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UNIVERSITY OF HUDDERSFIELD

School of Art, Design and Architecture Department of Architecture THD1055 Tower Blocks, were they doomed to fail?
A Dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for BA (Hons) Architecture (International) By Simon A Lunn U0672158019 The candidate confirms that the work submitted is their own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. April 10 2010

About the Unite de Marseilles, which, opened in 1953, Le Corbusier wrote: -

. and this is the theory upon which the Unites dHabitation de Grandeur Conforme is based: If you want to bring up your family in the peace and seclusion of a real home, in natural conditions (sun, space, greenery), form groups of 2,000 people (men, women and children); go in by a single door; take the four lifts (20 people in each) which will serve the eight, superimposed, internal streets. You will then be alone, you will meet no one, you will be in peace, sunlight and space, and the green world outside will stream in through your window. Your children will play in the grass and in a roof garden.

In 1950 or thereabouts, the President of the Association of Doctors of the Seine (department) had been filling the French press with scares of this sort: Le Corbusier will unleash a mass of lunatics over France by the uproar and confusion (which he advocates). In Marseilles the representative of the Ministry of Town-planning joined in the chorus of alarm. A year later . (peace and seclusion having been demonstrated in practice), was deploring the tragic loneliness.

Le Corbusier (1961). My Work. London: Architectural Press. 139.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Nathan Williams, for listening without complaint to many versions of the content of this dissertation, and for persuading me that it could be finished.

Thank you mother, for taking the time to share your experience of the past 70 years.

Abstract

The Tower blocks built in the 1960s and 70s are a common feature in most of our major towns and cities; but were they always doomed to fail?

As a result of the migration of large numbers of people from the countryside into the towns and cities during the industrial revolution the 19th century saw a huge increase in the urban population, many people lived in abject poverty in overcrowded and disease-ridden slums.

In response to the sever shortage of decent housing, the new century saw visionaries like Le Corbusier, develop a completely new type of architecture. Modernism promised a brave new world, with gleaming cities in the sky, which would solve the problems of our cities.

Following the slaughter of the First World War the cry houses for heros (for the men returning from the war) resounded throughout the political spectrum and descent housing for the working classes became a priority for the first time in our history. The Utopian ideas of the modernists captured the imagination of the politicians, planners and architects and building started on an unprecedented scale.

However these ideals were never truly realised as due to cost cutting and increased pressure from politicians to build more homes more quickly to combat the growing housing shortage, quantity took priority over quality.

The huge sterile Tower Blocks, which were built to replace the Victorian slums, now, cleared, failed to deliver the promised Utopia and soon a malaise afflicted these mighty towers.

The isolation and loneliness felt many residents and the increasing crime, which plagued the estates, begged the question, were the Tower Blocks doomed to failure. In this dissertation I aim to find out.

Contents

List of Illustrations Introduction Chapter One: Housing for heros Chapter Two: Utopia, a brave new world Chapter Three: Give the people homes Chapter Four: The death of Utopia Summery and conclusions Bibliography Appendix 1: New Construction Methods: Reinforced Concrete and Prefabrication Appendix 2: Living in working class housing from 1937. Interview with a resident.

7 8 11 25 36 44 53 55 61 69

List of Illustrations

Page 12: 14 15 30 31 32 32 33 35 35 38 39 41 44 48 Fig 1. Slums off Boundary Street, Shoreditch, in 1890. Anon. (2008). Fig 2. The Boundary Estate London. Haines, G. (2008). Fig 3. Too poor to buy second hand clothes, Roberts, R (1972). Fig 4. Freehold Maisonettes, Le Corbusier (1946). Fig 5. Freehold Maisonettes : The Hanging Gardens, Le Corbusier (1946). Fig 6. Freehold Maisonettes, Le Corbusier (1946). Fig 7. Blocks of dwellings on the cellular or Honeycomb system, Le Corbusier, 1887-1965., Etchells, F (1971). Fig 8. A Contemporary City, Le Corbusier, 1887-1965., Etchells, F (1971). Fig 9. Le Corbusier: Unite dHabitation Marseilles: West Entrance, Jenkins, D (1993). Fig 10. Le Corbusier: Unite dHabitation Sketch: West Entrance, Jenkins, D (1993). Fig 11. Royston Area A, Glasgow: existing buildings prior to clearance in 1960, Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994). Fig 12. Royston Area A: the same view eight months later, Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994). Fig 13. Ardler Phase I Development, built between 1964-66 Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994). Fig 14. Tomorrows Slums, (Surveyor 11-12-1970) Cited in Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994). Fig 15. Park Hill Part Two, (Hyde Park) development, Sheffield Built in 1962-66, Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994).

Introduction

During my lifetime, I have seen the demolition of many of the 1960s and 1970s tower blocks, which were built in my childhood to solve the shortage of affordable housing. These Utopian high-rise estates, fell into decay during my adolescence and were often condemned as being unfit for habitation and pulled down in my early adulthood.

Many of the estates that remain are plagued with drug dealers, violent crime and antisocial behaviour, which leaves many residents feeling, isolated and trapped in their flats, fearful to go out after dark and who feel unable to keep their kids safe.

Aim and scope of the research The aim of this dissertation is to prove or disprove the assertion that large groups of people living on top of each other in huge anonymous high-rise housing schemes, is an unnatural way to live, which stifles individuality and the natural human instinct to stake a claim on and have control over the immediate environment in which people live.

I will explore why the tower blocks were built. What were the social circumstances and political climate of the time? What were the condition in the Victorian slums that persisted in our towns and cities and what was the political climate which, refused to accept the continuation of those conditions and led to the prioritisation of social housing in a way never seen before and the clearance of the slums to make way for the new Modernist Utopian estates.

I will look at the Utopian ideas of Le Corbusier, which heavily influenced the avant-garde modernist architectural community, which captured the imagination of the planners and housing departments of the time.

