Glasgow: High-Rise Housing, Estates and Communities in the Post-War Period

In the wake of an unparalleled housing crisis at the end of World War II, Glasgow Corporation rehoused the hundreds of thousands of private tenants who were living in overcrowded and unsanitary conditions in unimproved Victorian slums. Adopting the designs, the materials and the technologies of modernity they built into the sky, developing high rise estates on vacant sites within the city and on its periphery. This book uniquely focuses on the peoples’ experience of this modern approach to housing, drawing on oral histories and archival materials to reflect on the long-term narrative and significance of high rise homes in the cityscape. It positions them as places of identity formation, intimacy and well-being. With discussions on interior design and consumption, gender roles, children, the elderly, privacy, isolation, social networks and nuisance, Glasgow examines the connections between architectural design, planning decisions and housing experience to offer some timely and prescient observations on the success and failure of this very modern housing solution at a moment when high flats are simultaneously denigrated in the social housing sector while being built afresh in the private sector. Glasgow is aimed at an academic readership, including postgraduate students, scholars and researchers. It will be of interest to social, cultural and urban historians particularly interested in the United Kingdom.