Latin Elephant

The challenge

Regeneration projects across London are changing neighbourhoods. Often, this means that rents rise, local shops close, and long-standing residents – particularly Black and minoritised communities – are pushed out. This is called gentrification.

Many business owners and local residents lack the expertise or confidence to take part in complex planning processes. As a result, their voices go unheard and consultations are often dominated by developers or more well-resourced groups.

When imposed on communities rather than shaped with them, regeneration can make London more inequal – causing job-losses when shops or market stalls are forced to leave, raising house prices, and forcing people to move to different areas.

The project

We fund Latin Elephant’s ‘Protect Our Places’ project, which brings together a coalition of 10 campaigns and organisations across London.

The coalition is made up of organisations working to protect London’s diverse spaces from gentrification. They represent markets, town centres and high streets in areas like Brixton, Newham and Brick Lane that are seeing huge changes that often don’t benefit local communities.

The projects help these organisations challenge gentrification through:

• Community empowerment: For example workshops and resources on legal rights, giving communities the tools to participate in consultations and challenge decisions.
• Building a collective narrative: By working as a collective, rather than as individual campaigns, to better understand London’s challenges and build a city-wide narrative.
• Addressing racism in the planning process: For example, producing policy responses calling attention to the need for greater attention to the negative, racialised impacts of London’s planning process and practice.