| Comment | Absolutely. Spence’s blocks are actually an exception - they contain design flourishes and their use of space was less economical than, say, the sheerpoint blocks in Red Road. I’m of the opinion that high rise building doesn’t automatically generate social problems. We know this because other high rise developments in Europe have been quite sucessful and remain popular. In fact if you read Valerie Wright and Lynn Abram’s recent book on the Glasgow high rises you can see that up to the 80s these homes were well recieved by their occupants, mostly. The problems came when the council and central government divested and cut off support for social housing in the 80s, just kept these places as a means to dump the poor.
I called them arrogant because the architects in the Housing Committee in the late 60s and 70s often slagged their counterparts elsewhere for building with beauty in mind and when confronted with the lack of natural light in one of their blocks, laughed and said tbat Glaswegians enjoyed living like that - among other things. They though they were doing the right thing, but in a very condescending and paternalistic way. |
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