I will discuss the research that has been done in particular by Oscar Newman, in the US and more recently, the work of the Land Use Research Unit of Kings College London, which does seem to explain some of the route causes of the many problems that beset these estates.

Methodology I will extensively read published academic works and supplement this academic research with more anecdotal opinions from family members who have first hand experience of living and working in various types of UK council housing and their views, from of what direction social housing should take for the future.

Objective The objective of this research is to be able to answer the question are Tower Blocks doomed to failure and if so make suggestions of housing types which are likely to succeed, in providing the safe stimulating environment, in which to build community and rear children equipped for adulthood, that people want, an environment often sadly lacking from many of the large social housing schemes of the 1950s 60s and 70s.

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Chapter One: Housing for heros

The tragedy was that in the most opulent country in the world, so many possessed so little.
Roberts, R (1972,p25).

The Slums During the 18th and 19th centuries, Britain underwent massive change as it moved from a mainly rural agricultural economy, to a highly mechanised industrial power.

Throughout this Industrial Revolution, large numbers of the rural poor who had traditionally worked the land and lived in tied cottages, or worked in small rural cottage industries, migrated into the towns and cities hoping to escape the poverty of the countryside and find a better life working in the new mills and factories in the booming industrial cities.

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The existing housing stock in the towns and cities was quickly overwhelmed by the shear numbers of migrants, resulting in chronic overcrowding, poor sanitation and the disease that inevitably follows. Speculative developers, built on any open ground, furthering the overcrowding in the already overcrowded Slums, exacerbated these conditions.

A VIVID description of a slum neighborhood in the East End of Victorian London at Friars Mount, known as the Nichol, was nothing but one painful and monotonous round of vice, filth, and poverty, huddled in dark cellars, ruined garrets, bare and blackened rooms, reeking with disease and death, and without the means for the most ordinary observations of decency or cleanliness.
Haines, G. (2008). Fig 1. Slums off Boundary Street, Shoreditch, in 1890

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This underclass was a source of cheap labour and services for the affluent middle and upper classes and the slum landlords made huge profits from the rents of the hovels the poor had to live in. It was simply not in their interests to change the status quo.

.there was little profit to be made by improving things. Much of the housing was owned by churchmen and peers of the realm, and they had a vested interest in maintaining the status quo. These 'vampyres of the poor', as one contemporary newspaper called them, were sitting on some of the most profitable property in London - making returns on their investment of up to 150 per cent. In fact, hardly anybody in the Old Nichol even knew who their landlords were. They acted through lawyers, themselves shadowy figures, and the whole system was ratified by the Bethnal Green Vestry, a squad of venal councillors who operated as the local authority. These Vestrymen blocked repeated attempts by politicians, from the 1850s on, to have the whole slum demolished.
Hudson, C. (2008).

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Between 1893 and 1896 under new powers councils had to clear slum areas granted by the Housing for the Working Classes

Act passed in 1890, the new London County Council (LCC) eventually demolished the Old Nichol slum and built the new
Boundary street estate. This was Londons first council estate, and was designed by notable architect Owen Fleming, in the popular Queen Anne style. (Fig 2).

Fleming, who was sympathetic to the living conditions of the working class, having, lived for many years in a workers tenement in nearby Stepney Green, designed the Boundary Estate to be a break from the usual monotony of terraced housing.

He created a series of 23 housing blocks that lined seven wide avenues

Fig 2 The Boundary Estate London

radiating out from the central Arnold circus with its communal leisure space and public bandstand. This revolutionary design, which incorporated a communal laundry, bakery, 188 shops and 77 industrial workshops would also have two things not experienced in the old Nichol, fresh air and sunlight.

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Unfortunately, for the Nichols 5700 evicted inhabitants, only 11 were able to afford the rents of a flat on the new estate. The rest were moved to neighboring streets, making the adjoining slums even worse. Haines, G. (2008).

In Salford, near the northern industrial powerhouse of Manchester, condition for the growing numbers of urban poor was no different. The working classes lived in rows of back to back terraced houses rented from private landlords, with rents varying from 2s 6d for a back to back to 4s 6d for a two up and two down house. Roberts (1972), These homes often shared a standpipe in the communal yard for water supply and outside earth closet toilets.

Unfortunately for the working class inhabitants of the slums, right up to the out break of the first world war in 1914, wages were kept at not much above starvation levels, some couldnt even afford to buy from the Fig 3. Too poor to buy second hand clothes

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second hand clothes dealer (Fig 3), a strict class system kept people in their place and the penal system made sure the poor were suitably deferential to any authority. Know your place Within the working class, there was also a strict cast system, in operation, which was perpetuated and enforced by the working classes themselves. On the topic of the social hierarchy in the slums of Salford, Roberts (1972, p.5) states:

.: the many looked upon social and economic inequality as the law of nature. Division in our society ranged from the elite at the peak, composed of the leading families, through recognized strata to a social base whose members one dammed as the lowest of the low, or simply no class.

At the top of the tree were the people with a little capital who had managed to go into business; shopkeepers, publicans and skilled tradesmen (time served skilled workers, who had served seven-years as apprentices, learning their trade), were the social and economic elite of the working class. Then came the semi-skilled workers, usually in regular, full time employment and then the various grades of unskilled laborers who were paid far less and whose employment was so unstable that they

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always lived in fear of falling to the lowest of the low, that of the pauper, those so destitute, either through unemployment, ill health of simply old age that they were forced to the Workhouse. Roberts (1972), The bottom of the pile: The Workhouse There have been poor laws dating back to the 13th century, which dealt with the control off beggars and relief of the poor of the parish. In 1601 during the reign of Elizabeth I, an act came into force that compelled, parishes to; -

.provide relief for the aged and the helpless, to bring up unprotected children in habits of industry, and to provide work for those capable of it but who were lacking their usual trade.

