‘A process of displacement and dispossession’, according to David Harvey, ‘lies at the core of the urban process under capitalism’ (Harvey, 2013, p 18). In the slums of Mumbai, India, in the past, for example, ‘financial powers backed by the state, push for forcible slum clearance, in some cases violently taking possession of a terrain occupied by a whole generation of slum-dwellers’, he pointed out (although there have been very different experiences too, as will be suggested later). Similar, if less brutal and more legalistic forms of dispossession could be identified in US cities, in his view, displacing long-term residents in reasonable housing in favour of higher-order land uses (such as condominiums) (Harvey, 2013, p 19). Such forms of ‘feral capitalism’, predatory practices and the dispossession of the poor and vulnerable had become the order of the day, Harvey concluded, making the case for the importance of developing alternatives through popular democratic movements for social transformation.

This chapter focuses on community responses to dispossession and displacement as a result of (re)development. Development has been a contested notion in general, and so has urban redevelopment more specifically. Definitions and approaches differ. And so do communities’ responses, depending on their varying interests and aspirations.

In recent years there have been examples of community-based resistance to displacement as a result of development projects in rural contexts in the global South, just as there have been examples of community-based resistance to displacement as a result of urban redevelopment programmes in cities across the globe. In other cases in contrast, however, rather than focusing on resistance per se, communities have developed their own alternative approaches, just as communities, and individuals within communities, have chosen to move on willingly, of their own accord. Chapter Six explores the question of choice and human agency in response to displacement pressures further, while taking account of wider frameworks of structural constraints.

Having identified examples of varying community responses in general, this chapter moves on to focus on examples of community responses to displacement as a result of urban redevelopment more specifically. These particular examples come from London, a global city with correspondingly powerful pressures competing for urban space, as Chapter Two has already explained.