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1. Introduction – Tower Blocks, sustainable development, and high-density housing

During the writing of this report we met several people who were genuinely surprised by the idea that the phrases ‘tower blocks’ and ‘sustainable development’ could occur in the same context. Yet it is just such connections that need to be made if sustainable development is to become more than an interesting idea. For the purposes of this report we shall use the loose but widely accepted definition of sustainable development as development which successfully integrates environmental, social and economic priorities, and helps those involved meet their needs now and in the future. Tower Blocks certainly have environmental aspects as well as economic and social ones: to consider their sustainability or otherwise therefore makes very good sense at this time.
In our discussions, tower blocks were described by people who lived in them in enormously varied ways. While negative perceptions were commonplace, they were by no means universal, and many residents were proud of where they lived and happy to be there. Yet the only time that tower blocks tend to be seen in the media are at times of crisis or when they are being demolished.
An unconnected observer might thus be surprised to discover that there are still over 4000 such blocks, with perhaps 800,000 people living in them. Tower Blocks are indeed places where people live, and many more such places are needed. Government forecasts suggest that 4.4 million new households may form in England by 2016. Much of this growth will be is because young people are leaving home earlier, more people are getting divorced and people are living longer. The question of how and where these people will be housed is one of the most important environmental and social issues of the decade.
There is now widespread concern about the environmental implications of green-field house building. As people leave the cities and move into suburbs and rural areas, pressures increase on previously greenfield sites for housing and related services, and inner-city economies are weakened. Research published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (May 1999) warns that the revival of Britain’s cities is being threatened by ‘abandoned neighbourhoods’ where the demand for housing has collapsed.
The Government’s Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs published its report on housing in July 1998. One of the key recommendations was that most new homes should be built in suburban areas on brownfield land or in converted buildings, and that the provision of green field sites for development must be severely restricted. Shelter, the national housing campaign, also stressed in their 1998 report ‘An urban and rural renaissance’ that there is no need to destroy the countryside by building on greenfield land to provide houses for the homeless and those in bad housing.
The Government’s Urban Task Force are also calling for an ‘Urban renaissance’. Its recent report identifies many positive steps that can and are being taken, and sets out ten key objectives for urban policy up to 2021. The first of these is that ‘all urban neighbourhoods will be managed according to principles of sustainable development’. They also stress that public services should specifically address ‘the needs and aspirations of urban communities’ and that all urban areas should be managed ‘according to standards agreed by the local community’.
We would suggest that tower blocks are certainly urban neighbourhoods. They face numerous problems, many of which they share with other social housing. But there are also issues that are very specific to high-rise blocks, and consideration of these issues offers much to discussions about how to live in cities in the future.