Challenging Perceptions

This chapter describes tenant&s;s experiences of community and neighbourliness on a difficult-to-let estate in London which emerged from ethnographic research for a Home Office funded evaluation of the Priority Estates Project (PEP) and its impact on crime and community. It explores the study that involved eighteen months overt participant observation on the estate and seventy interviews with residents, housing staff, police officers and other &s;professionals&s; associated with it. The chapter deals with a brief history of Riverside (a pseudonym), tenant&s;s recollections of the estate when it opened, the intense neighbouring which occurred at the outset and how the estate rapidly went into decline. It describes about the framework for subsequent discussion of resident&s;s perceptions of community and neighbourliness on the estate at the time of the fieldwork and the networks which existed there. The chapter outlines the patterns of interaction among residents on a London housing estate where, despite adverse physical design and changing tenant profile, networks had been established.