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At the beginning of the 21st century the key conundrum for housing in the
UK is how to provide enough homes for the rising number of households in
the country. Changes in the way that people live and set up home mean that
though the country’s population is stable, the number of households are
expected to increase by an average of 180,000 a year up to 2011 (Barker,
Kate, Dec 2003, ‘Review Of Housing Supply’, HMSO, Norwich). Most of these
will be small in size, and result from the fact that people are more
likely to stay single for longer, separate from their partners, or live
longer. Much of the UK is already crowded and intensively developed. A key
factor is to provide these new homes in a way that keeps use of space and
environmental impact to a minimum. This poses a huge challenge to
policy-makers and providers of private and social housing.
The last time the UK faced a dramatic need for new homes was during the
post-war period; when, building high was part of the solution. In seeking
to develop sustainable communities for the 21st century we should learn
lessons from the flawed housing programmes of the 1940s, 50s and 60s.
Thus the task is to provide more homes while keeping land use to a
minimum. Contemporary priorities however are wider than this and it is now
expected that housing should be of a reasonable standard; it should help
in the development of sustainable communities; and it should be
affordable.
Tower blocks were seen as the way to build a better future in the 1950s
and 1960s. Since then around 3000 tower blocks have been built in Greater
London alone. By the mid-1970s, however, high-rise building came to a halt
as doubts were thrown on construction methods and the social consequences
of poor quality building. The towers became unpopular for inhabitation and
some were subsequently demolished.
The existing tower blocks are in need of urgent attention and
refurbishment. The government has insisted that all councils draw up
business plans to bring all of their homes up to a decent standard in the
next 10 years. Therefore there is great demand from owners of tower blocks
for best practice solutions for sustainable refurbishment. The majority of
tower blocks are owned by local authorities, who in many cases favour
demolition. A number are now run by housing associations, and this will
increase markedly in the next few years. If conditions are to improve, the
physical environment and social development of the community must move
forward together. While negative perceptions are commonplace, they are by
no means universal, and many residents are proud of where they live.
Refurbishment can sometimes be more expensive than demolition. However,
keeping those tower blocks that can be saved is a more efficient strategy
than demolishing them in the long term. With 3.8m new homes needed by
2021, central and local government cannot afford to cut into the existing
stock of around 400,000 homes in tower blocks. With the advance in new
technologies such as, photovoltaics, wind energy harnessing strategies,
security systems, intelligent lift controls etc. it is now possible to
make an old tower block more secure and energy efficient.
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introduction
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state of the art |
sustainability |
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