The Fall and Rise of Social Housing: 100 Years on 20 Estates

Abstract

Becky Tunstall’s new book, The Fall and Rise of Social Housing: 100 Years on 20 Estates, makes a good companion to Edward Glaeser’s Triumph of the City (Glaeser 2011). Whilst Glaeser demonstrated that the concentration of urban poor is not necessarily negative, Tunstall shows the flip side of the coin: managing and assisting urban disadvantaged groups through public housing projects is a challenging and costly undertaking. Starting with a 1984 study of 20 unpopular council estates that eventually turned into a study of 19 mostly somewhat less popular than average mixed-tenure neighbourhoods, Tunstall takes her readers on a fascinating journey of the social housing history in the UK.