The document discusses the concept of postwar housing utopias in the UK and criticisms that arose. It summarizes views that the modernist housing complexes of the 1950s-70s that aimed to provide cheap housing instead resulted in soulless towers that lacked community and abolished individual identity. Residents ultimately rejected these utopias and preferred traditional housing forms like cottages and terraced houses that supported private virtues and community.
Dr Ian Waites - A paradise, what an idea! The postwar council estate and ‘Utopia’
1. Unchallenged Myths. They lie heavy.
L’imaginaire is our worst enemy.
A paradise,what an idea!
A guardian, still on duty.
(Stereolab, OLV26)
‘A paradise, what an idea!’ The postwar council estate and ‘Utopia’.
Ian Waites. University of Lincoln.
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11. … the desolation that is felt at the realisation of
the maddest of all Utopian schemes, the open-
planned housing complex, where streets are
replaced by empty spaces from which towers
arise, towers bearing neither the mark of a
communal order, nor any visible record of the
individual house … both community and the
individual are abolished ...
Roger Scruton, 1979
12. ‘the persuasive power of architects who
believed in the coming Utopia when everyone
would live in cheap, prefabricated flat-roofed
multiple dwellings – heaven on earth’
(Lynsey Hanley, Estates: An Intimate History, Granta:
2007, p.49)
15. ‘… It became increasingly obvious during the
1970s that either something was very wrong
with the people or something was terribly
wrong with the new homes. Because, put
simply, the British did not like the utopias into
which they were being so unceremoniously
decanted.’
(Nicholas Boys Smith, The 1970s. The decade when Britain’s
housing utopia turned into a nightmare,
http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2014/12/nicholas-
boys-smith-the-1970s-the-decade-when-britains-housing-
utopia-turned-into-a-nightmare.html)
16. 'It would not be unfair to describe the creation
of post-war estates as the work of well-heeled
utopians ignoring what the people wanted in
favour of what they thought the people should
want.'
(Nicholas Boys Smith and Alex Morton, Create
Streets, Policy Exchange 2013, p.26).
17. ‘the private virtues of the small
suburban villa, the soi-disant cottage
or the worker’s terraced house.’
(ibid, p.27)
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26. ‘I think it’s all rather wonderful. We
have a good home, good friends, and
we shall always be happy up here.
The Council … have done a very good
job.’
(Gainsborough Evening News, Tuesday 29 December
1964)
