Anna Minton – författare

The inside story of London's housing crisis, by the award-winning author of Ground ControlLondon is facing the worst housing crisis in modern times, with knock-on effects for the rest of the UK. Despite the desperate shortage of housing, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of affordable homes are being pulled down, replaced by luxury apartments aimed at foreign investors. In this ideological war, housing is no longer considered a public good. Instead, only market solutions are considered - and these respond to the needs of global capital, rather than the needs of ordinary people. In politically uncertain times, the housing crisis has become a key driver creating and fuelling the inequalities of a divided nation. Anna Minton cuts through the complexities, jargon and spin to give a clear-sighted account of how we got into this mess and how we can get out of it.

The inside story of London's housing crisis, by the award-winning author of Ground ControlLondon is facing the worst housing crisis in modern times, with knock-on effects for the rest of the UK. Despite the desperate shortage of housing, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of affordable homes are being pulled down, replaced by luxury apartments aimed at foreign investors. In this ideological war, housing is no longer considered a public good. Instead, only market solutions are considered - and these respond to the needs of global capital, rather than the needs of ordinary people. In politically uncertain times, the housing crisis has become a key driver creating and fuelling the inequalities of a divided nation. Anna Minton cuts through the complexities, jargon and spin to give a clear-sighted account of how we got into this mess and how we can get out of it.

Our cities are failing. While the super-rich sit on properties worth a fortune, the rest of us struggle to afford to live. We’re told it’s too much immigration, too much red tape and too little housing. Super Prime tells the real story. Since 2008, a warped economic normal has turbocharged house prices across the West. From London to Manchester, Atlanta to Dublin, a house has become a financial asset rather than a home. Enclaves of high-end real estate, owned by overseas investors, are left empty – more dead than alive. In the wake of the subprime crisis, a new superprime crisis has taken hold.This is the story of how luxury developments – with their familiar formula of high security, privatised public space and exclusive shops – are sterilizing our cities. Above all, it is a story of who bears the cost. Priced out, ordinary communities, families and small businesses – the lifeblood of the city – are forced to leave. Homelessness rises, wages flatline, and social housing collapses.Through meticulous research and myth-busting storytelling, Anna Minton uncovers life on the frontlines of this global crisis, reporting from the streets of Skid Row to the skyscrapers of Billionaires Row, while making clear how housing policy works in action – and offering real solutions. Super Prime reveals how our cities can once again become places where people, not capital, come first.

Britain's streets have been transformed by the construction of new property - but it's owned by private corporations, designed for profit and watched over by CCTV. Have these gleaming business districts, mega malls and gated developments led to 'regeneration', or have they intensified social divisions and made us more fearful of each other? Anna Minton's acclaimed and passionate polemic, now updated to cover the UK property collapse and London's controversial Olympic Park, shows us the face of Britain today. It reveals the untested - and unwanted - urban planning that is changing not only our cities, but the nature of public space, of citizenship and of trust.

The impact of global capital and foreign investment on local communities is being felt in major cities across the world. Since the 2012 Olympics was awarded to the British capital, East London has been at the heart of the largest and most all-encompassing top-down urban regeneration strategy in civic history. At the centre of this has been the local government, Newham Council, and their daring proposal: an "Arc of Opportunity" for developers to transform 1,412 hectares of Newham. This proposal was outlined in a short film, London's Regeneration Supernova, and shown to foreign developers and businesses at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.While the sweeping changes to East London have been keenly felt by locals, the symbolism and practicalities of these changes - for the local area, and the world alike - are overdue serious investigation. Regeneration Songs is about how places are turned into simple stories for packaged investment opportunities, how people living in those places relate to those stories, and how music and art can render those stories in many different ways.The book will also include a download code to obtain the related musical project, Music for Masterplanning - in which musicians from East London soundtracked London's Regeneration Supernova - and a 32-page glossy insert detailing the artists involved.