The biggest concern isn't the concept of social housing it's the appropriateness of British building regulations to high rise residential blocks.
The reality in the UK is high rise living is very much for exception and unlike many places, there's far less experience of it. Other than a handful of high exclusive apartment buildings in London, the only places that highrise have been used for was cheap 1960s-70s social housing.
We had limited experience and just a few examples of these kinds of blocks used for social housing in Dublin in Ireland, but they were demolished in the early 2000s and replaced with low rise and mixed developments with individual houses, terraces and smaller apartment buildings due to decades of major practical and social problems associated with the towers.
Some of the things that shocked me about Grenfell other than the cladding is the complete lack of sprinkler systems in a building that tall. It appears it only has one stairwell and one of its two entrances was closed for refurbishment.
Here's the only such development here in Ireland in 1966 (now demolished). It was put up to deal with a massive clearance of very poor quality city centre accommodation and a fairly huge social housing programme in the 1930s-70s
Interesting little patronisingly presented promo film of the Ballymun flat complex from the mid 1960s
They were very "brave new world" stuff back in their day but in general they were pretty unpleasant places to live.
*piped television (mentioned in the film) is mid 1960s irish terminology for cable TV.
the Corporation = old terminology for city council. It doesn't mean a private company as in the US.
I think though many of those buildings were built to a price and a speed and were very human-unfriendly places in reality, particularly where they were badly run.
[this post was last edited: 6/29/2017-12:44]
