Ship of Fools: Tower blocks

Thread: Tower blocks Board: Oblivion / Ship of Fools.

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Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

Everyone knows Britain has a housing shortage. Is there a good reason why no-one is talking about tower blocks as a solution? (Or am I just not paying attention?)

I associate the tower blocks of the fifties and sixties with all sorts of social problems, but I thought that's because they were used for slum clearance, so that all the pre-existing problems of the slums were compounded with a sense of alienation and being dragged from your roots.

I lived in the Czech Republic for a while, where around a third of the population lives in tower blocks. From what I was given to understand, they are not, despite the stereotypes, particularly unpleasant to live in - the chief problem is that they were built on the cheap and will all fall down in the next thirty years.

Granted, tower blocks obstruct views but policymakers don't generally have a problem with ginormous office blocks, which are more likely to be erected in a historically significant locale.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

I'm mostly guessing, but I suspect that to comply with modern-day standards to do with fire prevention and disabled access, as well as building codes, tower blocks end up being pretty expensive compared to low-rise blocks even when land is scarce. That means they tend to be prestige products rather than affordable housing.

Posted by Dafyd (# 5549) on :

I think the idea that developers are driven by the need for housing, as opposed to the speculations of potential investors, may not be entirely accurate.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

And why don't they refurbish all those empty office blocks to make affordable/social housing?

Tidy, well soundproofed, safe tower blocks are great to live in - and they have super views.

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

They do make BBQs in the garden a bit tricky though don't they? And I'm not sure where I'd store my bikes.

Posted by Augustine the Aleut (# 1472) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Boogie:
And why don't they refurbish all those empty office blocks to make affordable/social housing?

Tidy, well soundproofed, safe tower blocks are great to live in - and they have super views.

I have a real estate acquaintance in Toronto trying to do this right now, and finding out that engineering and architectural standards are giving her quite a headache. The simple provision of plumbing for residential as opposed to office use, and then.... kitchens!!! She informs me that converting her older building (postwar) is better than a 1970s building, as they were more sturdily constructed and less-likely to have asbestos or UFFI insulation, which require very expensive removal. The units, once intended for less-than-rich cultural types, are now being priced for the corporate set.

It might be more financially feasible for larger tower blocks, where financing could be more easily obtained from banks for a multi-year, multi-building, project.

Posted by Eutychus (# 3081) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'm not sure where I'd store my bikes.

That's what balconies are for (and residential tower blocks have them here).

Posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider (# 76) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'm not sure where I'd store my bikes.
That's what balconies are for (and residential tower blocks have them here).

I'd worry they'd rust.

Posted by Bullfrog. (# 11014) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:

quote:
Originally posted by Eutychus:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'm not sure where I'd store my bikes.
That's what balconies are for (and residential tower blocks have them here).
I'd worry they'd rust.

I'd just establish a designated storage room on the ground floor, with bike racks. It's pretty common around here. I guess with a larger building, you'd have to have a larger storage area, but it doesn't seem to me to be that difficult.

Posted by crunt (# 1321) on :

I first moved into a tower block (or apartment block) in 2006 on the outskirts of the Korean city Daegu. And I freaking LOVED it. My building was about 20 stories high and one of many built around a small park. All the shops and services were close at hand, and although we were nowhere near a subway station there were regular buses trundling by and taxis were not unaffordable.

Up until then, I had bought, leased and rented a variety of properties in New Zealand as well as living in Britain for a long time, but when I took the keys of my tenth floor city apartment on the fringes of Daegu I felt like a real grown up for the very first time. It was exciting!

I'm living in a concrete terraced house now, and I'd swap it for a high-rise apartment tomorrow (especially if it had a pool!).

Posted by crunt (# 1321) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'm not sure where I'd store my bikes.

In Korea, people chained their bikes to the handrails in the stairwells.

Posted by Siegfried (# 29) on :

quote:
Originally posted by crunt:

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
I'm not sure where I'd store my bikes.
In Korea, people chained their bikes to the handrails in the stairwells.

In Soviet Russia, the bikes chained YOU to the handrails.

Anyone? Anyone?

No?

I'm old.

Posted by Matt Black (# 2210) on :

No, I get it - old enough plus at one time last century married to a Russian

Posted by Huts (# 13017) on :

And in today's Evening Standard a new residential tower block, tallest in UK.

Evening Standard Residential Tower

Maybe in the Uk you could only build it in London with its sky high house prices.

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

High Rise can present problems in some British cities (sight-lines for listed buildings, etc) but medium rise can be a perfect solution: not so high that walking up/down isn't an option if the lifts break down, fire equipment can cope, and balconies are possible.

Where many local authority blocks went wrong was that no one felt any sense of ownership for the common areas, so first they were vandalised and then no one made any effort to clern them up.

What is required is a building with a concierge, basement laundry, every apartment to have storage room, underground parking space, etc.

Posted by leo (# 1458) on :

A friend of mine used to live in a tower block in Stevenage. 13th floor (and handy for St.George's Church) I stayed there quite often.

