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.

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.

In Ground Control Anna Minton 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.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?Now with a new chapter on the 2012 London Olympic legacy and Britain's housing collapse, Anna Minton's acclaimed and passionate polemic shows us the face of Britain today.'They sold our streets and nobody noticed ... timely and powerful ... revelatory' Observer'A sustained, informed, articulate, timely work of rage ... Anna Minton has put her finger on one of the most profound and disturbing shifts in modern British cities' Evening Standard'A damning study of how Britain is curbing freedoms ... Minton is a brilliant journalist ... a vital book' Daily Telegraph'Eye-opening, unsettling ... A wonderful, timely analysis that reveals another, more sinister side to "gentrification"' Financial Times

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.