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Communities - the physical and human

Published by Beth Peakall on Friday, March 14th, 2008 at 9:51 am

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I caught part of a radio 4 programme on housing. The programme was talking about the demolition of the culture of cities by the demolition of its houses. Part of it was about the physical aspect and part was about the human element. A lot of blame went to various city planners in the 1930s, by the way.

This brought to mind the article “The Art of Persuasion” in Inside Housing (22nd Feb). Coast and country Housing are planning to demolish what, by all accounts, are badly deteriorated 1950s pre-fabs and replace them with new bungalows. So, a group of old houses will go, changing the physical face of the area. But the people will be re-housed - and with their neighbours as before. So we retain the human element - the support, the care and the sense of the area remains. What a marvellous lesson we could all learn from! Yes, it took time to persuade tenants to move. But now they are eager to move to “their neighbourhood”. The next time a demolition and replacement of housing takes place, I hope they will follow the Coast and Country Housing example.