'Nice middle class people'.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

I was brought up on Marsh Farm in Luton. The whole estate is a hell hole but the high rise flats always had the worse reputation, even in my youth in the 80s they were known for drug dealing and prostitution and the stairwells stank of urine. 2 of my siblings lived in flats there, my older brother still does, they once had a murdered prostitute found in the rubbish shute of his block. He lives there because he has no choice, he has learning difficulties and has been unemployed since the factory he worked in closed down in the early 90s.
Tower blocks may well work in nice, respectable areas but in poor urban environments they are a magnet for crime.
Safety is also an issue, fire especially. It is very hard to evacuate a tower block and I'd imagine, from my own experience of living on a rough council estate, that fires are more common in housing in deprived areas.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

I lived in a council run tower block for 4 or 5 years. Plenty of room in my hall way for my bike. I was happy there.

Posted by Boogie (# 13538) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Karl: Liberal Backslider:
And I'm not sure where I'd store my bikes.

My son lives on the 3rd floor in the centre of Heidelberg and carries his bikes upstairs! One he keeps at the bottom of his bed and one on the landing [Smile]

Posted by Schroedinger's cat (# 64) on :

Well they are doing reasonably high-rise in the Battersea Power Station development and they don't have problems with the keeping bikes or BBQs, because people who live there will have servants to deal with running up and down the stairs for them.

I used to live in East London, near a large council estate. The whole estate had a poor reputation, but the two towers were the worst - they couldn't get people to move into them. In the end, they demolished the whole estate, and built low-rise properties instead. I believe that the new properties were liked and well looked after (we moved out before they had finished the work).

So I think the problem with high-rise social housing is that things like the lifts break, and don't get fixed; you cannot keep an eye on your car or kids if they are outside - and you cannot get to them quickly if there is a problem. So high-rise needs really good maintenance, a resident porter, some degree of safe area around the base. All of which make them expensive, and not so suited to social housing. Of course, if people are happy to pay half a million up, and (I presume) 10K a year in service charge, these things can be provided.

Without all of this, as others have said, nobody feels responsible for the communal areas, so they get neglected and misused.

Of course, some of this is also the case in a street of houses - there are still communal parts, and there is a responsibility that those in the road need to take. However, in a street, there might be, say, 50 houses, and most people, if they decide to be antisocial, will impact themselves and maybe a few others. In a high-rise, there might be 500, and if they decide to be antisocial, it can impact the whole block.

Posted by North East Quine (# 13049) on :

Glasgow University have a current research project, examining life in the multi-story flats.

I believe one of their findings is that the flats were expensive to heat, with winds buffeting them, and when a family could not afford adequate heating, the flats became damp and unhealthy.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

I lived on the 11th floor of a tower block for five years and loved it. Great views, despite being in the middle of a grey overspill estate. The main snag was the lifts, which as well as often stinking of urine, didn't work in windy weather because the doors were blown open away from the contacts. They have now demolished two of the four blocks where I lived, and refurbished the others with security doors and proper concierge supervision. That is the way to go.

Unfortunately most of these refurbishment schemes depend on selling the flats at unaffordable prices (even if they are officially, and Orwellianly, 'affordable')

Posted by L'organist (# 17338) on :

The problem frequently comes back to how people view their housing and the surroundings in which they live.

A good book on this is Alice Coleman's Utopia on trial: Vision and reality in planned housing which has some fascinating information about how how housing design influences the way people treat their surroundings.

Posted by chris stiles (# 12641) on :

The thing is that medium rise blocks can have the same housing density without the problems associated with high rise developments (generally the streets around high rises end up being fairly sketchy).

However, in the main the only place that would need this kind of density in the medium term is London - and there is a strong argument that we'd be better off spending the same money on regional development instead.

Posted by Angloid (# 159) on :

Streets of terrace houses are the typical British style, and maintain a reasonable density of population. Replacing these with tower blocks is never going to suit families, though they are often ideal for single professionals and students. But the most disastrous solution is to replace inner-city terraces with suburban style bungalows in their own gardens. Not only do they look out of place, they destroy community. The lower density means that shops and other facilities are less viable. Many terraces can be refurbished to a high standard; others can be replaced with a similar design (maybe incorporating a garden and off-street parking, although encouraging car use in city centres is not a good thing.)

Posted by Baptist Trainfan (# 15128) on :

You might say that this is the downside of the "Garden City" movement, which has always said that "a house with a garden" is something to be aspired to. Outside Scotland (and Sloane Square!), posh people don't tend to live in tenement blocks.

This desire is leading both to the building of tiny houses and gardens, and the gobbling up of scarce land.

Posted by Heavenly Anarchist (# 13313) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Angloid:
Streets of terrace houses are the typical British style, and maintain a reasonable density of population. Replacing these with tower blocks is never going to suit families, though they are often ideal for single professionals and students. But the most disastrous solution is to replace inner-city terraces with suburban style bungalows in their own gardens. Not only do they look out of place, they destroy community. The lower density means that shops and other facilities are less viable. Many terraces can be refurbished to a high standard; others can be replaced with a similar design (maybe incorporating a garden and off-street parking, although encouraging car use in city centres is not a good thing.)

