'Where We Live' - a survey of the decline in British housing.

[MAB]

I thought the description “Anywhere Houses” was quite an appropriate description for many new-build housing estates. (see extract and link to Telegraph book review below).

 

'Where We Live' a new book by Jonathan Glancey is a survey of the decline in British housing: lost successes, noble failures, utter disasters.

Above all, his wrath is directed, and deservedly so, towards “Anywhere Houses”. Dispensed from above, these featureless new-build estates turn Somewhere into Anywhere. Their “cul-de-sac roads [are] named after brutally built-over fields, orchards and meadows”. They have no centre in the form of churches, shops, pubs, schools, monuments, social centres or libraries – and thus no character or purpose. They’re bereft of context: landscape, local culture, even building materials. They stand in opposition to traditional towns, which are “endlessly fascinating” places of sanctuary and variety, where “a fish market might just jostle fin-by-gill alongside a beeswax-scented medieval church, itself sited next to [a] fashionable art gallery”.
Where We Live is a commendably heartfelt book. Yes, Glancey writes, things are bad, and they may have been thus for a while – but this isn’t a defeatist lament, because defeatism isn’t a responsible option. Beauty and utility are worth fighting for. We need to challenge the parallel failures of government and industry, banish the narrow fixation on costs and consultancies, and get back to some existential first principles: democracy, autonomy, decency, meaning."

The full book review:-

https://archive.ph/vv7xF

[Gus Potter]

15 minutes ago, MAB said:

I thought

Great post, well done. The article is well worth a read. 

 

Our political system needs an overhaul. Also our attitude to immigration needs to change rapidly and recognise that we are in serious danger of losing our British culture. One big threat is the intolerance of Islam. We live on a small island, we have nowhere else to go.