Unchallenged Myths. They lie heavy. L’imaginaire is our worst enemy. A paradise,what an idea! A guardian, still on duty.

(Stereolab, OLV26)

‘A paradise, what an idea!’ The postwar council estate and ‘Utopia’.Ian Waites. University of Lincoln.

… the desolation that is felt at the realisation of the maddest of all Utopian schemes, the open-planned housing complex, where streets are replaced by empty spaces from which towers arise, towers bearing neither the mark of a communal order, nor any visible record of the individual house … both community and the individual are abolished ...  Roger Scruton, 1979

‘the persuasive power of architects who believed in the coming Utopia when everyone would live in cheap, prefabricated flat-roofed multiple dwellings – heaven on earth’

(Lynsey Hanley, Estates: An Intimate History, Granta: 2007, p.49)

housing market renewal

‘… It became increasingly obvious during the 1970s that either something was very wrong with the people or something was terribly wrong with the new homes. Because, put simply, the British did not like the utopias into which they were being so unceremoniously decanted.’

(Nicholas Boys Smith, The 1970s. The decade when Britain’s housing utopia turned into a nightmare, http://www.conservativehome.com/platform/2014/12/nicholas-boys-smith-the-1970s-the-decade-when-britains-housing-utopia-turned-into-a-nightmare.html) 

'It would not be unfair to describe the creation of post-war estates as the work of well-heeled utopians ignoring what the people wanted in favour of what they thought the people should want.'

(Nicholas Boys Smith and Alex Morton, Create Streets, Policy Exchange 2013, p.26). 

‘the private virtues of the small suburban villa, the soi-disant cottage or the worker’s terraced house.’

(ibid, p.27)

‘I think it’s all rather wonderful. We have a good home, good friends, and we shall always be happy up here. The Council … have done a very good job.’

(Gainsborough Evening News, Tuesday 29 December 1964)