Co-presented with Stamatis Zografos (Bartlett, UCL)

Panel 53. The conflictive urban and spatial dimensions of memory

Ledbury Estate and the violence of poverty: Haunting memories of fire and precarity
This paper focuses on Ledbury Estate, a council estate in South London that is destined to be demolished, as it doesn’t meet fire and structural safety requirements. During the Covid-19 pandemic, however, Southwark Council introduced ‘measures’ that deemed Ledbury Estate safe, and three out of the four blocks were brought back into use as temporary accommodation for homeless and low-income families. Through an assessment of the situation at Ledbury, I will discuss how the memory of fire has been ‘translated’ into regulatory practices and how buildings can inflict – unintentionally or not – a sense of urban violence in precarity of housing.

Our research was formed through workshops with residents listening, recording in Super-8 film and communicating how everyday life at Ledbury unravels. We consider the multiplicity of voices at play in this collective piece, some often unheard, forgotten and disenfranchised, which comprise part of Ledbury’s intangible heritage, a ‘heritage from below’. We further argue that the architecture of Ledbury Estate, the measures taken to ensure its safety and the voices of the residents demonstrate haunting presences. Paraphrasing Mark Fisher’s interpretation of hauntology, which is based on Derrida’s trans-language pun on ontology, memories of fire and precarity emerge as a recognition that they are no longer a threat to the residents but are still effective as a virtuality. Simultaneously they demonstrate how fire and precarity (in actuality) have not yet happened but are already effective in the virtual, as an anticipation. In conclusion, this paper argues that the haunting memories of fire and precarity associated with temporary accommodations constitute forms of violence, which together with the violence found in the social cleansing of decant spaces comprise a form of urban violence of poverty.