The 1601 Act empowered parish overseers to raise money for poor relief from the inhabitants of the parish, according to their ability to pay. The poor-rate was originally a form of local income tax, but over time evolved into the rating system a property tax based on the value of real estate. Higginbotham, (2005). This was the forerunner of todays Council Tax.

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This poor relief was often distributed to the poor in their own homes in the form of money, food, clothes, firewood etc, and the poor houses that were built were not intended to punish the poor, but provide help for those who through misfortune were unable to help themselves.

In 1834 following a Royal Commission, the Poor Laws were significantly amendment. Among the changes, relief was now only to be given to able-bodied paupers if they entered the workhouse.

New Union workhouse buildings were built throughout the country, which were specially designed to segregate the different categories of inmate. Although the workhouses were not prisons, and inmates were free to leave, conditions in these institutions were deliberately harsh.

In describing the mindset of those charged with running the workhouses and the 19th century attitude to the poor in general, which prevailed well into the 20th century, Roberts (1972), states that; -

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.living conditions in the Unions must deliberately be made less eligible that is, more wretched than those suffered by the lowest paid worker outside.

He continues by quoting an unnamed inspirer of the workhouse system; -

.having all relief through the workhouse an uninviting place of wholesome restraint, preventing any of its inmates from going out, or receiving visitors without a written note to that effect from one of the overseers, disallowing beer and tobacco and finding them work according to their ability: Thus making the parish fund the last resource of a pauper, and rendering the person who administers the relief the hardest taskmaster and the worst paymaster that the idle and dissolute can apply to.

Robertss points out that this enthusiastic proponent of the punitive workhouse system clearly felt that poverty was a crime which should be sternly punished. The fact that most people forced into the workhouse, were honest, hardworking men and women driven to destitution through lack of work, illness or old age, seems to have escaped him. Roberts (1972).

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The first old age pension was not introduced until 1909 for those over 70, but this was withheld from anyone who had claimed poor relief, effectively trapping the aged poor in the Workhouse. This restriction was relaxed in 1911 and limited unemployment and health insurance was introduced. Higginbotham, (2005).

Having to go to the workhouse was the ultimate disgrace, the bottom of the social pile. It really was the last resort for; -

.those desperate enough to face entering the repugnant conditions of the workhouse. If an able-bodied man entered the workhouse, his whole family had to enter with him. Higginbotham, (2005).

The Workhouses were cruel places, the most destitute in society those who had given up all hope in the world, became inmates of the Union Workhouse, where in return for breaking half a ton of stones, they earned .a breakfast, which

consisted of six ounces of bread, margarine and one pint of skilly. For dinner one got six ounces of bread, tea and an ounce of cheese. Roberts (1972, p.53).
Skilly is a thin porridge or soup (usually oats and water flavoured with meat) (Source 118118 (2010)).

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Crime and Punishment Those who refused (or were unable) to do the work set by the overseers were severely punished including, only bread and water to eat for a week or even being sent to gaol.

In his book the Classic Slum, Roberts tells us that the governor of Canterbury gaol was perturbed by some of the prisoners sent to him for workhouse offences. One he said, aged 62, was partially paralysed in his right hand and could not do the work, another who had recently undergone surgery, was committed to prison for refusing to break rocks, his wound had not healed and required frequent dressing whilst in prison.

The prisons were full of people sent to gaol for the most trivial offences, and often for non-payment of fines, for offences that wouldnt in themselves have warranted a gaol sentence.

In the years ended 1908 09 an average of 177,500 men, women and children were summarily convicted and sent to gaol for minor offences.

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.In a little over four years, one young villain, clearly heading for a life of crime, had acquired forty-one convictions and been sent to prison on no fewer than thirty occasions:. Roberts continues .he was gaoled or fined seventeen times for playing pitch and toss, fourteen times for card-playing in the street and twice for playing football.

Roberts quotes the governor of Pentonville prison as saying in 1913 It is pitiful to have to have to record that so many lads

continue to be sent to prison for what one in all charity must call trivial offences. From a utilitarian point of view it seems little short of insanity to sit still and make no effort to check this pitiful waste of human life. Roberts (1972, p.50).

The unskilled workers and their families, who toiled in the factories and mills of our great industrial cities in the first quarter of the 20th century, made up 50 percent of the population. At the end of the Edwardian period, an adult male industrial worker earned 75.00 per year; the average annual salary of a man in the middle class proper was 340.00. Although a few men did managed to overcome the financial and class barriers before them and rise to the ranks of lower middle class, and women sometimes did marry above their station, most were born into poverty and died in poverty. This grossly unequal society prevailed unchallenged for generations; however, with the out break of the First World War things began to change.

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World War I As large numbers of men answered the call to fight for king and Country, and the casualties mounted, shortages of skilled men in the better paid, important industries, (engineering, manufacturing etc) allowed unskilled casual laborers, semi skilled men and women to fill the vacuum.

.well before the end of hostilities, observers noted that nearly all the unemployables had got jobs of some sort, taking over mostly part-time and casual tasks, whilst former casuals found regular work. All thereby aquired new abilities and status. For the first time ever, they had money in their pockets all week.
Roberts (1972, p.164-165).

The 1914 Criminal Justice Administration Act, which among other things gave people time to pay fines and banned prison sentences of 5 days and under, which had previously been extensively used for the most trivial offences, resulted in a massive fall in the number of people sent to prison. In the year 1919-20 the number of people sent to prison had fallen by 74% from the pre-war 1913 level. Roberts (1972).

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A Country fit for heros By the end of the First World War in November 1918, society had changed, the prime of British manhood lay dead in foreign

fields Roberts (1972).

In Britain, there was a new social attitude; the strict cast system, which had divided the working classes, was disappearing and the masses of soldiers returning from the war focused the Governments attention on the chronic shortage of affordable housing.

Following the 1918 General election, Lloyd George famously proclaimed that: -

he wanted 'to make Britain a fit country for heroes to live in', and there must be good quality housing for the working classes.
anon. (2004). For the first time in history, providing descent affordable housing for the working classes became a real priority.

