enforced. On the
whole, however, on the eastern side,
the share of informal housing has been
much greater. In contrast, organic
developments are the old city and rural
settlements (known as urban villages in
Delhi), that have evolved over a period
of time without any conscious meas-
ures taken for their growth and that
have now been included within the
urban development. These settlements
are not illegal, and therefore cannot be
termed totally informal. Both old city
and urban villages face different kinds
of problems, such as being subjected to
overcrowding, congestion, dilapidation

136

of structures and a low level of ser-
vices. As the urban villages eventually
become included within the urban lim-
its, they face sudden population growth
and the existing level of infrastructure
is inadequate.

Formal housing delivery systems
used in Delhi

This section identifies the general hous-
ing supply mechanism of Delhi. To
study the housing delivery system the
system was broken down into its vari-
ous stages: planning; land assembly;
implementation; and final disposal of
the finished house. This permitted the
various components of the problem to
be examined individually, rather than
trying to examine an entire system.
Substages are identified in the follow-
ing sections.

Planning Planning consists of two
parts, plan preparation and plan
approval. Except for area development
plans, all are prepared by the Delhi
Development Authority (DDA) on
behalf of the central government. The
Ministry of Urban Development
(MUD) approves the Master Plan, and
subsequently different bodies or com-
mittees within and outside the DDA
approve the plan prepared at various
levels of the housing development pro-
cess.

Land assembly Land assembly consists
of three components: land acquisition;
payment of compensation to land-
owners; and finance to agencies. The
Delhi government, under the Land
Acquisition Act of 1894, acquires land,
and it is handed over to the Land
Department of the DDA. This in turn
makes it available for development as
and when required. Compensation to
the landowners is generally based on
the market rate at the time of notifi-
cation of the area for acquisition, and
is paid when the government takes over
the land.

Implementation This stage consists of
two steps, land development and con-
struction of housing. Land development
is the responsibility of government, and
the responsibility for housing construc-
tion is divided among various sectors—
public, private and cooperative. The

local body (MCD) is responsible for
off-site development by using central
government plan grants and pro-rata
rebates from developed plots (Billand,
1990). Both the DDA and co-operat-
ives depend on the MCD for off-site
infrastructure. On-site development is
undertaken by DDA using a revolving
fund and government borrowing. Main-
tenance of the infrastructure is by the
MCD, from property taxes and user
fees.

Disposal The disposal of housing, ten-
ure of property and the system of fin-
ance available to individuals is a formal
system for allocation and disposal of
housing and land for shelter overseen
by the public sector and government-
approved cooperatives. Housing dis-
posal is mainly guided by government
for all income groups, with some also
by cooperative group housing societies.
Tenure of the property in most of Delhi
is leasehold with a 99-year perpetual
lease. The system for providing finance
to individuals is poorly developed. The
only agencies that provide loans to
individuals are the Housing Develop-
ment Finance Corporation (HDFC)
and, to a smaller extent, the National
Housing Bank (NHB). As the finance
system is not well developed, the rate
of interest is prohibitively high (for
example, 16% in 1998). Table 1 is a
summary of the present system for each
stage and sub-stage of housing deliv-
ery.

Informal housing delivery systems
used in Delhi

As the informal sector has become
quantitatively significant, policy mak-
ers have begun to realize that simply
understanding this sector is far from an
adequate management response. In
order to develop policy to provide
housing to everyone, it is necessary to
understand the mechanisms of informal
housing delivery. It is common on the
part of urban planners and policy mak-
ers to regard the entire slum formation
or informal housing sector as being
homogeneous. However, the generally
similar physical characteristics of these
areas (when compared to the middle
income housing areas), hide the
realities of their evolution. There are
distinct patterns in their evolution and,

Viewpoint: Alpana Sivam

Table 1 Observed alternatives for the different stages of housing delivery in Delhi

Stages Alternatives

I Planning
Plan preparation Central/federal government

Plan of co-operative housing is prepared by co-
operative housing societies

Plan approval Central government except for those areas handed
over to local bodies

II Land assembly
Land acquisition Compulsory acquisition by government
Compensation Flat rate (fixed by government)
Finance to developing agency Autonomous bodies

