2.3 Status, value and power

Pictured here are two housing estates in London made up of multi-story towers, built in a similar architectural style, known as brutalism. The Barbican Centre, on Slide 1, is an expensive and highly desirable place to live. Many residents are attracted to live there specifically because of its architecture. On Slide 2 is the Aylesbury Estate in South London, which has been repeatedly used by politicians as a prime example of failed urban planning. (It is worth noting that many residents of the Aylesbury Estate strongly object to this characterisation!)

While these two places have similar physical properties, they are assigned a very different social meaning. The Barbican is a high-status place which is often seen as also increasing the status of the people who live there. People who live in housing estates like the Aylesbury, on the other hand, are often stigmatised, looked down upon, and seen as a problem to be solved (Smith, 2025). This example demonstrates that it is never enough to look only at the physical features of a place. These issues of status, value and social meaning are also crucially important in understanding how places affect people.

One marker of how valued a place is could be the amount of care that is taken in its upkeep and in keeping the people who live there safe. Places with high levels of visible crime and vandalism have indeed been found to be worse for people’s mental health (Ross, Mirowsky & Pribesh, 2001). Another indicator of social status and power is how easily a person is able to influence decisions about the place where they live. The sociologist Anne Rogers did indeed find that people who feel like they have less say over their neighbourhood also have worse mental health. If a place has problems but people feel more able to fix them, this is perhaps less of an issue for well-being.

Comparison and a feeling of where someone is in society seem to also play a role. One study in South Africa found that between two communities of comparable levels of deprivation there were higher levels of dissatisfaction and distress in the community that was located on a hill overlooking a rich neighbourhood as opposed to the other area surrounded by neighbourhoods of similar wealth (Rogers & Pilgrim, 2003). This example also shows that value and status are always relative. Another example of this pattern is that people in more unequal countries in general have worse mental health than people who live in a country where people’s incomes are closer together (Wilkinson & Pickett, 2010). The dynamics shaping how people feel about the places they live, whether they feel valued, heard or excluded, are therefore complex and in flux, but always important to consider.