Policy Exchange’s report calling for tower blocks to be demolished and replaced with streets of terrace houses and low-rise flats “that people actually want to live in” has made a rather big splash.
My initial reaction was that the report was unfairly slanderous to the reputation of vertical living. Conclusions about tower blocks from the 50s, 60s and 70s are generalised to be about all such buildings, while the worst of terrace housing is overlooked. It is true that many of the post-war towers are in dire need of refurbishment, and it may well be better to tear them down and start again. But their failure has as much to do with being built on the cheap, abandoned by councils and then unmaintained for half a century as it does to do with them being tower blocks.
And there is an element of expertise in building tower blocks which should not be overlooked. Quite simply: we’ve got better at it since then. Whereas terraced houses are much the same as they were 100 years ago, even affordable high-rise living is nearly unrecognisable compared to that practiced post-war.
But more, I want to highlight the false dichotomy that the report creates. Arguing about tower blocks versus terraced streets ignores the fact that there are a huge number of alternative styles of living.
For instance, most British cities are alarmingly low rise. That’s not just that they have no tower blocks or skyscrapers, though; it’s also that whoever decides the number of stories a building should have seems to count like Terry Pratchett’s trolls (one, two, many, lots). There’s room for buildings which aren’t the tower blocks of yore, but do still fit a huge number of people in a small space, allowing more than just the rich to experience the benefits — walkability, culture, shorter commutes — that inner-city living offers.
And take a look at places like the German town of Vauban, which houses 5,500 people in a square mile — with no cars allowed. That’s not terraced living as Policy Exchange would imagine it, but it mixes some of the best aspects of tower blocks (high density, big shared spaces, and not having to walk particularly far to reach transport links) with those of terraces (like being relatively flat and open).
The Swedesh village of Jakriborg does this even better. It houses over 1000 people in an area a third of the size of a Maryland park-and-ride car park, by mixing the small streets and car free living of a town like Vauban with houses which are five or six stories high.
There’s been a lot of changes in city and suburban living since the 1950s. Treating town planning as a battle between 1950s-style homes and 1900-style ones ignores that there are more options available than ever before in the year 2013.
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