Municipal Dreams

Municipal Dreams:The Rise and Fall of Council Housing

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A narrative history of council housing – from slums to the Grenfell Tower

Traversing the nation, Municipal Dreams offers an architectural tour of some of the best and most remarkable of our housing estates, and in doing so offers an engrossing social history of housing in Britain. John Broughton asks us to understand better their complex story and to rethink our prejudices. His accounts include extraordinary planners and architects who wished to elevate working men and women through design and the politicians, high and low, who shaped their work, the competing ideologies which have promoted state housing and condemned it, the economics which has always constrained our housing ideals, the crisis wrought by Right to Buy, and the evolving controversies around regeneration. He shows how the loss of the dream of good housing for all is a danger for the whole of society – as was seen in the fire in Grenfell Tower.

Reviews

  • The book celebrates an era during which dreams of shelter and security for all—not just those who could afford to purchase it—were in large part made a reality, and asks us if we oughtn’t to consider reviving that dream before it gets destroyed completely … There couldn’t be a better time for this book.

    Lynsey HanleyGuardian
  • Required reading … provides a comprehensive history of Britain’s council estates [that] challenges the well-worn narrative.

    Anna MintonProspect
  • This serious, heartfelt book makes a convincing case that publicly provided homes have to be at least part of the response to the dysfunctional state that British housing has now attained.

    Rowan MooreObserver