Our home, tower home

[imomus]

Have a look at this trailer for the 2006 thriller Red Road, set in the Glasgow tower block of the same name.

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The clichés of urban alienation -- tagging, plastic bags on the breeze, concrete, disorder, paranoia, sex and violence -- are all present and correct. All that's missing is the Massive Attack song. But does high rise living have to be this way? Mightn't the disrepute residential tower blocks have fallen into since the 1980s, and particularly in the UK and the US, be something to do with this mythology itself? Mightn't right wing politicians, from Thatcher and Reagan on, have been trying to smash the socialist utopian agenda built into the 1960s tower blocks and shift everyone into suburban private homes with mortgages?

To people who say that tower blocks are synonymous with massive attacks of urban alienation, Dr Stephen Cairns and Jane Jacobs -- currently working on The Highrise Project at the University of Edinburgh -- are here to say "It ain't necessarily so". Interviewed on this week's Thinking Allowed, Cairns argued that if you go to Asian cities like Hong Kong and Singapore, the highrise is seen as a vibrant, viable and lively form of living. The same message emerges from the residents of places like Glasgow's Red Road tower, who -- once the usual horror stories are out of the way -- tell tales of communal bonhomie rather than spouting clichés of concrete anomie.



Jacobs and Cairns chose to research and contrast attitudes to the Modernist residential highrise block in two cities, Glasgow and Singapore. The Highrise Project "has been set up, rhetorically," Cairns told Laurie Taylor, "to explore a hunch: that, despite the apparent repetitiousness of globalisation, the inside of architecture, the sites of people's lives, unfold in quite distinctive ways." The highrise was chosen as one of the most notoriously repetitious architectural forms, and two cities on either side of the world were selected to see whether -- as Richard Sennett said in the previous week's programme about urban living -- globalisation really is resulting in cookie-cutter similarity; making it difficult to know if you're in London or Caracas.



What The Highrise Project found out was that even if the Modernist grid of the exterior of a tower block looks the same wherever you are in the world, the insides of the flats are quite different. And that's because the insides of people's heads are different in the East and West. People have different attitudes to things like density, community and public order, and their political feelings about public housing and the central, state organisation of human needs differ too. There are also different feelings about Modernist rationality; a lingering Romanticism has made the British revile figures like Le Corbusier to this day. Even Ikea had to battle it when they launched in the UK.

When I used to live in a Stalinbau on the Karl-Marx-Allee -- in a landmark high density public housing project built by the communist East German government -- I'd sublet my flat each summer while I travelled in Japan. Two summers in a row, my tenant was Lynsey Hanley, who was writing a book about public housing. Granta published Estates, her "intimate history" of UK housing estates, last year. As she explained to Grant Morrison in The Guardian, Hanley, as someone who grew up in one estate in Birmingham and moved to another in East London, "resents the vilification of those who live there - all that sneering at scum, chavs, pikeys and the great unwashed. More importantly, she believes the greatest division between people today isn't the work they do or what they earn or whether they have children, but the kind of homes they live in. And she wants to understand why being housed by the state has come to be seen as a confession of failure... Other European nations were perfectly happy living in skyscrapers where every fourth wall was made of glass - why couldn't Brits be?"



Hanley's answer is that she, too, sees public housing estates as "cages" and "hutches" which make the heart sink. "The architecture of the estate, a vast people-locker "designed by a cyborg", had insanity written into its plan: "How can you fight something as concrete, as concretey, as this?"

But fight highrise public housing is exactly what people began to do; Margaret Thatcher made it a political priority. "By 1979, nearly half the British population lived in local authority housing; then came Thatcherism and the Right to Buy, and now only 12 per cent of us do. Hanley is no rabid opponent of home ownership (she'd be a hypocrite if she was, since she recently joined the club). But she does regret some of its consequences: the dearth of state accommodation for those who need it (there's currently a waiting list of 1.5 million); the widening gap between the mortgage-paying haves and the low-rent have-nots; the loss of the Utopian impulse towards social integration. As she says, "this is no longer a society in which you can be proud, still less be seen to be proud, that your home has been provided by the state".

