Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48764 in Books
• Published on: 2008-01-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Review
* "A rich, thought-provoking book" Observer* "Estates, a journey through the world of British social housing, is both a history and a personal reckoning" Financial Times* "A wonderful book ... explains with verve and insight how one's mental landscape is moulded by physical environment ... Simple lessons for planners, architects and developers leap off the pages " Guardian

Telegraph (Andy Miller)
Hanley's Estates is many things - social history, memoir, mild
polemic... honest, informed and never whimsical... well-timed and truthful

Sunday Times
"Articulate, savage, poignant, engaged and vividly descriptive"

Customer Reviews

You do need to read this.
This is an important book which illuminates the lie of the New Labour meritocracy deal - in short, how can one aspire to a better lifestyle when conditions conspire to make you unaware that anything better might exist, and simultaneously rob you of any opportunity to succeed?

In my time I've lived and taught on sink estates, and if anything Hanley understates the case - I've worked with kids in The North East who at 18 had never been further than the end of the street, and moreover didn't feel any urge to. Hanley captures this well with her 'wall' metaphor.

However, worthy as it is, the mix of personal history, invective and evidence that Hanley presents is indigestible - she isn't really readable. Not the point, of course, but still so.

A unique first-person account of our post-war 'ghettoes'
Having lived on two council estates in my time, I recognise much of the landscape that Lynsey Hanley describes. As the title suggests, the descriptions of her own experiences of living on estates are emotional, often angry, sometimes comic, but not sensational. Hanley also provides a potted history of the rise and rapid decline of the estate, both architecturally and socially. She goes to town on the planners and politicians responsible for cheaply constructed, poorly maintained housing, as well as the arch modernists who, she maintains, put high ideals ahead of basic well-being. This book seems to be aimed at a general audience, but social historians and town planners would find value in Hanley's passionate and vivid account of post-war planning gone wrong. Highly recommended!

You gotta go there to come back
This is a fascinating view of life on council estates. Lynsey Hanley grew up on a vast estate in Birmingham, and now lives in Tower Hamlets. (It appears that part of her motivation for staying in the Tower Hamlets estate is to become an agent of change.) Her key arguments are:
-There is a common view that most people who live on Council estates are by nature anti-social. She argues that the condition of many estates is a factor encouraging anti-social behaviour. If you have been dumped in sub-standard housing on the edge of town, what motivation do you have to be a model citizen?
-Public housing is not necessarily bad. Some other European countries achieve a better standard than the UK. (However, she overlooks the banlieux of Paris, which manage to achieve racial ghettos as effectively as anywhere in this country.)
-Generally council houses are better to live in than council flats
-Architects and planners are past masters at producing award-winning monstrosities which they themselves would not live in (other than as a publicity stunt)
[These last two are not new views and are definitely not rocket science. However, it does absolutely no harm to emphasise them.]

The strongest metaphor in the book is "the wall in the head", which was originally used to describe the cultural conflict between East and West Germans long after the Berlin Wall disappeared.

There is an extensive explanation of how the provision of municipal housing paralleled the rise and fall of the Welfare State overall.

A challenging view, which makes you question your assumptions as to why council estates are the way they are.