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Chapter Two: Utopia, a brave new world

Vast airy and sunlit spaces on which all windows would open. Gardens and playgrounds around the buildings. Simple facades with immense bays give play of light and shade, and a feeling of richness is achieved by the scale of the main lines of the design and by the vegetation seen against the geometrical background of the faades.

Le Corbusier (1946, p60).

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Charles-douard Jeanneret-Gris, who later chose to be known, as Le Corbusier born in Switzerland in 1887 was probably the most influential of the early 20th century architects.

In 1907 he worked in Paris in the office of August Perret, who was a pioneer in the use of reinforced concrete, a material Le Corbusier used extensively in his own buildings throughout his long career.

In Paris he witnessed the squalor of the growing Paris slums, which had all of the problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation crime and disease, which afflicted most of the industrial towns and cities of Europe.

In 1924 Le Corbusier wrote Urbanism, which in 1929 was translated into English under the title The City of Tomorrow. In Urbanism, he explains his vision of how to plan a modern city to accommodate the ever-increasing population, the increased traffic from automobiles, how to introduce green spaces (the lungs of the city) and provide accommodation for the workers with convenient access to the commercial district in the centre of the city where they would work.

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In this book Le Corbusier states: In a mere hundred years the population of the great city has increased at an incredible rate. 1800. Paris London Berlin New York 647,000 800,000 182,000 60,000 1880. 2,200,000 3,800,000 1,840,000 2,800,000 1910. 3,000,000 7,200,000 3,400,000 4,500,000

Le Corbusier, 1887-1965., Etchells, F (1971, p96).

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A machine for living Le Corbusier (1971) wrote; -

A great epoch has begun. There exists a new spirit. Industry, overwhelming us like a flood, which rolls on towards its destined ends, has furnished us with new tools adapted to this new epoch, animated by the new spirit.

The problem of the house is a problem of the epoch. The equilibrium of society today depends on it. Architecture has for its first duty, in this period of renewal, that of bringing about a revision of values, a revision of the constituent elements of the house.

Mass-production is based on analysis and experiment. Industry on the grand scale must occupy its self with building and establish the elements of the house on a mass-production basis. We must create the mass-production spirit. The spirit of constructing mass-production houses. The spirit of living in mass-production houses. The spirit of conceiving mass production houses.

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If we eliminate from our hearts and minds all dead concepts in regard to the house, and look at the question from a critical and objective point of view, we shall arrive at the House-Machine, the mass-production house, healthy (and morally so too) and beautiful in the same way that the working tools and instruments which accompany our existence are beautiful.

Le Corbusier, 1887-1965., Etchells, F (1971, p96,p12-13).

Le Corbusier believed that in this new machine age the past was dead and a new approach was needed to solve the housing problem and that modern materials and mass production techniques, as epitomised by Henry Ford in the automobile industry and others, could and should be applied to architecture.

Mass production could be used to create a new architecture, for the machine age. Built with perfect standardized components, free from ornament, their beauty derived from the perfect performance of their function and the purity of their line.

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The cellular system

Fig 4, Freehold Maisonettes

In his Immeubles Villas plan of 1922, Le Corbusier demonstrated his belief that a standardized home could be created using mass-produced components that met the every need of the inhabitant. These cells, which could be stacked one on top of the other to form huge blocks, standing well apart in beautiful parkland. Towering way above the smells and fumes of the city street, all would enjoy fresh clean air and be bathed in natural light.

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Each maisonnette is affectively a twostorey house, with a double height living room, a modern well-equipped kitchen, a number of bedrooms depending on the size of family who would occupy it and a modern bathroom. Each house was

separated from its neighbour by its own individual private garden terrace with views from every window of the parkland that surrounded the buildings. Fig 5, Freehold Maisonettes; The Hanging Gardens

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Fig 6, Freehold Maisonettes: Blocks of dwellings on the cellular or Honeycomb system Fig 7.

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People would live in hygienic, regimented high-rise towers, set far apart in a park like landscape. This rational city would be separated into discrete zones for working, living and leisure. Above all, everything should be done on a big scale big buildings, big open spaces, big urban highways.
Rybczynski, W. (1998).

Fig 8. A Contemporary City

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The great park at the foot of the block of flats where the residents can mix and take their exercise is equipped with football pitches, tennis courts, childrens play areas, lawns trees and open spaces for other games.

The roof space so often wasted would be put to good use. There would be a 1000-yard track where residents could run in the

fresh air, a gymnasium where instructors would direct parents as well as children. Le Corbusier, 1887-1965., Etchells, F
(1971,p216). Le Corbusier also envisioned open air roof top sun parlours, which have proved so successful in the United States in

combating tuberculosis. Le Corbusier, 1887-1965., Etchells, F (1971,p216).

A treatment for tuberculosis (TB) was being developed at the Pasteur Institute in France between 1905 and 1921 Bonah,C.
(2005,p696-721). Mass vaccination using BCG did not start until after the Second World War Comstock,G. (1994, 528-540).

Le Corbusier wrote this in the 1920s when the usual treatment for TB was isolation in a sanitarium and fresh air.

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Fig 10.

It

was

25

years

before

Le

Corbusier got his chance to put his ideas into practice, when he got the commission to build the first of his Unite dHabitation in Marseilles. Fig 9. Le Corbusier: Unite dHabitation Marseilles: West Entrance

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Chapter Three: Give the people homes

To someone coming out of the slums of the Gorbals or Leith-and I was borne in a tenement in Leith-the idea of going into a house with a bathroom, a proper kitchen, hot water-it was the millennium for them, it was their dream, and it didnt matter a damm to them if it was a multi storey block or a cottage-they wanted as many dwellings as quickly as possible!

R.D.Cramond,(1988) - Cited Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994).

