As I have banged on about incessantly, I live in an ex-RTB flat on a 1950s estate in urban South London. I bought it from about the third owner since it was bought from the council in 1990. Yes there are some problems on the estate with a tiny number of the residents who cause annoyance to the rest. It only takes a small number of people to spill beer down the communal stairs to make them all sticky until the next time the cleaner comes around, for example. Generally because of the good design of the estate and the mixture of homeowners, long-term tenants (some of whom I think have lived on the estate since it was built) and other sensible people we do not suffer from some of the serious issues which we hear about in the news.
Not all post-war housing estates are so carefully designed. The above-pictured building is part of the infamous Heygate Estate just off the Elephant & Castle roundabout. Whoever planned it thought that big was better. All they cared about was the number of cubic metres of housing which could be fitted in to the available area on the ground. If you build a poor environment and then fill it with people who only live there because they have to, you don’t get much pride and stewardship from the residents. I have never been in to a flat in the Heygate Estate but if they are anything like most other council flats they will be perfectly good spaces. But if you cram enough deprivation in to one area what do you expect to happen? The Heygate Estate is due for imminent demolition – it has lasted about forty years.
The Victorians built houses which for the most part are still highly desirable. They built streets which are dense yet liveable. Even with modern computer modelling etc. nobody has found a way to build more densely without going high-rise. It is fair to say that the free market built better housing that the state did. Not because the builders were philanthropic, but because they wanted to build houses that people wanted to live in.
It may not surprise you to learn that I believe that allowing towns and cities to grow organically is far preferable to the strict planning loved by patrician socialists.
The problem is, of course, is that decent housing is expensive to build. Nobody wants people who do the low-paid jobs – which are vital to the functioning of society – to live in squalor. Nobody would suggest allowing shanty-towns to encircle our cities as they do in less wealthy countries. Not many in Britain would advocate the creation of mono-demographic ghettos which result when poor people cannot afford to live in convenient places. So how do we square the circle?
Well for a start we need to let private developers build more housing. The housing shortage will never be solved by social housing as eloquently explained by Raedwald. We need to allow our cities to become more densely populated by allowing developers to build upwards. Parliament can set the minimum standards and let the builders get on with building. We need to change our planning system to allow some of those suburban streets to be re-built. Not every Victorian house needs saving – we can keep the best, we don’t need to preserve the rest.
And for those who will never be able to afford market rents? Instead of trapping people in slum housing for the council’s convenience why don’t we hand them some cash so they can decide where they want to live? Let people decide where suits them best. Let tenants decide on their landlord, not the other way around. Given the freedom of choosing where to live, it is much more likely that people will take pride in their homes, themselves and their communities. By mixing people around we won’t have these sink estates and the problems which go with them.
All we need is a change of mindset.
Hasn’t it been proved that terraced housing is the most dense housing possible as high-rise need a certain amount of space betwen to allow light (planning laws) and so going up is not the answer? Cause they tried that in the 60′s. I was there. Unless your midset change is code for changing planning laws..
I don’t know P, but if it is, then developers would not build anything else surely. In which case you would be happy
Developers did *not* try high-rise in the 60s, the state did. That is my point about social housing. Yes I am proposing a sharp liberalisation of planning laws. I don’t see why land which has already been developed should not generally be re-developed as the owner sees fit.
Cheek by Jowell would make a wonderful headline somewhere.
If you give the poor cash for rent wont they spend it on beer?
If you make them spend it on rent wont that just push up the rental price?
I wish I could share your opinions but I can’t. There will always be those who have no idea how to live properly, nicely and in harmony with their neighbours. Giving them a wad of cash and asking them to choose where to live will mean that wad of cash will be spent on things other than housing vis, fags, booze and puff; and the state will still then have to house them. A growing number actually don’t mind living in ‘sink estates’, it suits them and their lifestyles and officialdom seldom comes calling. There are so many people trapped or imprisioned on huge housing estates and it is really just a small minority who spoil that environment for the many. This needs to be tackled by the criminal justice system, harsh and long sentences so that a new mindset is brought about. There are many families who should be permanently removed from the state housing system and placed in special complexes miles from anywhere…..like prisons. They’ve had chance after chance. I lost count of the times I saw elderly women in Deptford and Rotherhithe sweeping their front steps and the pavement outside. Neat tidy council houses and flats but next door the new generation were busy piling up fridges, bikes, rubbish and god knows what else in the tiny gardens so you knew what the inside was like. inhabited by generally fat, dirty, lazy people who’s only exercise was pushing their card in the slot at the Post Office once a week. Maybe they should stand for Parliament.
There was a mini-series on the Beeb last year about the redevelopment of a tower block in Deptford, bought from lewsiham council by Barratts – stunning river views etc. Snapped up after its makeover, flats cost a fortune PLUS huge maintenance charges and concierge services. Handouts don’t engender respect EVER.
Um I think it was and developers still did what they did. That’s what they do: give us what they want, not what we want. Of course government grants do help the decision process. Buy and sell a few more houses, Blue and you’ll eventually stop asking ‘why on earth did they do that?’. The answer is always: Because it’s cheaper.
I agree with Ranter a lot on this. I’m no fan of high rise blocks and I know that some of them are awful designs, but they are not bad places to live per se – what makes them bad are the people who live there. Up near me in Slough is a large housing estate. Most of the homes are semi or terraced, they are decent sizes with decent gardens and there are plenty of green spaces – but it is notorious. Drugs and crime are rife, unemployment is high – and yet it is next door to one of the largest industrial estates in Europe! It’s not the only estate in Slough like that either – but it is quite probably the most green and open of them all.
I agree with you that the best thing to do is to allow conurbations to develop “organically” – particularly, in my opinion, villages. One of the great icons in this great country of ours is the quintessential English village – none of which were the result of careful planning. I want to see it made easier for private individuals with genuine connections to the locality to buy plots of land and build individual homes rather than lumping great swathes of land together and selling it off to large developers whose only concern is making as much money as they can out of it.