THE ANTHILL SOCIAL

Database (e)state

Artist and activist-led PhD research of the role of housing database technologies in processes of urban regeneration. The projects/activities listed below, occupy a hazy space between art, activism, academic research, and documentation of the everyday experience of housing database systems. Together they paint a portrait of the socio-technical complexities of local government housing administration.

Database (e)state: Introduction to the research project.

A calendar view: An exploration of how the standardisation in a URL produces complexity in government.

Shadow Database: A resident-led recreation of Lambeth’s housing database systems.

Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV): A bicycle trailer that records audio and video footage of Cressingham.

Search Drill: An electric drill controlled by a database searches of SOR codes used on Cressingham.

Displacement Calculator
An online form that clarified Lambeth’s financial offer to homeowners of Cressingham. The formalised programmatic structure of the form revealed the disjuncture between Lambeth’s cabinet reports, financial viability assessments, and guarantees to residents facing demolition of their homes.

Housing Justice
A workshop, that I helped devise and deliver, instigated by the housing activist group Concrete Action, Bournemouth University Civic Media Hub, The Centre for Excellence in Media Practice, and Centre for Investigative Journalism.

Lambeth Tech Timelines
Multiple timelines of Lambeth’s administrative technologies, legislation, issues of repair, and historical technical artefacts. They reveal how database technologies and practices are coextensive with central and local government decision making.

Land Value Plot
A visualisation of property sales on Cressigham compared against Lambeth’s proposed new-build prices and average sale prices in the borough.

Paper Houses
A craft activity making houses out of paper print-outs of 5,000 Schedule of Rates(SOR) codes obtained via Freedom of Information requests. This activity revealed how abstract codes can produce multiple associations both inside and outside the technical confines of a database.

Regen Cheat Sheet
A collaboratively written guide for residents and activists. It covers technical information, expertise, legal processes, and general practicalities for coping with a local authority regeneration project.

The Regeneration Algorithm
An SQL query that calculates the average cost of repair for housing estates across Lambeth.

Service Charge Parser
A programming script that uses computer vision technologies to extract a table of data from .pdf versions of homeowner service charge bills. This script supported efforts by Cressingham residents to contest £127,000 of repairs undertaken by Lambeth contractors and staff.

Spreadsheet Schema
A spreadsheet used to reverse-engineer hidden database structures employed by Lambeth in the management of their housing stock.

Shadow Database

Shadow database

A shadow version of Lambeths Housing database built with residents of Cressingham Gardens Estate that reverse engineers Lambeth Council’s (in South West London) housing database systems. The interface, shown in the video below, overlays video footage of homes on Cressingham with data obtained via: Freedom of Information requests; an audit of Lambeth’s accounts in accordance with Section 26 of the Local Audit and Accountability Act; and an assessment of Cressingham residents (by central government) for the Right to Manage their estate. All footage was shot using the SPV bike trailer which was built for this project. A restricted version of this interface is available at http://shadow.db-estate.co.uk.

Smiling kids in a wooden bike trailer