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World War II In 1930 a Slum Clearance Act was passed giving more power to Local Authorities to Compulsorily purchase and build to let. During the 1930s, large areas of old housing were designated as 'Slum Clearance Areas. Whitehead, J. (2010). This paved the way for the replacement of the huge numbers of substandard house that existed in out towns and cities.

Coming out of years of austerity following the devastation and shortages of the Second World War, the cry Give the people homes! rang out in the housing authorities, the length and breadth of the land. From the 1950s onwards there was an urgent push to clear away the old 19th century slums and replace them with clean modern, homes, with all the mod cons that this new age of optimism promised.

I remember an endless stream of older women coming to the office around 1957-9, all with the same question: Whens ma house comin down? They just couldnt get out of the condemned houses fast enough!

Ian M. T. Samuel, 1990 Cited Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994,p220).

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Although over a million council houses, had been built between the wars, mainly three bedroom family homes on the new estates that surrounded our towns and cities, there was still a critical shortage of descent affordable housing, particularly in the inner cities, which were home to the very worst slums and had been decimated by wartime bombing. This was the perfect opportunity to put into practice the theories of the avant-garde architectural community and replace the bombed out wastelands and inner city slums (Fig 11.) with new modernist Utopian cites in the sky (Fig12.).

Fig 11. Royston Area A, Glasgow: existing buildings prior to clearance in January 1960 (Wimpey)

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Fig 12. Royston Area A: the same view eight months later, with three 20-storey Wimpey point blocks under construction. (Wimpey)

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In 1940s the town planners became more and more powerful and armed with the Town and Country Planning act, which gave them the power to control exactly what could be built on every bit of land in the country. Local authorities were required to designate a green belt around their cities where development was to be severely restricted. As a consequence the amount of available building land became more and more scarce. Therefore in order to provide the number of new homes needed to solve the acute housing problem, the logical solution was to build upwards. Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994).

There was some debate as to the merits of very high point blocks, in the UK towers of up to 30 storeys were built and slab blocks, which were not as high but were very long, sometimes several slab blocks were connected, with elevated walkways, (streets in the sky) creating inter-connected housing complexes with several thousand flats.

The relative merits of point block v slab block is not that important in this dissertation as in either case large numbers of new modern flats could and were built very quickly. However, there was a system of Government subsidies that increased in direct correlation to building height, which tended to favour the high point blocks.

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There was also a perceived benefit of increased light and air of the point block, surrounded by parkland.

Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994,p61). States In Jensens later book of 1966, High

Density Living, the point block remains his main choice, and he reiterates that the surrounding parks will give unique sense of freedom.

Fig 13. The six 17-storey blocks of Dundee Corporations Ardler Phase I Development, built between 1964-66 photographed in 1988 (RCAHMS)

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Quantity or quality The success and extent of the slum clearance program actually worsened the housing shortage, as there were now fewer properties available for rent. This brought into sharp focus the lengthening council housing waiting lists and put added pressure on the local authorities to increase production or new homes. The declaration at the Conservative party conference of 1963 that 400,000 new homes were to be built each year in all parts of Great Britain, put further political pressure on the councils to step up production. Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994,p183-184).

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Prefabrication These revolutionary new buildings needed equally revolutionary construction techniques, e.g. The Picton Street scheme in the London Borough of Southwark, was described as; -

Perhaps the most rationalised yetby maximising the use of pre-casting Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994,p80).

The majority of the components except the cross walls, which were poured in situ, were pre fabricated on site, this ensured high level of standardization, which reduced cost, complexity and build time. Many pre cast components could simply be lifted into place by the on site tower crane. (See Appendix 1)

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Chapter Four: The death of Utopia

The none place is the opposite of utopia: it exists, and it does not contain any organic society.
Aug M (2008,p90).

If non-places (airports, service stations, railway stations, etc) have many people who are anonymous, simply in transit, not interacting with anyone, are the passages, lifts and foyers of high rise apartment blocks also non-places, devoid of any organic society, populated by anonymous people in transit to their individual private space, their flats? If so is an apartment complex inevitably a nonplace, devoid of any sense of place and therefore any sense of Fig 14. community?

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This begs the question, if large parts of a tower block are indeed no-places, if we built still more high-rise housing complexes, are we in danger of eroding communities and damaging society?

The shinning towers envisioned by Le Corbusier, and built on mass by the local authorities all over the UK, soon lost their lustre as the vandals started to take their toll on these cites in the sky.

I remember going round the Heygate Estate in Southwark on the opening day. I went to the highest flat in the highest block, and there was an old lady there, who had ribbons all over her kitchen taps. I asked her why, and she said Its the first tap Ive ever had in my life! Previously in Queens Buildings, shed had to share one with five other families! It gave her a great deal of happiness a lovely flat with its own toilet, bathroom, it all looked fine on paper. A year later she came to me and begged me to get her rehoused vandals had broken the lifts, muggings had started, she was virtually a prisoner in her own flat!

Lord Mellish, 1989 Cited in Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994,p319).

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What went wrong? The high hopes of the designers, planners and tenants, who were all so enthusiastic at the outset of this great social experiment, all too quickly turned to disappointment and then dismay as the Utopian dream turned sour.

Those charged with the management of these estates soon realised something was badly wrong. Time and again, flagship developments, designed to free the ordinary working classes from the squalor of the slums quickly deteriorated and often became the new slums.

The public spaces became strewn with litter, defaced with graffiti, dirtied with urine and worse. The lifts were repeatedly vandalised, and residents live in fear or the gangs and drug dealers who have taken over the communal areas.

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Management Policy Andrew Balderstone, a resident of John Russell Court, a 20 storey point block in Edinburghs Cooper Street development, Leith, had this to say about the decline in his building: -

It wasnt anything to do with the block itself, really, it was a change in the kind of people who lived there, and how they behaved. When we first went in, we were introduced to the caretaker, a retired seaman. He was very enthusiastic about his job. And for the first five or ten years things were really great, everybody kept the block spotless, you were really proud of having such a nice new house..The problems only started after about five or ten years, when they started putting a different kind of tenant in..theyd come in steaming, well after midnight, loud music straight away, shouting the odds, then
crash, thats all their plates on the floor Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994,p323).

