Jan Kattein’s new book, Londoners Making London is not about architects, sorry, but brings together nine stories of entrepreneurs, activists and community groups transforming their own neighbourhoods.

My copy arrived, appropriately, on local election day in May. A democratic process that relies on being able to procure available community space. For a general election, we need 40,000 polling stations across the UK, to be roughly precise, along with 150,000 polling station staff. But according to Locality’s Save our Spaces campaign, on average, “more than 4,000 publicly owned buildings and spaces in England are being sold off every year.”

In every aspect of life in London, from the logistics of voting to building homes, there is a gap in physical space and services that creative, determined people fill. And it’s this gap that the book explores. It looks at projects where people, here mostly women, have identified a need, whether for somewhere to live, work, make or grow, and have done something about it – in the process fulfilling less tangible desires, like togetherness and visibility.

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