Commentarii Mathematici Helvetici

We give a local characterization of the existence of Kazhdan projections for arbitary families of Banach space representations of a compactly generated locally compact group $G$. We also define and study a natural generalization of the Fell topology to arbitrary Banach space representations of a locally compact group. We give several applications in terms of stability of rigidity under perturbations. Among them, we show a Banach-space version of the Delorme--Guichardet theorem stating that property (T) and (FH) are equivalent for $\sigma$-compact locally compact groups. Another kind of applications is that many forms of Banach strong property (T) are open in the space of marked groups, and more generally every…