THE SOCIAL-HOUSING PROBLEM
figure 1.2 - Park Hill, Sheffield
In developed countries, self-build is often a consequence of social-housing failing to respond to the needs of the individuals that must inhabit the numerous projects. In the 20th century, widespread urban destruction in the aftermath of World Wars I and II resulted in severe housing shortages, which were left for the state to resolve. Legislation in the form of the 1930 Housing Act in the UK and the Nation Housing Act of 1934 in the USA was implemented but it wasn’t until 1961 that the government moved from the sole provision of housing to attempts to create social cohesion, which in the majority of schemes such as Park Hill, continued to fail. People become statistics, as that is unfortunately the easiest way in which the responsible governing bodies on limited budgets can deal with the vast number of people who require housing. Design is often based on the preconceptions of what the architect perceives the user wants. The architect Giancarlo De Carlo summarised this in the Italian anarchist monthly, Volontà:
3. Ward, C (1984), Housing: An Anarchist Approach, London, Freedom Press, pp.9
“The state is the principle of authority -- an abstraction masquerading as something real, and can have no real contact with the concrete reality -- man himself -- whom it treats and manipulates as though he were just an abstraction. The home is an organism in a direct relationship to man. It is his external environment, his affirmation in space. Thus the home cannot have any relationship to the state, which recognises the man not as an individual but as a number.”3
4. Turner, J F C and Fichter R (1972); Freedom To Build: Dweller Control of the Housing Process, New York, Macmillan, pp.vii
Housing viewed as a physical product can be judged only by physical criteria. Conventional ‘housing standards’ such as occupant-area ratios, air circulation, plumbing facilities, and so forth, are all too often calculated on a hypothetical or an empirical basis in an unrelated situation. Turner advocates that, “Such measures of value are based on false premises. [...] Genuine housing value lies in the ability of dwellers to create and maintain environments which serve both their material and their psychological needs.”4
5. Ward, C (1984), Housing: An Anarchist Approach,
Colin Ward, a renowned urbanist and architect who was also deeply involved in the anarchist movement, long promoted the concept of dweller control. Giving the user the power to control the decisions relating to the design of their environment can be enormously beneficial to individual and social wellbeing, whilst denying the user the right to involvement can be detrimental to personal fulfilment.5 Giving the user control through participation in public-sector housing may cost more in the short term, but in the long 4