‘Space for cycling shouldn’t come at the cost of space for living’

Space for cycling shouldn’t come at the cost of space for living.

Bristol City Council has installed a cycle lane in St Werburgh’s as a way of forcing out van and caravan dwellers. This makes life even harder for Bristolians living in vans.

It is an act of green gentrification: implementing supposed environmental improvements in a way that displaces existing residents that allows landlords and developers to profit from the influx of new money.

People living in vehicles and caravans are at the sharp end of housing insecurity in Bristol. It’s one of the very very few cheap(ish) ways to live in Bristol.

But it isn’t a quiet life. People living in the road face harassment from all quarters. Private landowners evict them from their hoarded vacant plots and our own city council has harassed our van dwelling neighbours off our streets.

In 2018, Bristol City Council took the extraordinary step of using the courts to force van-dwellers off a quiet side street next to Greenbank Cemetery in Easton.

This was a blatant act of displacement and gentrification with the only alternative offered over six miles away in Avonmouth.

Chittening Road in Avonmouth is one of the city council’s sites for van dwellers – photo: Joanna Booth

Bristol City Council has since begun targeting our neighbours living in vans in St Werburgh’s, going a step further and going to court seeking an injunction banning vans from the entire neighbourhood.

An injunction would mean anyone parking for more than two hours could face up to two years in prison. You can donate to the legal fight against the injunction here.

One of the justifications given by the council is that people living in vans in St Werburgh’s disposed of human waste in an unsanitary manner at the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, when public toilets were closed.

Those fighting the injunction have not opposed the council’s temporary injunction against anyone leaving human waste in public places (whether they live in vans or otherwise).

But taking this as justification to evict everyone who lives in a vehicle would be like banning cycling because a couple of people jumped red lights. Portaloos could have solved the poo problem.

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We suspect the real reason for the injunction comes from a few streets away where a major new private housing development is about to come to market The developer is seeking £375,000 to £500,000 per home – way above even the neighbourhood’s current sky-high average house price of £354,000.

It seems the council think displacing some of the city’s most precariously housed from the neighbourhood will help attract the sort of money required to meet developers’ expectations.

One particularly egregious aspect of the council’s gentrification campaign is the weaponisation of cycle lanes to displace our neighbours in vans.

A new cycle lane has been installed on the north end of Mina Road, between the junction with James Street and the tunnel to Ashley Vale.

This is a quiet street leading to a cul-de-sac where no-one has ever asked for a cycle lane. It is much much quieter than the section of Mina Road with shops where one might be useful.

Contrary to what Bristol Rising Tide write, Mina Road leads not to a cul-de-sac but to the Concorde Way heading towards Ashley Down and Lockleaze – photo: Jess Connett

The new cycle lane is a beefy, metal bollarded affair creating very strong separation from vehicles. It’s much more permanent and sturdy than the cycle lanes simultaneously installed on much busier central thoroughfares like Park Row and the Clifton Triangle.

It makes no sense until you remember what occupied this spot before: neighbours in vehicles.

Safe cycling routes are critical to fighting climate change and improving air quality. That’s why it’s so heinous that the council is using them to evict and displace van dwellers.

We desperately need this sort of infrastructure on dangerous, busy roads. Why weren’t they installed on Stapleton Road, Church Road or Fishponds Road?

And there’s a pressing need for affordable housing in Bristol. The shortage of council housing, failure to regulate landlords and criminalisation of squatting has left van dwelling as one of the few affordable ways to continue to survive our city. Now the council wants to remove that option too.

Sam in her surfing van, which she began living in after being evicted during lockdown – photo: Ibby

After decades of campaigning, cities are finally implementing some of the environmental measures movements have been demanding.

But by doing so within a capitalist urban development framework, improvements to the local environment are being weaponised to gentrify neighbourhoods.

Cycle lanes, green spaces and flood defences are used to market neighbourhoods as more desirable both to global investors and wealthier incomers.

Existing renters find their landlords raising rents, often evicting them in favour of wealthier tenants in the process. Private developers snap up land and put their marketing budgets to good use further raising local house prices.

And local authorities play their part by never properly implementing regulations on affordable housing and failing to build the social housing our neighbourhoods desperately need.

Green gentrification is a new tactic in developers’ arsenal, with recent examples in Boston, Seattle, Montreal and Barcelona. But in truth it’s rarely so explicit as in St Werburgh’s, where some of our neighbours have literally been pushed out and a useless cycle lane installed as a means of keeping them from returning.

Bristol City Council is setting a new bar for green gentrification.

We demand the council:

• relocate this unnecessary cycle lane to a busier road where it is actually needed
• drop the injunctions, allowing van dwellers to quiet enjoyment of longstanding street sites in St Werburgh’s and next to Greenbank Cemetery
• support van dwellers by installing infrastructure such as toilets, washing facilities and recycling collection
• run a ‘gentrification check’ on all new (green) infrastructure in the city, checking whether enough has been done to guarantee local residents housing security to prevent the new infrastructure contributing to their displacement

If you’d like to support those living in vehicles from being criminalised, donate to the team fighting the injunction here.

You can also help counteract the exclusion of travellers and people who live in unusual ways by speaking up when you hear unfair generalisations made about the behaviour of these groups.

If you’re part of an environment or climate groups in Bristol, support van and caravan dwellers and call out this cycle lane for what it is: a weapon to displace our van dwelling neighbours that does nothing to protect the environment.

Bristol Rising Tide is a local group of a national network taking direct action for climate justice. This piece was originally published as a statement on their Facebook page. Main photo: Bristol Rising Tide

Read more: ‘All I want is to be able to cycle safely through Bristol with my young children’