Commercial banks
Government

III Implementation
Land development Central government (DDA)
Housing construction Government

Individuals
Co-operatives

IV Disposal
System of disposal Government

Housing co-operatives
Private (very small percentage)

Tenure Freehold (very small percentage)
Leasehold
Rental

Finance Commercial banks
Financial agencies

for any given cluster, these also change
over time.
Drawing on a number of studies that
have directly, or indirectly, looked at
the processes of evolution of slum clus-
ters or settlements, there are two dis-
tinct types which appear prevalent in
Delhi. These types are identified mainly
on the basis of the mode of access to
land. The squatter settlements are
developed on illegally appropriated
land, whereas the quasi-legal settle-
ments are on legally owned or rented
land, but have developed without the
necessary permissions from the auth-
orities. Within each group, further dis-
tinctions are made on the basis of the
dominant actor groups involved in initi-
ating these settlements.

Invasion/squatter settlements The unique
feature of these settlements is that land
is normally assembled, either by a com-
munity for its own use or by an oppor-
tunist “slumlord”. The land on which
squatting takes place may be vacant,
either because of its unsuitability for
development (due to the presence of
flood plains, for instance) or because of
its non-conformity with the zonal plans
of the local authority. Similarly, pub-
licly owned vacant land is a prime tar-
get for misuse. Often, land under long

137

legal disputes or owned by absentee
landlords is also squatted upon by the
slumlords (Mehta and Mehta 1989).
According to official descriptions, land
is freely available in this sector,
although in reality, land is never freely
available. The dwelling is constructed
in a self-built environment. In Delhi,
squatting is generally found on the
government’s vacant land. These types
of settlements are more likely to occur
near places of work. It is seen that
larger numbers of squatters tend to seek
security of tenure because of the polit-
ical vulnerability of the situation.
Households at lower levels of the econ-
omic ladder are to be found here.

Pirates/quasi-legal settlements The sec-
ond group of slum settlements consists
of quasi-legal sub-divisions and ten-
ements. These settlements are different
from the squatter settlements as they
are built with the explicit consent of the
landowner. Three identifiable models
exist within this group.

Unauthorized colonies/community based
sub-division In this case, a community,
either on the basis of social or occu-
pational grouping, buys or leases out
land from a landlord often with the help
of a middleman. The group leaders,
who also determine the land rents to be

paid by the members, carry out the
requisite sub-divisions and allocations.
Individual households, according to
their access to building materials, con-
struct shelters. The settlements are
quasi-legal, in the sense that no formal
approval for the land sub-divisions or
buildings is sought from the local auth-
ority. The materials used for shelter are
also usually “temporary” and no build-
ing permission is sought. The overall
size is properly laid out, with emphasis,
however, on maximizing the use of
land, even at the cost of environmen-
tal conditions.

Landlord based subdivision In the
second model of this group, legal land-
lords initiate a similar type of develop-
ment. In most cases the landlord oper-
ates through a middleman who often
turns into a slumlord. There are two
main reasons for landlords to promote
such development. A lot of areas,
which have been now engulfed by the
urban growth of Delhi, were considered
distant outlying areas just three or four
decades ago. A second reason arises
when the land is put under acquisition
or reservation for some purpose. As the
value of land to the owners is frozen,
it may be more profitable to promote
development of sub-divisions and dis-
tribute these through an intermediary
on collection of deposits and monthly
payment of rents.

Policies, regulations, controls
and acts
Delhi is not able to provide adequate
housing through the formal housing
market, and there are still many prob-
lems relating to housing delivery in
Delhi. Major constraints, which operate
against the public sector’s ability to
move effectively to deliver land for
housing are:

� existing policies, regulations and
controls;

� poor coordination among public
agencies responsible for the pro-
vision of off-site trunk infrastruc-
ture, and poor management of the
housing projects;

� lack of reasonable financial instru-
ments to provide loans to the middle
and lower income groups; and

� the delivery mechanism.

