Letter: High-rise theories were quickly demolished
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Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Whatever may be said now in their defence, high-rise blocks were foisted on local councils in the Fifties and Sixties by the architectural profession and the government on three spurious grounds: that they would be quicker to build than low-rise housing; that they would be cheaper; and that more people could be accommodated per acre.
None of this was true. I was a GP practising in an area of dense terrace housing in the Somers Town area of central Portsmouth, which was replaced in the Sixties largely with 17-storey prefabricated slabs. The theories were quickly proved to be fake by the experience of the next area of the city to be redeveloped. This was carried out with many more two-storey houses than Somers Town and nothing higher than seven storeys was built. It housed more people per acre, was more quickly built and more cheaply. Furthermore, it needed far less in the way of expensive repairs in the subsequent 20 years.
I agree that it was not tower blocks per se that caused the social disruption. There is one tower in Portsmouth that was a success from the start. It was filled with middle-aged and elderly people almost entirely from one condemned street. They knew each other before they moved in. Also it was built by Wimpeys' comparatively trouble-free system of concrete cast on site. The trouble was the combination of high-rise with comprehensive, as opposed to piecemeal, redevelopment. For the three false theories were compounded by a fourth, equally ill- founded. It was that houses approaching 100 years old were - chilling phrase - 'nearing the end of their useful life' and would have to come down anyway.
Later, in the Seventies, I was a councillor in Fratton, another central area of high-density terraced houses, which a decade earlier would have been deemed 'ripe for development'. But they survived to become General Improvement Areas, where much more satisfactory homes resulted from refurbishment and where the residents were given a genuine say in what happened in their own streets.
It was perhaps inevitable that an attempt would be made to rehabilitate the reputation of the tower- block era, as Peter Dormer does ('The rise, fall and rise of the tower block', 23 February); but, in fact, it was an aberration as perverse as monetarism and, for a time, just as irresistible and socially destructive.
Yours sincerely,
ROGER JAMES
Southsea, Hampshire
24 February
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