What we have to realize is that we think of tower blocks the way we do because that's how we want to see them: as "failed states in the sky". The belief that public housing leads to no-go high-crime zones soundtracked by Massive Attack becomes, in the West, a self-fulfilling prophecy as white- and middle-class flight leaves Resident Evil-like landscapes of drugged zombie-losers in the crumbling, asbestos-clad towers ringing winner-takes-all cities. Call Group 4! Install CCTV! Get Irvine Welsh writing about it! But Singapore, Tokyo, Hong Kong and countless new cities rising in China show that it's only so if you make it so.

At a time when imaginative new solutions to housing problems are desperately needed, say Cairns and Jacobs, it's a shame that self-fulfilling clichés like these have taken highrise public housing off the agenda in the West. They show how a different attitude -- the attitude exemplified, for instance, in highrise community magazines like Our Home, produced for highrise citizens in Singapore in the early 1980s -- can make these "failed" towers into successes. Our home can be -- why not? -- tower home.

Comments

[obliterati.livejournal.com]

The Housing Authority of Portland seems to run most of their big facilities in really nice locations, so even though you're stacked vertically with the old and impoverished and chronically ill, you're basically in the middle of an area that most people pay way too much for under normal circumstances. For instance I live in what's called the Pearl District, which was designed by the old Mayor on purpose to be a showcase neighborhood, with a zillion specialty shops and expensive art and the persistent smell of the heavily insured.

The government put me here though, because I am broke. I have exactly no problem with that. Originally I was going to be way up on the 8th floor and I was a little upset because I wouldn't be able to see the road from my window. I really enjoy the road, to an extent that verges on need, I pretty much need to see what passes by to help order my brain a little bit and inform the personal narrative. That room didn't work out though, and a while later I wound up getting a studio a few floors down from there, at the uppermost boundary of the trees outside. When I saw the trees is when I realized what a close call it'd been, because aside from the road I think I just like the ground as well. That's where the world is! Through my window I have roots!

[neil-scott.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the Lynsey Hanley book, being particularly struck by the issue of how to let your young kids play in the garden when you live on the 15th Floor (in Glasgow, on the 7th floor, we had little Chinese kids in our corridors on tricycles as if they were in the Shining)

As Hanley emphasises, the problem with public housing is that it has to take in all the drug addicts and dropouts. And it only takes one person to decide to defecate in the lift for the lift to be ruined for all.

Where I lived in London, they turned the council flats into yuppie apartments, which is surely the right demographic.

As for Red Road, I was scared just driving past it . . .

[cheapgreens.livejournal.com]

http://www.sylviagraceborda.com/ekmod.htm

http://www.eknewtown.com/

[cheapgreens.livejournal.com]

http://skelemitz.wordpress.com/2008/09/05/bizarre-houses/

[(Anonymous)]

When people say the credit crunch could lead to 'a return to the seventies' I always think "No, it could be much much worse." At least in the seventies we had extensive and secure council housing. Imagine the same recession with people, families, piling up on the street because they can't afford private rents and mortgages.

she wants to understand why being housed by the state has come to be seen as a confession of failure

No-one I know sees it that way! We'd all love enough 'points' to get a council flat.

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

It often is municipal policy which ruins these buildings.
They do become places where those with high points eligibility are housed. As another respondent said, the "old and impoverished and chronically ill (drug addicts)".

My block had an over thirties, no kids policy which was both good and bad. I always thought that phrase summed it all up and made it no different from anywhere else. It's both good and bad.

Telephone companies would want to place aerial masts on top of some blocks which led to financial sweeteners to the leasers. A grant to repaint the lift? A mural done by a local artist?

Many have community group representation, we had a meeting room on the ground floor where residents could discuss issues with various representatives.

The most interesting thing was the relationships which flourished in a block of 78 maximum. From nodding to avoidance to entertaining to looking out for. I was always impressed with the efforts many made to express themselves.

It always reminded me of that cover for Georges Perec's - Life A User's Manual. Tear the facade off and there is a complex novel of various inter-dependabilities.

A brief anecdote about elevators.
http://niddrie-edge.livejournal.com/40068.html

We often spoke of Manchester's Redbrick digital community in the late 90s as an example.
http://www.overmet.net/press/the_times/story182.html
http://www.overmet.net/press/default.htm

[(Anonymous)]

I agree in theory, but in practice I love my little garden.