Land policy in Delhi is not fully con-

Viewpoint: Alpana Sivam

ducive to efficient housing delivery.
The present policy was formulated to
curb the activities of private land devel-
opers, to check undesirable speculation,
and to operate a land bank in order to
keep land prices within reasonable lim-
its and ensure planned development
with special reference to the needs of
the poorer segment of the population.
But the freezing of large areas of land
for planned development and its slow
development and supply in the market
has had the opposite effect on the urban
poor. The inadequate supply of land
has led to increases in land prices since
1974 being disproportionately higher
than increases in income (Pugh, 1991).
The land bank policy has resulted in a
slow rate of land acquisition. Before
1980, the cost of land acquisition was
based on the 1959 cost fixed by the
government, but since 1980 the cost of
acquisition has been revised to reflect
its market value. The relatively high
cost of land acquisition has resulted in
a financial constraint for the DDA.
Although the land acquisition policy
gives the power to public authorities to
compulsorily acquire land for public
purposes, it is a cumbersome, expens-
ive and time-consuming process. Pro-
cedures required under the present act
most often end in legal disputes nor-
mally taking three to four years to
resolve—and in some cases up to 20
years (Billand, 1990). The Land Acqui-
sition Act requires compensation to be
paid to landowners for land acquired,
based on the market rate prevailing at
the time when the notification of intent
occurs. But because of the time lag
before actual acquisition, the owner is
compensated at less than the market
value prevailing at the time of the
actual acquisition. Owners perceive this
to be unfair and resort to litigation,
which delays the process. The lease-
hold system exercises strict control
over the use of land by restricting legal
transfer. But it has acted as an incentive
to transfer plots and dwelling units
illegally and, in the process, the
government has lost out on revenue
from transfer fees.

Management and coordination
There is a lack of project management
of urban development on the part of
Delhi Administration, the apex body in
Delhi for coordinating all plan

138

implementation agencies involved in
the development of basic services such
as water supply, sewerage and elec-
tricity. Unfortunately all of these
agencies are working independently.
Every agency makes its plans, on its
own, without considering the priorities
of other related agencies. Because of
lack of coordination the DDA is not
able to allot houses immediately after
construction because of non-avail-
ability of basic services. In this process,
the DDA’s investment in housing gets
locked up over several years and it is
not able to reinvest in quick succession.
At the same time, the slow pace of land
development creates an artificial scarc-
ity of land for housing and other uses.
Persistent scarcity of land very often
leads to unauthorised housing develop-
ments on the urban fringe and on vac-
ant land.

Financial constraints

The lack of adequate funding for the
MCD to carry out the construction of
trunk infrastructure delays the delivery
of serviced land and housing, because
on-site infrastructure provided by the
DDA cannot be used until off-site con-
nection is made. Finance in general is
a constraint that places impacts most
seriously on the provision of off-site
trunk infrastructure. A study on the
housing finance needs of potential
homeowners brings out the fact that
low-income informal sector households
do not have significant access to the
formal system of housing finance
(Aggarwal, 1996). Much of their
financing is generated from family sav-
ings and the sale of assets, as well as
loans from friends and relatives. As
about 35% of total employment in
Delhi is in the informal sector, these
people are deprived of institutional loan
facilities for housing, as commercial
banks do not provide loans without
security. Institutional housing finance
mechanisms need to be reviewed to
explore how they can address the needs
of the poor and people in the infor-
mal sector.

Delivery mechanisms

Registration in public sector housing
schemes is necessary to acquire a house
or flat in Delhi. The DDA allots plots
or dwellings to the registrants on a

seniority basis, but for many years it
has not opened any new registrations.
However, those already registered with
DDA under various schemes have been
waiting for many years to get an allot-
ment. This adversely affects the hous-
ing market and diverts potential buyers
to the unauthorised sector. In spite of
planning and land legislation, the priv-
ate sector—in the form of unauthorised
colonies—is providing large number of
dwelling units. One reason is the rapid
and simple methods of transaction and
comparatively cheaper land in the
unauthorised market. In spite of low
level of amenities and facilities in
unauthorised colonies, this sector is
thriving in Delhi because of the mis-
match of demand and supply of hous-
ing. The poorest segment of the popu-
lation, who cannot afford either public
or privately developed housing, resort
to squatting on public land. Households
in squatter settlements increased from
31.2 to 38.3% over the period 1981–
1990 (National Institute of Urban
Affairs, 1993).

