Student reading list – housing
February 1st, 2015
Since starting this blog I have been approached by a number of University students asking for information about housing design, housing estates, and related matters. Rather than creating a new list each time I am putting the list here.
Manor Estate Sheffield
The category groupings that follow are general owing to the overlap in subject matter among the papers many of which fall into more than one category. This rather arbitrary list is intended as a starting point for your housing research and is by no means a definitive guide.
Foundation reading
Graham Towers thesis – this above all
Re-forming multi-storey housing: the regeneration of urban housing estates in Britain
Christoper W. Bacon
Streets in the Sky: The rise and fall of the Modern architectural Utopia
although I haven’t yet read this Anne Power is always worth listening to
Anne Power thesis
The development of unpopular council housing estates and attempted remedies
[Towers and Power HT @municipaldreams]
Prof Michael Edwards UCL on the housing crisis
The housing crisis: too difficult or a great opportunity?
Housing standards and design
Homes for Today and Tomorrow – Parker Morris committee 1961
Interim London Housing Design Guide – Alex Ely MAE August 2010
London housing SPG – Mayor of London
London County Council architects department – Elain Harwood
The failure of housing – Nicholas Taylor
The Village in the City – Nicholas Taylor 1973
Review of a speech by A.W. Cleeve-Barr to the RIBA in the 1960s
Defensible Space
Defensible Space – Oscar Newman
Utopia on Trial – Alice Coleman
The Psychology of Housing – Alice Coleman pdf here
Wordle from Planned housing as a social trap
Design Disadvantagement – Alice Coleman -> get pdf here
Planned housing as a social trap – Alice Coleman
City of Alice’s dreams – Bill Hillier
Poverty and Depressed Estates: Critique – Utopia on Trial – Paul Spicker
Review of Utopia on Trial from a blogger – Known Pleasures blog
Writing on the Wall – Horizon 1974 – Youtube
Regeneration and gentrification
The Affordable Housing Con – London Tenants Federation
Staying Put: An Anti-Gentrification Handbook – Prof Loretta Lees
Housing and sustainability: demolition or refurbishment? – Prof Anne Power
Regeneration Realities Urban Pamphleteer #2 – Prof Loretta Lees P.6
Demolition or refurbishment of social housing? – UCL Urban Lab
Case studies
The death of a housing ideal – Heygate
Glasgow
Overspill policy and the Glasgow Slum Clearance Project in the Twentieth
Century: From One Nightmare to Another?
History, politics and vulnerability: explaining excess mortality in Scotland and Glasgow
An essay on the provision of council housing, with special reference to Killingworth – P J Taylor
Killingworth towers – photographs
Hulme Crescents – Peter Shapley
Estate Regeneration – Mozart – Lowenfeld – pages
Estate Regeneration – Mozart – Westminster
Tackling Vandalism – Sheena Wilson and others 1976
Hackney Vandal Patrol (Kingsmead) 1976 – Sheena Wilson appears in the film
The Essex Design Guide – thanks to much missed Adil Hussein
Politics and Society
The Death and Life of Great American Cities – Jane Jacobs 1961
Family and Kinship in East London – Wilmott & Young 1957
Where will we live? – James Meek
Thatcher’s legacy is in ruins, but Britain is still in its thrall – Seamus Milne
What is living and what is dead in social democracy? – Tony Judt
Professor Judt changes trains – Obituary by Geoffrey Wheatcroft TLS
Despair on the frontline of Britain’s homelessness crisis – Shelter
Social housing and tenant participation – History & Policy
The Seventies
How Jim Callaghan changed the world – Neil Clark
The Tory years – a view from Wings over Scotland
James Callaghan: a great PM – from the Guardian
Right to buy
Safe as houses – John Harris
Frank Field in the Guardian and my response
Other
London: the unique city – Peter Hall – from City Villages
Estates: an Intimate History – Lynsey Hanley – Independent review
Do sties make pigs? – Theodore Dalrymple
The New Brutalism – Reyner Banham
New Brutalism – Dr John W Nixon
The Paul Watt papers – Dr Paul Watt
Film
There are so many but you might like to begin with these:-
Housing Problems 1935 – watch this first
City of Towers – BBC 1979 – review here – History of Modernism
High Rise Dreams – BBC 2003 – review here – Miscellany
Homes for Heroes – BBC 2005 – review here – Miscellany
A Home of your own – BBC 1995 – review here – Birmingham
The Pruitt Igoe Myth – on Youtube
n.b. With gratitude to the staff of University College London for their assistance.
August 4th, 2015 at 7:22 pm
You helped with my essay on mass housing not too long ago, and I came here to see if you could recommend some reading for me – as I’m still very much interested on the topic. Found it funny that you made this list – glad to see you’re still blogging.
Enes