Soon there were a few more families in the block disrupting the lives of everyone else. The housing management had the idea that if they put problem families, in amongst descent people, it would raise the standard of their behavior. However, the opposite is usually the case.

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Referring to the Park Hill development in Sheffield, in 1966, the then Housing Development Committee Chairman, Harold Lambert said-

If you get one or two families in there, that were not

prepared to toe the line, its like putting the proverbial bad apple in the barrel!

Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994,p320).

Fig 15. Park Hill Part Two (Hyde Park) development, Sheffield Built in 1962-66

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Poor build quality The effect on tenants of antisocial behaviour was exacerbated by extremely poor sound proofing, between the flats: -

Thats the only flat I have lived in and I wouldnt live in another and Ill tell you why, because you could hear every noise from the flat above and below you. If you got a noisy neighbour god help you. If next door had the telly on loud you could hear it, if someone went to the loo in the middle of the night, you could hear it. My next-door neighbour could tell when I went to bed, as she would hear me switching off all the sockets.

I could hear when the old lady above me went to the toilet and when she died I got the hound of the Baskervilles above me. They mustnt have had any carpets as I could hear its feet on the floor. When it was left from 8 till midnight every Friday night it howled.(See Appendix 2)

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Defensible Space Large social housing complexes, in particular high rise apartment blocks were often designed to have large communal spaces around the building and shared access, to many apartments in fact the idea of cities in the sky surrounded by parkland was key to many of the Utopian Modernist schemes.

The problems of, litter, graffiti, vandalism, fouling by urine and the loss of control of these communal areas to gangs and criminals has been seen throughout the world, where ever, high rise, high density social housing projects have been tried.

Oscar Newman an architect and town planning consultant, has done extensive research into buildings, which tend to suffer higher instances of this antisocial behaviour.

He has identified a number of key factors, which make a building more venerable, however, when these vulnerabilities are addressed he has had some success in reclaiming control of the public space in these projects.

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The effect of building type on behaviour Research has shown that there is a direct correlation between the number of people who share an area, be that outside space or an internal corridor and their feeling of ownership. The more people share, the less an individual feels a sense or ownership or responsibility for the behaviour that takes place in that space. Therefore if too many people have access to a space, no one feels empowered to take control of that space or challenge other peoples behaviour.

Some high-rise housing estates have external public spaces and internal circulation spaces serving many hundreds or even thousands of homes. Therefore it is virtually impossible for any resident to feel they have ownership or responsibility for the public space beyond their front door.

The result is that no one agrees what is acceptable behaviour and antisocial behaviour is common and the criminals feel free to loiter unchallenged. Newman, O (1996).

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The other key factor found by Newman and Alice Coleman of the Land Use Research Unit of Kings College London, is that the observability of a space, i.e. is it easily observed, or hidden from view. If a space is easily observed antisocial or criminal behaviour is diminished. If the space is hidden, the criminal or vandal is free to do as he pleases unobserved. Coleman, A (1985).

Mrs. Lunn when describing her work as a caretaker in a block of flats explained; -

When I had just cleaned it they would walk through and drop their sweet papers and match boxes on the floor, especially in the lift because they couldnt be seen doing what they were doing.

I was lucky I wasnt in a high rise flat, swan court was only 6 stories, because in the high rise flats they pee in the lifts and you cant get rid of the smell, chewing gum is a bugger to get off. People would see that you have just cleaned and then throw their rubbish down anyway. The flats are worse now as they dont have caretakers so no one is responsible.

(See Appendix 2)

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Summary and Conclusions


From the research I have done to prepare this dissertation, I have come to the conclusion that, the modernist high rise Utopian dream that promised so much was fatally flawed. The ideas of people like Le Corbusier, that building huge, modular towers, bathed in light and fresh air and surrounded by parkland was well intentioned and did appear to provide a solution to a major housing shortage. These ideas when compared with the squalor of the Victorian slums, which lacked basic sanitation, made perfect sense at the time.

The construction methods developed were indeed efficient, however, research has shown that these schemes, denied the majority of residents their little piece of earth with which to express their individuality and call their own.

The sheer size of many of the estates meant that the majority of residents were completely anonymous, to each other, ships that did pass in the night. The vandals and criminals have taken over; people are often prisoners in their flats. A tower block is a non-place devoid of organic society.

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What should we build? All of the evidence I have gathered suggests that the best environment in which to bring up children equipped for the future is in a house, with its own garden and its own entrance, which is not shared. The best building type for an old person is a bungalow, with a small garden.

Social housing schemes should be based on houses and bungalows and designed to incorporate the principles of Defensible Space, however this alone is not enough. There must also be a clear and strong management system in place that ensures that the equilibrium of the whole is not disturbed by the refusal of the few to abide by the commonly accepted rules of civilised behaviour.

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Bibliography

Books

Aug M (2008). Non-places. London: Verso Broto, C (2006). Today's apartment architecture. Barcelona: Links. Broto, C (2008). Urban apartment blocks. Barcelona: Links. Coleman, A (1985). Utopia on trial: vision and reality in planned housing. London: Hilary Shipman. French, H (2008). Key Urban Housing of the Twentieth Century: Plans, sections and elevations. London: Laurence King. Gann, D et al (1999). Flexibility and choice in housing. Bristol: The Policy Press, University of Bristol. Glendinning, M & Muthesius, S (1994). Tower Block Modern Public Housing in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. London: Yale University Press. Jenkins, D (1993). Unite d Habitation Marseilles: Le Corbusier. London: Phaidon Press.