Emerging policies to reduce
the problems of housing
delivery
The government in Delhi is interested
in improving the housing delivery sys-
tem and getting rid of the policies and
regulations that are obstacles to hous-
ing delivery. This is reflected in the
action taken by the Minister of Urban
Affairs and Employment in the
Government of India for scrapping the
Land Ceiling Act, making changes to
urban development law, and making
decisions to involve the private sector
in housing delivery (The Economic
Times, 1998; The Times of India
1998a–1998h, 1999). Debate on the
participation of private developers and
other sectors in land and housing devel-
opment is taking place at all levels
within government circles. Within the
federal government, there now exists a
widely held view that the activities of
legitimate private developers should be
encouraged. Indeed, before the present
urban land policy in Delhi came into
existence in 1961, large residential pro-
jects were developed by the private
sector.

It is also clear from the 1998 budget
report that the Indian government has

Viewpoint: Alpana Sivam

been interested in reform and involve-
ment of the private sector (The Econ-
omic Times, 1998) and the Government
of India’s (2001) Gazette notification
“Public Private Partnership”. All the
above recent changes indicate that the
union government has amended and
liberalised some of the policies, regu-
lations and controls to make housing
supply smoother.

Future strategies to improve
housing delivery in Delhi

Given the inability of the City authorit-
ies’ formal sector institutions to pro-
vide affordable housing, policy makers
should consider adopting a new alterna-
tive two-pronged strategy of improving
housing delivery by improving formal
housing delivery and regularizing and
expanding informal housing production
and upgrading existing informal areas.

Formal housing delivery:
alternative approaches

The methods used in this study
involved two steps: (i) identification of
possible alternative methods for the
delivery of housing and (ii) obtaining
the preferences of the housing actors on
various alternatives. To generate sets of
alternatives for each of these stages, a
variety of cities from both developed
and developing countries were exam-
ined to determine the present mode of
housing delivery for each stage in each
of the cities. The cities were selected to
cover both developed and developing
countries and cities where it was
known that there were major differ-
ences in the approaches used. The sam-
ple consists of Canberra and Melbourne
in Australia, Lucknow, Ahmedabad
and Gurgaon in India, and Jakarta and
Singapore.

The alternatives developed in this
way were then tested in Delhi, through
individual interviews with different
actors in Delhi’s housing delivery sys-
tem, to observe how the different sets
of actors see the strengths and weak-
nesses of each alternative at each stage.
This resulted in suggestions for each of
the stages of the housing supply in the
formal housing market appropriate for
Delhi. The suitability of each of the
various alternatives was then assessed,
via further interviewing of the varied

139

actors involved. There were altogether
175 respondents from various groups,
including government professionals;
researchers and academics; executives
from financial institutes; professionals
in the private sector; property lawyers;
private developers; engineers from
implementation agencies; and poli-
ticians and bureaucrats (for details, see
Sivam, 1999).
The results of the research suggest that
the participation of the public, private
and other sectors is seen as essential for
efficient housing delivery to take place.
While the public sector would shape
the city planning and urban policies,
the common perception of the various
participants is that other sectors, either
alone or in joint ventures with govern-
ment, should manage the development
and implementation. However, the
results suggest that no one sector—
public, private, cooperatives, non-
governmental organizations, com-
munity-based organizations—can meet
the challenge in isolation for the later
stages of the housing delivery system.
Guidelines for improving formal hous-
ing delivery in Delhi are explained in
turn for each stage of the housing deliv-
ery system.

Planning As Delhi is a city of national
and international importance, the cen-
tral government should prepare and
approve the overall plan including
plans for areas of national importance.
DDA’s work should be restricted to
planning policy and development
guidelines only. Planning and approval
for the rest of the area should be the
responsibility of the state government.
For better coordination, management
and implementation, Delhi should be
divided into four zones; each zone
should have an office at zonal level,
responsible for planning and plan
approval. At present DDA has approxi-
mately 23,000 employees and there is
poor staff accountability. At the city
level, there should be one office to
coordinate the zonal offices and look
after policy matters. Responsibility
should be distributed at each level.

