http://www.urbanstudies.uva.nl/urbanstudies

Remaking Social Housing in Glasgow

• Monday, 30th May 2011, 16.00- 17.30 hrs.

• Oost Indisch Huis – Room: E0.02 (VOC-zaal)

It is nearly 10 years since Scotland’s largest city embarked on a revolution in its social housing, transferring more than 80,000 council homes to the Glasgow Housing Association (GHA) who then embarked on a massive investment programme and series of commitments, most significantly proposing to undergo ‘second stage transfer’ to more than 60 local or community-based organisations. Although public housing stock transfer to the association sector is an established and successful (though contentious) model within the UK housing system, the scale and ambition of the Glasgow proposals marks it out.This lecture attempts to provide perspective on the GHA experiment – looking at its progress, its many controversies and its contested status. We consider the housing, urban, social, financial and political dimensions of what many considered at the time to be a once in a lifetime opportunity to ‘fix’ Glasgow’s housing problems. We draw on a wide ranging literature about GHA, housing and community politics, and focus in on the following specific questions:

• What are the roots of the continuing controversies surrounding GHA?
• How (and to what extent) were the political problems confronting the organisation resolved?
• What impact has GHA had on the city, on communities and on the built environment?
• What is the future for second stage transfer and GHA?
• What wider lessons are there for urban politics, social housing and for analysing urban regeneration and housing policy and practice?

Prof. Ken Gibb is Professor in Housing Economics at the University of Glasgow. In the course of the Urban Studies Programme Ken Gibb spends time at the University of Amsterdam to work with Urban Studies researchers, give lectures and teach PhD students.