The resilience of a London Great Estate: urban development, adaptive capacity and the politics of stewardship

Abstract

This paper explores the concept of resilience through the planning, development and management history of one of London’s Great Estates. The Grosvenor Estate in Mayfair and Belgravia was developed incrementally from the 1720s and continues to be managed on behalf of the aristocratic Grosvenor family. The Great Estates have been described as exemplars of resiliently managed evolution in response to change in several publications and resilience acquired a strategic significance for Grosvenor in the early twenty-first century. This occurred in the context of the phenomenon of empty homes acquired by overseas investors which has steadily transformed the character of inner London areas, but also related to Grosvenor’s management future. The paper argues that the Grosvenor Estate provides an intriguing case for testing academic ideas of “evolutionary resilience” while also raising issues of how resilience concepts are mobilised within the socio-political worlds of planning, development and real estate management practice.