Land assembly A multiple approach is
favored for land assembly, to reduce
the financial burden on the public sec-
tor and to reduce the monopoly of the
DDA. The results of the study led one

to speculate that various options should
be available to assemble and acquire
the land needed for housing. Payment
of compensation to landowners should
be based on market rates, and should
be made available within a short span
of time, say two to four months. Mul-
tiple agencies should be developed to
provide loans to developers, and
income tax rebates should be given to
developers based on the percentage of
lower income group housing in their
portfolio of housing developments.

Implementation Joint ventures are fav-
ored for land development to reduce
the financial burden on the public sec-
tor. Multiple options for housing con-
struction will reduce the monopoly
effect of the DDA, and improve the
flow and choice of housing in the for-
mal market. When implementing hous-
ing developments, off-site infrastruc-
ture should be developed by joint
venture, with the government as a part-
ner. On-site infrastructure should be the
responsibility of the developer (public,
private, NGO, CBO etc). Housing con-
struction for the lower income group
will generally be the responsibility of
the government, either by itself or in
partnership, but for other groups, con-
struction could be carried out by a mul-
tiplicity of agencies.

Off-site infrastructure development
and services at the city level and zonal
level should be the responsibility of the
state government. Peripheral and on-
site development may be given to the
respective sector developing the area.
Provision of sector level facilities
should be the responsibility of the
developer. Also developers should be
permitted to develop housing only after
providing facilities and services. This
would increase the involvement of
other sectors and more housing could
come onto the market. Planning norms
for cooperative housing societies need
to be changed; a minimum of eight
members, because smaller groups make
it easier to build. Plans of all these
housing developments should be
approved by the state government
within a limited time span.

Disposal Housing disposal for the
lower income groups should be the
responsibility of the government, but
for other groups it could be carried out

Viewpoint: Alpana Sivam

by a variety of agencies. Tenure, at
least on the present evidence, should
always be freehold, except in areas of
national importance. Housing finance
should be provided by a variety of
agencies, but it may be necessary for
the government to facilitate the setting
up of additional agencies. An example
is the Central Provident Fund (CPF)
system in Singapore. There is always
the problem of low incomes and the
consequent inability to pay for housing
in the cities of the less developed econ-
omies, but this factor was outside the
scope of this study, which was limited
to exploring an improved approach to
the institutional problem of housing
delivery and the focus has been on
issues of supply rather than housing
demand. Freehold land tenure is pre-
ferred to reduce the corruption and
bureaucracy involved in the present
system of land transactions. Leasehold
tenure may be restricted to areas of
national importance. The finance sys-
tem for agencies and individuals needs
to be improved to increase the capital
flow in the formal market and to facili-
tate the reduced rate of interest.

Policies and regulations Controls need
to be modified to involve private sec-
tors and the DDA in the formal housing
market in order to improve housing
development. Actors felt that over-
detailed policies and regulations
resulted in delay in the development of
housing. A majority of the actors were
of the opinion that policies, regulations
and controls should be revised to make
them more flexible and transparent.
Delhi’s present housing system reflects
the fact that there is a need for the
government to improve the slum areas
by providing services and infrastruc-
ture, similar to the Kampung pro-
gramme in Indonesia. About 47% of
respondents drawn from the informal
sector preferred government to change
strategies towards the informal sector
because it is part and parcel of housing
provision for almost half the popu-
lation.

Informal housing delivery:
alternative approaches
The informal delivery of housing is a
viable approach and it works well in
providing housing that is affordable to
those earning down to the 20th income

140

percentile (Pugh, 2000). For very low-
income households, conditions are con-
siderably worse as such households
have few resources for housing con-
sumption. In contrast, the planned for-
mal sector provides much higher qual-
ity housing but does so at much higher
unit prices. The enormous differential
between formally and informally pro-
vided housing raises fundamental pol-
icy questions regarding the appropriate-
ness of government programmes aimed
at expanding formal housing pro-
duction to assist the poor. While well
intentioned, this policy has been, and
will continue to be, a failure as it is
simply too expensive. For example, the
least expensive housing project now on
the market cost approximately Rs
100,000, about double the average cost
of housing in the informal sector.

