Born of idealism, and once an icon of the Labour movement and pillar of the Welfare State, council housing is now nearing its end. But do its many failings outweigh its positive contributions to public health and wellbeing?
Alison Ravetz here provides the first comprehensive and apolitical history from which to arrive at a balanced judgement. Drawing on the widest possible evidence, from tenant and government records to the built environment itself, she tells the story of British council housing, from its seeds in Victorian reactions to 'the Poor', in philanthropy and model villages,...

This book is a comprehensive and indepth history of British council housing. For political and institutional reasons it operated as a law unto itself for most of its history, but is now undergoing major change and re-integration into mainstream housing and society. The bulk of research and literature on the subject has been from social policy and politics perpectives, and an overall history has not been attempted, other than as chapters or sections of chapters in more general books. This has resulted in a number of important omissions - notably the relation of design and management to the...

Garden suburbs were the almost universal form of urban growth in the English-speaking world for most of the twentieth century. Their introduction was probably the most fundamental process of transformation in the physical form of the Western city since the Middle Ages.
This book describes the ways in which these suburbs were created, particularly by private enterprise in England in the 1920s and 1930s, the physical forms they took, and how they have changed over time in response to social, economic and cultural change.
Twentieth-Century Suburbs is concerned with the history,...

This title describes the development of the capital cities of Latin America in the post-colonial period - their planning, urban morphology and social evolution. These cities provide a unique example of the influence of urban planning and design ideas of one continent on another. The well-illustrated case studies of Buenos Aires, Caracas, Mexico City, Havana, Lima, Rio de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Santiago, and San Jose de Costa Rica, are each written by an authority on thecity concerned.

The British system of universal development control celebrated its 50th anniversary in 1997. Remarkably, the system has survived more or less intact but the experience of the 1980s has left large questions unanswered about the relevance and effectiveness of the system. This book traces the history of the development control system in Britain from early modern times to the present day. It also looks at the tension between private interest and public control, and between the freedom of local authorities to decide and their accountability for decisions taken. It looks at the rights of third...

International clients have emulated American buildings such as skyscrapers, have followed patterns of American urbanism such as suburban residences and have adopted American concepts of form and space for leisure activities. This study examines how North American architecture had been transplanted elsewhere during the 20th century. It explains how, why and where Amnerican architects, contractors, developers, planners or building materials exporters have marketed American architecture overseas.