City Planner: London Mayor takes on foreign property owners!

It’s about time someone took a stand on the scale of gentrification in London and in some of towns and cities in the South East, including Brighton. The news that the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, will launch a comprehensive inquiry into the impact of foreign investment on the London property market should encourage other cities like Brighton to do the same.

In London, the scale of gentrification in boroughs like Tower Hamlets and in areas in the inner city like Clerkenwell and Shoreditch, is such that action is needed to tackle the scale of the problem and the spiralling housing costs.

Overseas buyers, particularly from China, are increasingly focusing on towns and cities outside London – with Brighton, Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham all identified as “hotspots” as buyers try to get more for their money while avoiding new stamp duty rules. These are all of course high demand university towns and so will have other pressures from rich overseas students to contend with.

Brighton suffers as a result of poor city management

Brighton, as this column has argued in the past, suffers as a result of poor city management and well off Londoners looking to move out of the capital to somewhere where they get more for their money.

For years, gentrification champions have argued it is the most effective formula for urban regeneration. There have been many upsides. But the consequences of the rate and scale of change, the displacement of poor by rich, the loss of workspace and the hollowing out of neighbourhoods by buy-to-leave investors, is now frightening even the most ardent promoters of trickle-down regeneration. Including the mayor of London. Brighton and Hove too should take note!

www.samerbagaeen.com, Twitter: @samerbagaeen