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Le Corbusier (1946). Towards a new architecture. 2nd ed. London: The Architectural Press. Le Corbusier (1961). My Work. London: Architectural Press. Le Corbusier, 1887-1965., Etchells, F (1971). The city of tomorrow and its planning; translated from the 8th French edition of

'Urbanisme' by Frederick Etchells. 3rd ed. London: The Architectural Press.


Le Corbusier (2000). The modulor: a harmonious measure to the human scale, universally applicable to architecture and

mechanics. Basel; Boston: Birkhser.


Losantos, and Caizares, A (2007). Highrises: social living. Barcelona: loft. Mackay, D (1977). Multiple family housing: from aggregation to integration. Stuttgart: Verlag Gerd Hatje. Mostaedi, A (2003). Apartment architecture now: residential developments. Barcelona: Links. Newman, O (1996). Creating defensible space. Darby: Diane. Roberts, R (1972). The Classic Slum: Salford life in the first quarter of the century. 2nd ed. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

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Saint, A (1996). Park Hill: What next? London: The Architectural Association. Sutcliffe, A (1974). Multi-storey living: the British working-class experience. London: Croom Helm. Dissertations

Gawthorpe, T. 2009. Design out crime: Crime prevention through environmental design. Is it the way forward? . BA (Hons): University of Huddersfield. Heywood, S. 2008. Mind the gaps: a critical history of public space in social housing schemes. BA (Hons): University of Huddersfield. Web Sites

Anon. (2004). Slums. Available: http://www.le.ac.uk/emoha/community/resources/braunstone/slums.html. Last accessed 01 Apr 2010. Anon. (2008). Inside the skin of a slum. Available: http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/uploads/images/Off%20Boundary%20Street_P20%231%23.jpg. Last accessed 10 April 2010.

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Anon. (2008b). 13 million to buy unsold homes for affordable housing. Available: http://www.communities.gov.uk/news/corporate/997340. Last accessed 31 March 2010. Anon. (2008c). The History of Council Housing. Available: http://environment.uwe.ac.uk/video/cd_new_demo/conweb/house_ages/council_housing/print.htm. . Last accessed 30 March 2010. Birch, J. (2009). Unsold story. Available: http://www.insidehousing.co.uk/StoryBlog.aspx?storycode=6503479. Last accessed 30 March 2010. Carey, J. (2008). The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum by Sarah Wise The Sunday Times review. Available: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/book_reviews/article4164526.ece. Last accessed 02 April 2010 Gordon,T. (2009). Government 200m plan to buy unsold homes for council housing. Available: http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/politics/government-200m-plan-to-buy-unsold-homes-for-council-housing-1.933551. Last accessed 01 April 2010. Haines, G. (2008). BOUNDARY OF OLD NICHOL'S VICE, FILTH & DEATH. Available: http://www.eastlondonadvertiser.co.uk/content/towerhamlets/adverladownmemorylane&itemid=WeED24%20Jul%202008%

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2020%3A47%3A17%3A813. Last accessed 02 April 2010. Higginbotham, P. (2005). The Workhouse. Available: http://www.workhouses.org.uk/. Last accessed 28 March 2010. Hudson, C. (2008). It was the worst slum in Victorian Britain. Yet its crime-ridden streets were SAFER than todays. Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1033919/It-worst-slum-Victorian-Britain-Yet-crime-ridden-streets-SAFER-todays.html. Last accessed 02 April 2010. Paice, L. (2008). Overspill Policy and the Glasgow Slum Clearance Project in the Twentieth Century: From One Nightmare to

Another? Available: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/rsw/undergrad/cetl/ejournal/issues/volume1issue1/paice.


Last accessed 30 March 2010. Rybczynski, W. (1998). Le Corbusier. Available: http://205.188.238.181/time/time100/artists/profile/lecorbusier.html. Last accessed 09 April 2010. Whitehead, J. (2010). The Slum Clearance Movement in the Nineteen Thirties. Available: http://www.locallocalhistory.co.uk/municipal-housing/slum-cleance/index.htm. Last accessed 30 March 2010.

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Journals

Comstock,G. (1994, 528-540). The international tuberculosis campaign: a pioneering venture in mass vaccination and research. Clin Infect Dis. 19 (3). Bonah,C. (2005). The 'experimental stable' of the BCG vaccine: safety, efficiency, proof, and standards, 1021-1933 . Stud His

Philos Biol Biomed Sci . 36 (4).

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Appendix 1: New Construction Methods: Reinforced Concrete and Prefabrication

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Appendix 2: Living in working class housing from 1937. An Interview with a resident:
My mother was born in 1905 and was in service from about 12 years old until getting married in 1923; she died in 1939 aged just 34. Up until the Second World War women stayed at home to look after the children. In the war when the men were away the woman had to take there place in the factories and driving buses etc. I was born in 1937, one of 7 children my mother died having her 8th child.

Q. Where did you live?


Up until 1946 I lived in Lucan Dublin. I lived in a house with an outside toilet, no bathroom, and no hot water. It had a big living kitchen that has a big range and a bread oven and water heater running off peat. There was no other heating in the house; it was like a bloody fridge. We had a front room that was let off to a couple.

Q. So a couple lived in one room?


Yes that was quite common. When electricity was available we paid to have it installed, even though it was rented from a Mr Shackleton a Quaker mill owner who owned all the village, he used to bring me smarties in his pony and trap after my mum died.

Q. How many bedrooms?


2 big ones, my father was at war so there were 6 of us until my oldest sister Lilly got married when I was 7, then the next oldest Bridget looked after us.

