Municipal Dreams

A narrative history of council housingIn every city and town across Britain, there are swathes of housing provided by the state - from the 'homes for heroes' built after the First World War to the tower blocks of the sixties, in styles ranging from arts and crafts to brutalist. As so much of this housing is privatised and some demolished, historian John Boughton recovers the story of the hopes of the men and women who dreamed of good homes for all and the travails such ambition suffered. Municipal Dreams presents an alternative history of the United Kingdom. This history begins in the slum clearances of the late nineteenth century and the aspirations of those who would build anew. He looks at how and why the state's duty to house decently its people became central to our politics. Traversing the nation, Boughton offers an architectural tour of some of the best and most remarkable of our housing estates, as well as many accounted ordinary; he asks us to...