[steviecat.livejournal.com]

Some great graphics there, as is usual for your LJ.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

They're mostly from the Highrise Project website (http://www.ace.ed.ac.uk/highrise/), which rewards digging and delving with some illustrative treasure.

[kumakouji.livejournal.com]

My parents own a home in a cul de sac that splits into two sections -- one section is a small street of private housing, the other section leads onto flats that are used as social housing.

My parent's house isn't suburban luxury, and the council housing neighbouring it isn't Resident Evil-eque squalor, but the contrast between these two places, considering they're right next to each other in the very same cul de sac, is quite stark.

When you walk past the council housing there's always litter blowing about the place, shopping carts abandoned down the side of buildings. the communal bin area is always a mess, the doors are broken, nobody bothers to straighten it and close the doors properly. No pride taken in the place what so ever.

More seriously, there was a murder a few years ago related to drugs - someone was pushed out of a 3rd story window and died after hitting the concrete. There was small children around as this guy hit the ground apparently, it was horrific. I also remember this woman in her 50s who was lying on the pavement near the housing in tears one night. I stopped to ask her what was wrong and she was clearly intoxicated and someone had been beating her, she was bloody and bruised. She kept asking me for money for tobacco... I told her she should call the police and get them to take her to somewhere safe like a friend's or relative's place. She kissed my hand and thanked me for my kindness, then she got up and left, shouting drunken obscenities towards the social housing and the boyfriend who'd been hitting her. A lost cause if ever I saw one.

The private housing part of the cul de sac is very different -- everyone knows each other and theres very much a sense of community. It's very safe and clean. There's a garden committee the neighbourhood community set up that's planted flowers and trees around the area, and every summer the area is visited by a pair of mallards who reside on the central green.

It's almost ironic that the area with private housing should have so much more community spirit than that of the social housing.

What do I think makes the difference?

My parents worked like dogs to save for a deposit for that house, and continue to work hard to pay for their home, as did the vast majority of the people in that sul de sac. When you have to work hard for what you have, you dont take it for granted and you treat it with respect.

With social housing, it attracts people who never had to develop any real sense of self-discipline because they have everything handed to them by the state, which then reflects in their behaviour. It attracts people who have all sorts of psychological issues who are unable to conform to the level required to keep a job, the people caught in the safety net of social welfare.

I support the social safety net wholeheartedly, but I'm also firmly believe that some people just dont have it in them to function as part of a society and will always be either unable or unwilling to conform to the level required to achieve some kind of social utopia. These souls will always be the have-nots.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

The safety net metaphor implies that society is a high wire which some fall off, though. It takes inequality for granted. How about using the metaphor of the ground -- just say we're all walking and living on the ground together, living in the same world under pretty much the same conditions, and that we should avoid the creation of radically different outcomes -- the emergence of extremes of high and low, rich and poor, and so on.

There are lots of ways of avoiding high-Gini Resident Evil-like scenarios -- the exaggeration of the negative characteristics of rich and poor. They're things like progressive taxation, legislation that requires social housing provision to be a part of all new commercial building developments, and intelligent public housing design like the kind I described at Byker Wall (http://imomus.livejournal.com/389833.html). What's needed is the political will to do these things, rather than Darwinian / Thatcherite stuff about the people who drag themselves up deserving all the rewards they get. Nobody drags themselves up without dragging someone else down.

[eclectiktronik.livejournal.com]

In Madrid and the surrounding areas, blocks are the norm and individual houses the exception. There just isn't the Theatcher-orignated snobbery about them which you find back in the Uk.
Not only that, but as a model for urban planning blocks seem to me to be far more sustainable , making better use of the land and resources than individual plots. Having lived in one now for some 9 years, there are so many advantages: feeling part of a community, shared, minimal upkeep bills, security, views (!)... there is no way I would want to live in a house again.

I actually like a lot of the 70s architecture others are so quick to condemn. I had numerous relatives who lived in blocks in Liverpool and they never saw it as a bad thing.
Another thing people ignore is that most problems (lifts, dirt, plumbing etc) are due to lack of proper investment and maintenance programmes, or lack of social provision for the more vulnerable residents, not an inherent flaw of the blocks themselves. You go to other European countries and those problems just don't exist on a large scale, so it's clear there is some propaganda at work in the criticism of blocks.

