A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates

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Not everybody agrees that councils and housing associations should drive a new wave of housebuilding. There are many who think that changing the planning system and reducing bureaucracy would let private builders produce many more houses and flats. But mainly, Boughton hopes to arm readers with a better understanding of social housing, which could help to "build better, just as we need to build more, in the future". As a social historian, he had grown interested in “the role of local government, which I think is undervalued particularly in the British context”, he says. “Housing is the largest intervention that local councils made.”

Manoochehri, Jamileh (2009). Social policy and housing: reflections of social values – UCL Discovery (PDF) (PhD). University College London. p.413 . Retrieved 18 December 2016. issues and they were slowly persuaded to intervene. It was argued that new private housing was too expensive for most working I did not know until reading it, for example, that the houses familiar to me from friends who moved out into West Essex in our teenage years were an example of the Radburn philosophy in the 1950s: homes that opened onto large greens instead of streets. And how this philosophy faded as the idea of ‘defensible space’ was imported from the US in the 1980s. Most people will want some definitive judgement about how this work[ed], this didn’t and this is what we should be building now,” he says. “But when you see the common sense of one era completely contradicted by the new ideas of the next, that makes you very humble. I think the biggest lesson for me in this is humility. Obviously one wants architects to bring real care and attention to their designs, and planners likewise. But one also has a very powerful sense that they don’t actually determine the success or failure when there is so much going on that is external.Dwellings should be fitted with heating systems that maintain the kitchen and circulation space at 13°C, and the living and dining spaces at 18°C, when the external temperature is -1°C. In this highly illustrated survey, eminent social historian John Boughton, author of Municipal Dreams, examines the remarkable history of social housing in the UK. He presents 100 examples, from the almshouses of the 16th century to Goldsmith Street, the 2019 winner of the RIBA Stirling Prize. Through the various political, aesthetic and ideological changes, the well-being of community and environment demands that good housing for all must prevail.

And despite the initial enthusiasm for right to buy among many working-class people, attitudes grew increasingly divided over the scheme. This is something Joanne relates to. John Boughton is a social historian whose book Municipal Dreams: the Rise and Fall of Council Housing, drawn from his long-running blog Municipal Dreams that charts the history of council estates across the country, was published in 2018. His new book A History of Council Housing in 100 Estates will be published by RIBA Publishing in November. There’s a lot of middle-class concern about how working-class people live their lives,” Mr Boughton says. “A lot of that stuff is well meaning, so you have from the 1930s, and again into the ’50s and ’60s, these various attempts to engineer community. But that almost never works; community arises through the dynamics of the tenants who live there.” Main article: Radburn design housing The Radburn layout. Maisonettes on Teak Avenue, on the St Ann's estate, Nottingham. The facing houses are on Tulip Avenue, Nottingham. The upper houses are accessed from this walkway, while car access is limited to the crossing roads. Modern methods of construction (MMC) also appear to be a misnomer. Mr Boughton visits factory-built estates dating to shortly after World War I, such as the domed, barn-like curved roofs of the Nissen-Petren houses in Yeovil, Somerset, or the ill-fated ‘Boot Estate’ in Liverpool.

Various phases of regeneration have seen its walkways and elevated shopping centre demolished and some of its social rent housing sold off to promote a more mixed and more affluent community."