Watch out - there's a Dementor about. Dementors, as fans of the Harry Potter books will know, suck the soul from their victims. We don't have such hooded monsters in real life, but we do have people, organisations and businesses that suck the soul from communities and insist on calling it regeneration.

Today's news that the Foundry in Shoreditch, east London, is to make way for an 18-storey hotel (pictured) with an art gallery and cinema, is a case in point.

You might wonder what's wrong with a glitzy hotel instead of a rather ugly bar full of students and artists. Surely it's jobs (albeit for hotel staff on low wages), business opportunities and something that will attract activity to a run-down area.

Well, no. Those are the blandishments of the bland: in exchange for a rough and ready environment and a plethora of marginal activities we get a package deal that could be anywhere, but appropriates to itself bits of the past as commercial accoutrements (let's get rid of the scruffy spaces for artists, but hey, if we keep this bit of Banksy graffiti people will think we're cutting-edge).

Way back in 1999, when I and a few colleagues set up New Start magazine in the back room of a former pub in Hoxton, the Foundry was one of our regular drinking spots. It wasn't flash, but it was a place where stuff happened - and all around that area there were businesses like ours, struggling to make ends meet but re-using old buildings for new purposes.

That is what helps to animate and regenerate an area - the combination of existing infrastructure (social and physical) with the arrival of people who are ready to take a few risks. What often follows is gentrification - not so much the influx of new people with money as the edging out of those without money. And when the developers see a commercial opportunity and move in, the process of edging out is often well advanced.

To put the Foundry development in context, Shoreditch has been revived through new activities (artists, web designers, comedy clubs and much more) for well over a decade. So to come in and say a new building will regenerate the area is arrogant tosh. That's when developers become Dementors.

A few years ago Justin O'Connor, now professor of cultural industries at Leeds University, produced an insightful paper for Renew Northwest, the regional 'centre of excellence', on the role of creative industries in regeneration. He describes such activity as a 'complex ecosystem' all too easily disrupted by the grand plans of public agencies or the insensitive actions of developers, who often end up forcing out those who have created the conditions they're seeking to capitalise on.

Renew Northwest, of course, has since been closed down. So in the hope that someone, somewhere will think before letting the Dementors in, I've put the O'Connor paper on Slideshare (see below). It's worth a read.