[robinsonner.livejournal.com]

One of the reasons there are technical problems in the UK high rises is that maintenance is often contracted out to private firms usually based in the middle and south of England. Sometimes, even, it is European companies.
Indebted municipal authorities can't wait to get these financial responsibilities off their hands.
A return to the seventies social contract almost looks appealing.

[(Anonymous)]

Off-topic aside:

New Labour spin doctor Alistair Campbell talks about his passion for Jacques Brel.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/radio4_aod.shtml?radio4/breletmoi

[imomus.livejournal.com]

I heard a trailer for that, yes. Almost scared to listen to it, in case Campbell's repugnant personality puts me off Brel for life.

[(Anonymous)]

I think you've just politicized 15 Storeys High for me in an entirely different way. The Errol worldview as inciting change. I sort of want to live at Alexandra (http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2006/jul/18/communities) Road, but only if everyone else moves out, so I can climb along the concrete however I see fit.

Perhaps there's a certain level of population density and class polarization that forces the communal aspects into a mode that organicizes these areas like prefab Kowloon Walled Cities? I'll probably wish I had written this comment differently after I hit Post, but that's the problem with being part of the floating population of anons.

[(Anonymous)]

I'll probably wish I had written this comment differently after I hit Post, but that's the problem with being part of the floating population of anons.

Damn, there's a comment I wish I'd written.

Oh, I did!

[thomascott.livejournal.com]

I agree that Thatcher and Reagan certainly contributed to the demise of tower block living and an inherent romanticisation of private property - that seems to be centripetal to Anglospheric culture - always seemed to dog the social experiment.
However I think we are perhaps ignoring the elephant in the room if we do not recognise that there is an element within Anglospheric society that spoils the communal living experience of social housing regardless of the form of it's physical setting.
Within almost any social housing scheme on these islands there is a thuggish, individualist social stratum that actively enjoys vandalising the community property, terrorising the other residents and generally giving some first-rate propaganda to the Daily Mail reading chatterers who besmirch the concept of social housing.
I'm cautious about speaking for other Anglospheric nations but are we in the U.K. and Ireland in some way - right across the social strata - hardwired to reject the idea of close, communal living, of collectivist property ownership, of pride in our community...if so we are very much the poorer..

[imomus.livejournal.com]

It's interesting that when the French banlieu explodes with some grievance, private cars get torched. In Britain it's phone boxes and bus shelters.

Then again, there aren't many phone boxes left, but there are plenty of chavs stealing people's private phones. Things are looking up!

[(Anonymous)]

Great film!

[bugpowered.livejournal.com]

Doesn't science tell us that greater concentration leads to greater anxiety, violence and ultimately, Group 4 and Irving Welsh? I mean like those experiments with rats stuffed in a cage, etc.

Seriously, concrete tower blocks as utopia? What happened to all this experimental architecture you have previously covered, Atelier Bow Wow, Unitary Urbanism et al?

If you want to provocatively champion an unpopular idea, how about "Lebensraum" instead? As in, enough space for a garden and some peace of mind?

[kementari2.livejournal.com]

If you want to provocatively champion an unpopular idea, how about "Lebensraum" instead? As in, enough space for a garden and some peace of mind?

Hmm yes, I call Manchukuo!

politicized utopia

[commoniser.livejournal.com]

in singapore, our public housing estates are managed by town councils most of which are directly vested by the ruling party..these estates are maintained on a regular basis and upgraded in terms of private and communal amenities through various enhancement programs to benefit most unit dwellers every now and then, of course through our taxpayers monies..d strategy is quite clear n simple: to relentlessly instil a sense of pride in the unit dwellers of their private and public spaces and to create the illusion of ownership..furthermore the structure of imposing fines for every little individual lapses here and there (again policed by the town councils) makes the utopian scheme even more compelling..

as a social experiment through more than 50 years of its making, the public housing scheme here is a resounding success with more than 80% of the total population and at least 3-4 consecutive generations fully conditioned to thrive in high-rise high-density living.

even in other asian countries like china and hongkong, i'm sure it would have been a very different story.

PS: where did u manage 2 get those posters? cool stuffs really!

[nickink.livejournal.com]

Yes! I relate to this very much, Nick.

When I first lived in korea, it took a long time for me to disassociate high-rise buildings from ideas of poverty, alienation, threat, fear and repressive conformism. But koreans I met were completely thrown by this - for them, the apartment blocks represented aspirational, modern, stylish, and most interestingly of all, socially-binding communities.

