Planned Housing as a Social Trap
Abstract
Viewpoint ALICE COLEMAN '... men or organisations or whole societies get themselves started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they can see no easy way to back out of. ..' (J. Platt, 'Social Traps', 1973)1 SOCIAL TRAP as conceived by Platt seems tailor-made to fit the plight of British housing after 40 years of official control. Our massive housing machine was switched on to achieve five laudable objectives, but in practice it has created five great failures which are proving extremely difficult to switch off. Solutions are not at all obvious. Many people are calling forA even more of the well-intentioned government intervention that unleashed the problems in the first place, but this is hardly likely to guarantee success. We should not pursue what Roger James has called 'solutioneering' for its own sake,2 but go back to the problems for a harder, clearer analysis and a more open-minded search for more effective approaches. The purpose of this paper is to outline four of the problems and report more fully on the fifth, which has been the subject of a large research project funded by the Joseph Rowntree