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In 1946 when I was 8 we moved over to England when my father was de mobbed from the army. In June 1946 we (Dad, me, Bridget, Jean, Kathleen who died, and Johnny) moved to Primitive Street in Huddersfield. We rented upstairs in a terrace house with no water upstairs, we had to carry it upstairs; we had no bathroom, just an outside loo. We had 2 rooms plus an attic room, where I slept. I used to knock myself out on the roof beams when I sat up on my bed too quick and forgot they were there. In September 1946 we got a three-story house at Kirkgate (where kingsgate is now). The front door was in Kirkgate and the rear door was in king street. We had a living kitchen and a front room. From the front room were the stairs to the first floor with 2 bedrooms and an inside toilet (no going outside to the shared toilet). Up again and we had 2 more bedrooms. In September 1947 Bridget got married, my sister Kathleen died of flu aged just 17 in January it was a bad winter in 1947. I have never seen snow so high; she died on my eldest sister Lillys birthday. When Bridget got married to Jack she moved to London where she lived in one room with her in laws. Lilly and her husband Kevin (who had lived with us since he was de mobbed form the air force in 1946) moved back into the 2 rooms in Primitive Street where they had their first 2 children. People didnt buy houses in them days everyone rented; Lilly and Kevin went on the list for a council house and got one in 1950. In 1950 they moved to a 2-bedroom house at Bronty close on the Walpole estate. This was the first house that we had with a bathroom, before we just had a tin bath.

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In 1952 we moved to Bronty close to live (which was the first council house I lived in), with my sister and brother in law after my father re married and the other members of my family had got married and moved out. I lived with them until 1961 when at 23 I got married In the meantime we moved to bolster moor near Slaithwaite. My sister wanted a small holding to keep hens so we moved out to the wilderness. I had to walk home in a blizzard, and all the lanes were covered in snow, we were snowed in regularly. I got married in 1961 and moved to the other side of the valley into Lord Dartmouth cottages. I went backwards with this one, we had to get our water from a well, and the toilet was a long drop, which they come and emptied every so often. It had a small kitchen, a front room and one bedroom. We stayed there until 1963 when I was expecting my first son, and then moved to Marsden, that house had an outside toilet, a living kitchen, no hot water, a coal fire and 2 bedrooms, but no bathroom.

Q. So the best house at the time was the council house?


Yes defiantly, they were modern and had bathrooms and proper kitchens, separate from the living room. In 1965 my second son was born and we moved to Outlane, that house had a small kitchen living room and 2 bedrooms, and a bathroom with an inside toilet in the bathroom but no garden as it was straight onto the road. In 1968 I moved to Lingards Road, which was a terraced council house that had a small kitchen living room, and a separate dining room, three bedrooms and bathroom and a front and back gardens. This had a coal fire with a back boiler and an electric immersion heater to heat water. In 1974 I moved with my 2 children to Linthwaite for 3 months whilst the house was modernised. They put central heating downstairs and a gas fire with a back boiler, no heating up stairs, no double-glazing. Modernising meant re-wiring, knocking out the pantry in the kitchen and putting gas central heating down stairs. As a result we had condensation upstairs; we had to put towels in the window to mop up the water.

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The point is the best houses were council houses; they were affordable for the working class people. Before that you had to rent and got nothing, not even bathrooms. There was plenty of work then but the wages were poor, then if you didnt work it was because you didnt want you, there was work but the wages were poor. When I left school at 15 my wage was 1 17s 3d, I came home with 1 12s 3d (we had to buy our own shop dresses which came out of our wages every week), and N.I and tax. I paid 1 for my board and lodgings for a 40-hour week. In 1986 both my children having left home I got a job as a caretaker of swan court at Lockwood, which came with a one bedroom flat.

Q. So that was your first flat?


Thats the only flat I have lived in and I wouldnt live in another and Ill tell you why, because you could hear every noise from the flat above and below you. If you got a noisy neighbour god help you. If next door had the telly on loud you could hear it, if someone went to the loo in the middle of the night, you could hear it. My next-door neighbour could tell when I went to bed, as she would hear me switching off all the sockets. I could hear when the old lady above me went to the toilet and when she died I got the hound of the Baskervilles above me. They mustnt have had any carpets as I could hear its feet on the floor. When it was left from 8 till midnight every Friday it howled.

Q. So lack of soundproofing was a problem?


Yes, you didnt want to hear your neighbours, their music or their telly.

Q. What else was wrong with being in a flat?

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There was no privacy the entrance was right by my bedroom, you could hear the lift going up and down, I dont want a flat.

Q. What problems were there?


When I had just cleaned it they would walk through and drop their sweet papers and match boxes on the floor, especially in the lift because they couldnt be seen doing what they were doing. I was lucky I wasnt in a high rise flat, swan court was only 6 stories, because in the high rise flats they pee in the lifts and you cant get rid of the smell, chewing gum is a bugger to get off. People would see that you have just cleaned and then throw their rubbish down anyway. The flats are worse now, as they dont have caretakers so no one is responsible.

Q. If you were going to build flats how would you build them?
I wouldnt, what happens when your old and the lift breaks down and your isolated, everyone wants there own bit of garden even if it is the size of a postage stamp.

Q. What would you build?


I would build bungalows for the elderly they dont want stairs, what happens when they fall and break a hip? They dont want baths either they want showers that they can get in and out of.

Q. What about gardens?


It doesnt have to be a big garden but defiantly not open plan, where every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks they have the right to walk past your home and throw their rubbish, and the dogs always fouling on the grass. I walk my dog and pick up its mess to find some other dog has fouled outside my door.

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There are people that walk their dogs past our back doors, some on leads others arent; they foul on the grass outside my house. Its not fenced off so I cant do anything about it; I have to tell my grand children that they cant play on the grass outside my house because of all the dog mess.

Q. What is the policy of the councils towards the commercial gardens?


They mow them once a fortnight and dont clear the grass cuttings away so it gets blown everywhere, I pay a gardener to mow my front garden as Im not happy with the job the council do, I dont want my garden looking like a field.

Q. What do you think of the council policy that you are not aloud to erect fences around the garden?
I dont like it I want my own space.

Q. Why do you want your own space?


I think you are entitled to your own space; I have kids kicking balls into my plants its not on.

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