I live in a 1950s terraced house on a council estate, though at least a third of the houses are in private hands these days. It is a very well designed estate with good sized houses with generous gardens (especially at the back near the surrounding fields where I live, we have over 100 foot garden), front gardens/drives and several back outhouses for storage (the 50s designers were anxious about working class sensitivities and decided to supply us with inside and outside toilets!). The post-war was a period of thoughtful design on new estates, the estate is small and we have a central green park, primary school, play areas and a shopping parade. In recent years a pavilion centre has been added to the park. Not a high rise in sight and the flats over/by the shops are only 3 storeys high. It is the best designed council estate I've been on.

Posted by To The Pain (# 12235) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Glasgow University have a current research project, examining life in the multi-story flats.

I believe one of their findings is that the flats were expensive to heat, with winds buffeting them, and when a family could not afford adequate heating, the flats became damp and unhealthy.

And, of course, ye cannae fling pieces oot a twenty-story flat.

Posted by Enoch (# 14322) on :

It's long been my suspicion that pre-1914 terraced houses achieve comparable densities to high rise flats, and for most of us are much nicer to live in.

The only disadvantage they have is that they were built before cars became widespread. So the car has to go in the street.

Where the space gets wasted in more recent developments is:-
1. Not laying developments out in rectangular streets.
2. Consequentially too much pointless grass verge everywhere.
3. Open plan front lawns. What's the point of a lawn you can't sit on?
4. Unintelligent accommodation of the motor vehicle, especially the waste of not putting house over the space occupied by vehicles at ground level.

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by North East Quine:
Glasgow University have a current research project, examining life in the multi-story flats.

I believe one of their findings is that the flats were expensive to heat, with winds buffeting them, and when a family could not afford adequate heating, the flats became damp and unhealthy.

There used to be a group of tower blocks in Govan nicknamed "the Dampies". Apparently their plans were copied from a design used very successfully in ... Algiers.

I was surfing through Glasgow on Streetview recently and was amazed to see how many tower blocks were missing (or had been painted pink and had funny hats put on them).

Posted by Cod (# 2643) on :

quote:
Originally posted by Enoch:
It's long been my suspicion that pre-1914 terraced houses achieve comparable densities to high rise flats, and for most of us are much nicer to live in.

Can't agree with this. A properly planned and built high-rise development allows space for all. Across the world, high rises represent higher quality accomodation than the alternative. The UK is the exception to this, chiefly because high rises were put up on the cheap to deal with an acute housing shortage. I have heard that despite the cost constraints, flats in council blocks had bigger floor areas than the terraces they replaced, or the box maisonettes that have replaced them.

If you can put aside the heritage cachet of Victorian terraced houses, it becomes clear that they're poky, crammed together, and ugly - and this is although the worst of them have been demolished by slum clearance programmes and the Luftwaffe.

Roupell Street? Characterful in a Jack the Ripper way, perhaps.

Posted by Ricardus (# 8757) on :

If - as some seem to be saying - tower blocks work better for the moderately well off, that might be a point in their favour. Rich people, when they live in houses, take up more space than poor people.

quote:
Originally posted by Cod:
If you can put aside the heritage cachet of Victorian terraced houses, it becomes clear that they're poky, crammed together, and ugly - and this is although the worst of them have been demolished by slum clearance programmes and the Luftwaffe.

Also tower blocks tend to have parking, instead of being urban country lanes where wing mirrors go to die.

Round here there has been a massive stand-off for the past five years between the local council, which wants to knock down several rows of the nasty end of Victorian terraces, and the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles, who has never been to the area in question but who wants to keep them for misty-eyed heritage reasons.

Everyone who has ever lived in those houses, as well as the public inquiry that Mr Pickles insisted on holding, wants the terraces destroyed because they are damp, poky and hard to heat, and replaced with modern houses that aren't rotting from the ground up. However because Mr Pickles is a Grade A moron he is still blocking development despite all the inquiries he has forced going against him.

Posted by Gamaliel (# 812) on :

Like Angloid, I had a good experience living in a high-rise block, but I was single and had no family. I had a spare room and could put people up. Eventually, a mate of mine moved in so we could save money by sharing the rent. He gave up his flat a few floors up.

I was earning, but not a great deal, and it was fine. When I first moved in, though, there was a concierge on the ground floor and she kept things spic and span in both blocks - there were two together on a windswept hill in the middle of a council estate ... although it was the 'better-end' of the council estates as it were.

Thanks to council cut-backs, the concierge moved out and the flats soon declined. The lifts were full of pee - and sometimes worse. There were needles and drug-addicts on the stair wells.

It got a lot worse after I'd moved, but it was a friendly place - we all knew the neighbours and people were chatty in the lifts.

If some of these blocks were properly concierged and looked after they'd be decent places to live.

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