The typical modern Korean apartment complex would be 7 or 8 15-storey buildings, clustered around a beautifully maintained play area for the children, often with an attached convenience store, DVD/comic rental place, dry cleaners even, and finally, a little hut populated 24 hours-a-day by a friendly old man or two whose job was to wander around making sure everything was safe and well kept. Dense, yes, but with a feeling of community and shared responsibility and reliance that I've never found in my western life amongst the semi-detacheds.

Many of the Brits I worked with complained that the apartments were all characterless, identical rabbit-hutches (though they really aren't that small, not perhaps as small as in Japan), but I never saw it that way personally. And the design of interior space also spoke of 'togetherness'. Unlike the boxy, compartmentalised western house, all the rooms kind of open onto a large central living/kitchen area, so that wherever you are, you feel connected and often in sight of other people in the apartment.

Now that I'm back in the UK, I find these things quite high amongst the many aspects of my old Korean life that I miss.

[(Anonymous)]

Ever been to NYC? High rise living is basically as aspirational luxury as it gets. Which is why none of this "high rises as poverty" makes sense to me. All over the area, high rise = for well to do people. Suburban houses are owned by the schlubby middle class, and rented by the poor. Housing projects exist, but the population that lives in them is pretty minimal since most of the buildings have been torn down in the past 15 years.

sarawak, sibu, rajang, kapit

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

Perhaps instead of looking to the '70s for our inspiration, we should look much further into our tribal past, and instead of building tall, we should build long (http://www.galenfrysinger.com/iban_longhouse.htm). As a child I remember seeing the Ibans dance the Najat in these. Many of them still had -- hanging from the rafters, draped in the curling smoke -- rattan baskets full of bone-grey, eye-sockets agape, skulls; supposedly those of Japanese soldiers, missionaries, and rival tribesmen.

MOOOOOOOOOOOOM

[microworlds.livejournal.com]

Re: MOOOOOOOOOOOOM

[count-vronsky.livejournal.com]

*ahem...

You'll navajo how much I lo-o-ove you,,,

hah hah hah!

[eclipsedeyes.livejournal.com]

See also the Estonian film Autumn Ball!

http://frankiesayscollapse.wordpress.com/2008/08/16/film-karlovy-vary-autumn-ball/

[(Anonymous)]

Anonymous strikes again.

"Kumakoji" - I'm not sure if it was intentional or a slip-up but I like it when you refer to middle class housing communities as a "Sul de Cac".

"Momus" - you said "Grant Morrison", the article says "Blake Morrison". I was bitterly disappointed. I wish Grant was working for The Guardian...or maybe not...I'm not sure.

Great article btw. Good job Momus - for a while I thought we lost you all the way into the rabbit hole of inane hipsterism. Contrarian as hell, as always, but at least you make an interesting point.

-RE

[kementari2.livejournal.com]

tell tales of communal bonhomie rather than spouting clichés of concrete anomie.

Much love for your linguistics here. Two different roots, but instant success as a dichotomous pair I'd never seen before!

[kementari2.livejournal.com]

Interesting post. I'm all for encouraging - and thus effecting - a sense of community pride in high-density homes.

I do see some problems with it, though, which are often resolved by stand-alone homes.

First, when living in an apartment you have little say about what chemicals you are exposed to. If management decides to spray pesticides, perfumed carpet cleaners, etc. around the place, they will do it despite the health issues or wishes (and sometimes even without the knowledge) of the residents. This is uncomfortable, dangerous, and sometimes life-altering for many people. Many cannot risk this.

Second, living in an apartment certainly needn't alienate you from people, but it easily alienates you from (non-people) nature. I feel terrible when I can't observe, enjoy, learn from, and directly identify with nature on a basic, experiential level. One solution to this is clearly to have high-density living intermingled with beautiful grounds, like on many college campuses. In my experience, campus life was an ideal mixture of high-density, community-oriented, pedestrian-friendly, plant-intensive community architecture.

[inuitmonster.livejournal.com]

"Red Road" is a funny film... the publicity makes it seem like it is going to be about the horror of the panopticon state or the huge tower blocks, but this is just a smokescreen. It's depiction of the tower blocks in the end is far more neutral.