The slums of the future

With the recession, the crash of the buy-to-let market, and a serious oversupply problem, many developers have stopped building flats. Those who have not stopped altogether have cut right back on numbers and redesigned schemes, substituting houses for apartments. Good.

Over the last few years, it has been my misfortune to see numerous proposals for new developments of apartment blocks. The name of the game has been to squeeze as many as flats as possible on to the site – with little thought, if any, as to the people who will live there.

High numbers are achieved by: over-massing of blocks – too high and too deep; producing tiny flats (Parker Morris would have had a fit); and appalling design generally, particularly as regards daylighting and outlook.

Many new flats are single aspect without any external space such as a balcony or terrace. For those of you who have not experienced living in such properties - I have - they are ghastly. In the summer, those facing south and west can become stiflingly hot with limited opening windows and no possibility of through ventilation. Those facing north are depressingly gloomy – OK for troglodytes, but enough to put normal humans on Prozac. In mixed tenure schemes, such dwellings are normally reserved for social housing – especially if they overlook a car park, busy main road or railway line.

In the sixties, single aspect houses were termed back-to-backs; they were deemed unfit under slum clearance legislation, irrespective of their condition. At least you could walk out of the door into the street and open air. Now we allow developers to get away with building single aspect homes many floors above the ground with no immediate outside access. Those who build or design them should be made to live in them to see just how awful they are.

Where the development of apartment blocks is still viable, planners should look carefully at layouts and reject proposals for single aspect properties – especially those facing north and/or without balconies or terraces. Even better perhaps government could issue guidance or regulations that precluded the development of such properties entirely.