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238
a satisfactory solution to the housing problem. Substitution of
the small dwelling with its own little garden by munificent architectural
erections, although perhaps justified on grounds of higher
density occupation, has signally failed medically, economically or
socially to provide the ideal milieu for family life. Experience has
shown that better results are achieved by planners and architects
with smaller schemes which have to be "shoe-horned" into existing
situations than with the larger monolithic developments, the
aesthetic designs of which are beginning to be adversely influenced
by fire precaution regulations and the demand for newer building
materials and methods of construction.
It is fair comment to say that vandalism, on today's scale, is a
recent phenomenon and is a concomitant of the large, high density,
high-rise urban estate. Moreover, the introduction of costly
"damage-proof' appurtenances is a treatment of symptoms which
merely serves to emphasise the inadequacy of such schemes and
their unsympathetic environments. Effects of this modern tendency
towards wilful and deliberate vandalism are legion, not the least
of which is the growing number of dissatisfied council tenants
seeking alternative accommodation by all means at their disposal
thereby adding difficulties to the already overburdened housing
departments.
Other problems harassing local authorities in the London area
include growing lists of applications for accommodation which
are directly attributable to increasing economic pressures which
preclude residents from purchasing homes of their own. An even
more serious dilemma confronts the G.L.C. In order to provide
"elbow room" in which to tackle overcrowding, homelessness,
housing shortage and deterioration of property it is, with the best
of intentions, decanting businesses and economically active persons
(principally skilled and semi-skilled workers) into provincial
"new" towns. Unfortunately, as a result of this denudation of the
capital's centres and the dissipation of some of its vital working
population, we are witnessing the break-up of the social structure
of communities, an event obviously not envisaged at the planning
stage.
It is common knowledge that most people wish to live in town
centres with all their undoubted advantages and aids to good living,
but the environment needs to be adjusted to residents' requirements
and not be the subject of abstruse, academic and intellectual
exercises. Recognition of this fact by authorities is already apparent
in the increasing number of designated "amenity area"
schemes and the delegation of many responsibilities to "tenants"
associations. However, with a continuance of the present metropolitan
housing policy there will be a loss of artisans in the middle