The regularization of the informal
land and housing development process
should concentrate on ameliorating the
negative effects of informal shelter
delivery and enhancing the capacity of
the informal sector to provide afford-
able housing. This process would con-
centrate on providing secured land title,
the provision of essential services and
ensuring that informal settlements are
sited in areas which are adjacent to
existing or planned infrastructure and
away from environmentally sensitive
areas. Such approaches have been suc-
cessfully adopted in Indonesia. The
informal housing delivery system may
not reach the high quality levels found
in planned areas, but it is far more
efficient and demand responsive.
Government policies to regularize and
expand new informal settlement activi-
ties and upgrade existing areas could be
a highly effective means of responding
to Delhi’s housing crisis.

Summary and conclusions

In Delhi, the policy of large-scale
acquisition, development and disposal
of land forms the basis for urban and
housing development. Development of
land by private developers has been
effectively frozen, and the government
has a near monopoly in the formal land
and housing market. Over time, this
policy has directly or indirectly contrib-
uted to increasing the housing shortage.
Some of the housing legislation
enforced in Delhi adversely affects the

production of housing. Finance policy
for housing does not include schemes
to provide housing loans to people in
the informal sector, and mobilisation of
resources for housing by this large seg-
ment of the population is often restric-
ted to self-savings and borrowing
from relatives.

Land development involves numer-
ous government departments and pub-
lic sector undertakings at both federal
and state level, but coordination among
these agencies is weak, and as a result,
their programs are not synchronised for
faster land development.

Therefore it is highly unlikely that,
without a major change in the mech-
anisms of the public sector housing
delivery processes, additional housing
in the formal market will be available
to absorb the projected increase in
population. It is clear that change in the
present housing delivery system is
necessary and urgent. Multiple
approaches need to be adopted to pro-
vide housing in Delhi. It requires both
public and private sectors and the
involvement of civil society to improve
both formal and informal housing sec-
tors. As approximately 50% of total
housing is in the latter, there is a need
to improve quality and the essential
infrastructure.

Despite the protestations of govern-
ment officials and policy makers, low
cost informally provided housing in
Delhi’s informal sector is a valuable
and important component of the overall
housing delivery system in the city.
This has and will continue to provide
the safety net for low and moderate
income households seeking shelter.
From a policy perspective, it is
important to understand why this sector
operates and what kind of housing it
provides: the important lesson for pub-
lic agencies to learn from the informal
sector is how to combine housing qual-
ity with affordability.

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builder likely’ New Delhi, 2 June.

The Times of India (1998d) ‘Private devel-
opers apprehensive of 30-acre rule’ New
Delhi, 22 June.

The Times of India (1998e) ‘Private devel-
opers will not get DDA land’ New
Delhi, 21 July.

The Times of India (1998f) ‘Raise funds by
regularising unauthorised colonies’ New
Delhi, 22 May.

The Times of India (1998g) ‘Repeal of Land
Ceiling Act may not solve housing prob-
lem’ New Delhi, 15 May.

The Times of India (1998h) ‘Urban land
ceiling act will be scrapped’ New Delhi,
13 May.

The Times of India (1999) ‘Rules to be soft-
ened again for private developers’ New
Delhi, 21 January.

Introduction
• The present housing delivery system

Formal housing delivery systems used in Delhi
Planning
Land assembly
Implementation
Disposal
Informal housing delivery systems used in Delhi
Invasion/squatter settlements
Pirates/quasi-legal settlements
Unauthorized colonies/community based sub-division
Landlord based subdivision

• Policies, regulations, controls and acts

Management and coordination
Financial constraints
Delivery mechanisms

• Emerging policies to reduce the problems of housing delivery
• Future strategies to improve housing delivery in Delhi

Formal housing delivery: alternative approaches
Planning
Land assembly
Implementation
Disposal
Policies and regulations
Informal housing delivery: alternative approaches
Summary and conclusions
References