Negotiating urban change. Strategies and tactics of patrimonialization in Hackney Wick, East London

The heritage category function of building collective identity, condensing in specific goods, tangible or intangible, a set of locally significant values and practices, has been often pointed out to show its use in managing relations between the authorities and local communities (Simonicca 2015). This happens nowadays with a particularly conscious approach in urban planning, not only in the practices and rhetorics of institutions, but also in the quotidian experience of people who develop their own informal planning. In this discussion, the heritage arguments become an appropriate tool to handle and shape the change, especially when these processes have a deep impact in the everyday lives of communities and territories, like in cases of gentrification.