Coin Street 40 years on

The Oxo Tower on the Thames riverfront

Coin Street is a community-led success story – a development of homes and commerce on the south bank of the Thames which has demonstrated over a forty-year period that local creativity and control can enrich and enlarge the lives of the people who live and work there. At YoCo, we’ve long admired their vision and tenacity, and they were part of our Don’t Extract – Redistribute! Online event in 2023, with founding member Iain Tuckett delivering the keynote session.

This March saw the launch of a report on Coin Street’s success, which endeavoured to unpick the key components of “the Coin Street Model” and understand the features and qualities which led to such positive outcomes. Phil Bixby was lucky enough to be at the launch (along with our friends from Mayday Saxonvale in Frome) and to get a tour of Coin Street, along with an opportunity to share thinking with the report authors and some of Coin Street’s key people.

Context

Coin Street came about through very specific circumstances; opposition to inappropriate development which developed into a positive vision for something better. Supported by the departing GLC and at a time when there was greater grant support for housing, the opportunity was taken to create a neighbourhood which used economic activity, and the bedrock of community ownership of land and buildings, to provide stability and hope for its residents. One result has been that Coin Street generates its own economic opportunity – it relies relatively little on grant funding but uses profits and the leverage of its assets to fund the good stuff it does.

There are parallels in YoCo’s position:- Grant funding is unlikely to be a major contributor (although it may be important at some stages) and it will need to develop and maintain an economic model which is sustainable. YoCo talks of “a community made through exchange” – an approach to York’s inequality which seeks to redistribute that inequality; focusing on local wealth creation rather than just poverty. Both Coin Street and York Central have opportunities to work with tourism in a creative way.

Illustration from report author Popular’s launch presentation

Complexity

We find ourselves often saying about YoCo that it’s “about more than just housing” – ideas which can be complex to explain about neighbourhood and community. Our work years ago turning the My York Central vision into a deliverable plan asked what it really took to get the good things people said they wanted – birdsong outside the window and kids playing in the street – and this turned out to be a complex structure of ownership and economy.

The Coin Street report acknowledges that this complexity is an inherent part of their success – that a community-run neighbourhood is far more than a scaled-up community-run pub, for example. The holistic nature of the place is part of its success – economically it enables a wider range of fuels for driving the community good, and socially it creates a richer infrastructure and “a range of touchpoints” with those who live, work, learn and play there. There is, perhaps, a critical mass in both scale and complexity which is needed to really create neighbourhood.

Deliberation

One of YoCo’s upcoming challenges will be devising a structure of governance which enables local control of a mix of activities and assets, and we are hopefully about to embark on a process of developing this with very well-informed legal support. Coin Street has achieved this balance – not without its challenges and conflicts, but it has been able to reshape itself on a rolling basis to respond to changing circumstances and personnel. The report notes, with a touch of coyness, that while democratic process is a big part of the community it doesn’t run uninterrupted right up to the board (which is local, but unelected). What struck me from the report though was the importance given to connecting people in the community with the process of discussion, rather than just decision.

YoCo, and My York Central before it, recognised that a process of public deliberation which started early and continued indefinitely was key to good public engagement. Voting on the location of benches was not good engagement; developing a complex, shared vision of a future place took time and courage but was far more likely to foster the citizenship which would help it thrive. Coin Street has demonstrated over four decades what that process looks like.

Co-operative housing at Coin Street

Principles and pragmatism

The Coin Street report notes the autonomy that has been achieved through assembling local wealth and assets. The exercise of that autonomy is a day-to-day challenge and it is fascinating how this shapes the place and economy. Much of the ground floor street frontage of the Neighbourhood Centre is a Nando’s, and the top floor of the Oxo building is occupied by a Harvey Nichols restaurant, brasserie and bar. But when offering headquarters and studio space to Rambert dance company, the rent was one pair of ballet shoes a year, alongside offering a programme of free or subsidised community dance classes.

YoCo’s proposal for its pilot development on York Central is for a mixed neighbourhood – inclusive and intergenerational – where an economic model enables those who want a high-quality city centre environment to contribute to it, ensuring it is affordable and accessible to those with limited economic means. While this notion of consciously creating inclusive community may seem unusual in the UK, we have done it before (Joseph Rowntree’s New Earswick) and continue to do so (Chapeltown Co-Housing and Citu – in very different ways – in Leeds). It goes beyond what might simply be seen as “cross-subsidy” – spelling out the broader benefits of recognising that money is not the only worthwhile resource for a neighbourhood.

Shared public space at Citu in Leeds

Report conclusions

While celebrating Coin Street’s success, the sobering fact is that community-led housing and other development is still some way from the mainstream – certainly in the UK. There are many reasons – our monopolised housebuilding and development process, is one, and I’d argue the remoteness of most people from civic activity is another. The report notes the urgency of using upcoming changes via devolution and reform of the planning process to strengthen the connection with communities.

Crucially though it identifies the problem of funding – urging for the availability of feasibility funding (converted to borrowing where a scheme progresses, written off where it doesn’t) and of patient capital – to provide large-scale, long-term financial stability. YoCo’s next steps involve progress to the point where a substantially shaped proposal can be put to the master developer – largely designed in partnership with a reassuringly complete group of future residents and businesses, costed and with evidence of funding. Where a commercial developer will have the resources to undertake this sort of challenge, a community group needs substantial financial support of the sort that Coin Street got from the GLC.

In her excellent opening speech for the launch event, Coin Street’s Head of External Relations Cait Saunders (pictured above) talked about the measures we use for success within housing and regeneration – numbers built, reductions in waiting lists. But she argued for a broader view based on human flourishing – looking beyond the need to reduce suffering towards enhancing people’s ability to thrive. YoCo has always based its approach on “propose, don’t oppose”. We have embraced what rapper Darren McGarvey described as “the need for a cleaner-burning fuel” which moves away from anger about inequality and engages people in creative endeavour – building a vision, understanding what’s needed to realise it, and working together to carry it to reality.

Coin Street’s long-term and ongoing success, and this very timely report, stand in support of that approach. If community-led initiatives are to one day become common, then we need to celebrate their multiple aims, their sometimes messy process – and stop calling them risky, especially when the risks of impoverishing citizenship are greater. If we don’t realise that now, when will we?