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The great ecotown land grab

Glancey and Greer in The Guardian

Whatever the government says, they will need to be served by even more cars and - this being England - out-of-town supermarkets. In any case, how can a town be called "eco" when its existence requires the loss of green land and a spread of new homes away from established towns, as so many of these proposals do?

Octavia Hill revisited

Tristram Hunt considers the legacy of the social reformer

"And as ministers grapple with re-engineering the welfare state, it is not Keynes, Marx or Giddens who provide the inspiration, but Hill, the most versatile of late Victorian social entrepreneurs."

"As the era of Fordist bureaucracies crumbles, the space for pre-statist social enterprise is re-emerging. Yet the problem with this 1900s civic settlement is its dependence on a sense of Christian duty. Hill saw herself as a lonely, Puritan missionary toiling among the fallen. "

Dreams set in concrete

Forty years ago, work began on the construction of Thamesmead, 'a 21st century town'. But has it lived up to its promise, and what does its future hold? Michael Collins reports in The Guardian.

Row over 'street in sky' estate

The future of a significant modern housing project is under threat.

Robin Hood Gardens was completed in 1972. It was intended as an example of the "streets in the sky" concept - social housing characterised by broad aerial walkways in long concrete blocks. The estate seemed destined for demolition but has won a reprieve.

The Building Design website has begun a petition which it hopes to present to English Heritage to get the "seminal" building listed. Lord Rogers has said:

"Peter and Alison Smithson built two seminal buildings in London - the Economist Building in St James' Street and Robin Hood Gardens in Tower Hamlets - both as good, if not better, than any other modern building in Britain. Whilst the Economist Building has been maintained and upgraded, Robin Hood Gardens has been appallingly neglected…”

Migrant housing myths exposed

The housing pathways of new immigrants

Some of the enduring myths about immigration and social housing in the UK are debunked in a new report by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

"The new immigrants that we talked to were rarely skilled players of the welfare system. They typically had little choice and few options about where they lived and were often making do in poor conditions."

See also David Robinson in People, Place & Policy:

European Union Accession State Migrants in Social Housing in England

"The findings to emerge from this analysis are presented and contrasted against stories of unfairness and injustice in the allocation of social housing.  What is revealed is a yawning gap between perception and reality. "

3 MILLION NEW HOMES OR WHAT?

Monbiot on Housing Bill

"There is a legitimate debate to be had about where and how these homes are built. However - though it hooks in my green guts to admit it - built they must be."

David Hepher:new works

New works by David Hepher are currrently on display at the Flowers East Gallery. Hepher's paintings are created on a base of concrete. More recently he has begun to introduce a photographic element, balancing, as it were, the neutral graphic image of the buildings with the painterly surfaces created by the concrete and the graffiti.

City Survivors

Anne Power: Guardian Society Profile

Activist and writer tells Lynsey Hanley that shortsighted urban housing developments dominated by one- and two-bed apartments are breaking up communities by driving poorer families out of the inner city

"Families are the litmus test of whether a city is really working. If a city isn't working for families it's very, very difficult to make the city work."

Anne Power's City Survivors: Bringing Up Children in Disadvantaged Neighbourhoods is published by Policy Press. See books column.

What makes new housing developments communities?

The government wants 3m new homes by 2020. But will they be user-friendly houses or soulless boxes?

Patrick Barkham on two developments in Kent.

"Developers spend far more time thinking about whether they are using Italian granite in the bathroom than thinking about what kind of place they are creating..."

Poorest bear the brunt...

The problems of everyday life

The latest report from CCJS offers a detailed picture of the nature, pattern and impact of people's experience of civil justice problems, along with information on crime victimisation. It explores the nature and degree of connections between social exclusion, criminal victimisation and the experience of civil justice problems.

'While all the main political parties have placed a huge emphasis on tackling crime, the far more widespread experiences of injustice have often been overlooked.'