Micro-community engagement and area-based regeneration in East London: The case of Chrisp Street Market

This paper critically engages with how the notion of community is used in local economic development in England. Its primary concern is how current understandings of the concept of ‘community’ in regeneration, as well as how it is instrumentalised through ineffective community engagement, is depitcted as a linear and homogeneous construct. This paper addresses how this is a result of a tension between historic neoliberal urban policy and communitarian approaches to local engagement which can often result in tokenistic community engagement practices. This in turn can have serious and adverse effects on localities as local area-based regeneration projects materialise. This paper argues that an approach based on understanding communities as made up of a number of micro-communities might be more useful in a regeneration context. It examines an initiative called the Chrisp Street Exchange led by a local regeneration team called Accents tasked to be at the frontline. The paper outlines Accents' strategies of delivering community engagement as an example of a micro-communities approach. It then suggests that while Accents might not be able to stem the tide of market forces, they can at least deliver engagement approaches that might be able to prepare micro-communities, in this case a local small business micro-community, for the impending change that has landed in this part of east London