The London Particular is an open-ended urban research group which has been documenting, theorising and acting against regeneration and gentrification in East London since 2001.

In our view, so-called regeneration in fact represents the spatial and social restructuring of the city in the interests of an elite minority. Privatisation of space, housing and services, the displacement of working class communities, and authoritarian social control coincide with rising homelessness and falling living conditions.

In the name of inner city rebirth and renewal, regeneration gives us state-sponsored gentrification and an intensified attack on the working class. It obscures its true objectives behind a dense and proliferating fog of quangos, agencies, partnerships, and funding bodies. Unaccountable and untransparent, they collectively dictate the new shape of the city through a pseudo-democratic discourse of consultation and participation.

’The streets were so full of dense brown smoke that scarcely anything was to be seen… “This is a London particular.” I had never heard of such a thing. “A fog, miss,” said the young gentleman.’ Bleak House