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Up in the Air:A History of High Rise Britain
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How the high-rise Tower Block came to symbolise the welfare state, and what went wrong - from an award-winning debut historian.
Up in the Air tells the story of Britain’s multi-storey council housing from its beginnings to the present day. Throughout its history, high rise has been a symbol of the welfare state for better or worse. Here, Holly Smith tells a new story from the perspective of those who lived there, exploring how residents grappled with this brave new world above the old skyline.
Through a series of historical moments based upon prize-winning research, we confront the human story of high-rise Britain. Interrogating the complex inheritance of mid-century urban reconstruction, Smith shows how these buildings became a crucible for the welfare state’s reimagination over the decades.
She traces the scattering of a local community during the construction of Park Hill in Sheffield in the 1950s. The resistance of residents after the Ronan Point collapse of 1968. The formation of a pioneering tenants’ cooperative to revive a crumbling estate during the closure of the Docklands. The rage of a National Tower Blocks Network advocating for high-rise safety in the 1980s and 1990s. The excitement of early digital culture in a Liverpudlian pensioners’ high-rise internet television show in the 2000s. And the fierce battle to defend estates from demolition in the 2010s.
Up in the Air is a rich history of political struggle within Britain’s most misunderstood buildings, offering essential lessons for a reformed social housing compact.
Reviews
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Nothing is more subject to gross generalisation and hostile misrepresentation than the story of British high-rise. Holly Smith’s exemplary case studies and judicious summary provide nuance and complexity and genuine insight. If you really want to understand multi-storey Britain – its positives, negatives and contradictions – read this book.
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Finally, a history of the British high-rise from below - a kaleidoscopic account of the civic activism that has emerged to maintain, control, repair, protect and remember the tower blocks, against the tabula rasa visions of both the past and the present. Up in the Air is both informed and pugnacious, but is dominated by the actions and memories of those who have lived high up, giving voice to their frequently frustrated desire for good, well-maintained, well-built council housing
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Neither rose-tinted, polemical or cynical, Smith provides us with something much more valuable: the truth. This is a history of people more than buildings: the way the humans that lived in high rises resisted, celebrated and survived amid the architectural ideas and high political theories that have defined our urban built environments since World War II. As such, it serves as a grounded history of Britain, as well as a history of our buildings in the sky. A must-read for anyone interested in the thorny question of housing in the UK.
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Smith boldly busts the enduring myths of high-rise living in the post-war period to the near present. Shorn of stories of architectural heroism, forensic in exposing craven political motivation, we are instead confronted with the voices so often ignored: those of the tenants, whose complexity, creativity, and communitarianism drive the book’s narrative. This is not just for those interested in social and architectural history; everyone concerned with the housing question today will gain from its perspicacity.