page_title: Tower blocks in Great Britain
section_title: Current use
hierarchical_section_title: Tower blocks in Great Britain / Current use
caption_attribution_description: At the time of building, these blocks were the tallest residential units in Europe.
context_page_description: Tower blocks are high rise buildings for residential use. These blocks began to be built in Great Britain after the Second World War. The first residential tower block, "The Lawn", was constructed in Harlow, Essex in 1951; it is now a Grade II listed building. In many cases, tower blocks were seen as a "quick-fix" to cure problems caused by the existence of crumbling and unsanitary 19th-century dwellings or to replace buildings destroyed by German aerial bombing. It was argued that towers surrounded by public open space could provide for the same population density as the terraced housing and small private gardens they replaced, offering larger rooms and improved views whilst being cheaper to build.
  Initially, tower blocks were welcomed, and their excellent views made them popular living places. Later, as the buildings themselves deteriorated, they grew a reputation for being undesirable low cost housing, and many tower blocks saw rising crime levels, increasing their unpopularity. One response to this was the great increase in the number of housing estates built, which in turn brings its own problems.
context_section_description: In recent years, some council or ex-council high-rises in the United Kingdom, including Trellick Tower, Keeling House, and Sivill House, have become popular with young professionals due to their excellent views, desirable locations and architectural pedigrees, and now command high prices. There are plans to redevelop the Little London and Lovell Park areas on the fringes of Leeds city centre into luxury flats for 'young urban professionals'. The plans entail demolishing all of the council housing and refurbishing the highrise flats. This demand has led to many councils rethinking plans regarding their demolition.
  In Glasgow, similar initiatives have taken place – in 2011, the Glasgow Housing Association saved one of a cluster of three condemned tower blocks in the Ibrox area with the help of government grants to transform it into desirable rented housing for young professionals.  Glasgow itself has taken a more measured approach to its high-rise housing stock, eschewing the mass demolition programmes being practiced in other British cities – favouring selective refurbishment of estates with secure futures and on buildings in good structural condition, only razing towers where absolutely necessary.
  After a gap of around 30 years, new high-rise flats are once again being built in Belfast, Birmingham (some are for wealthy people, e.g. The Mailbox, others are student accommodation), Cardiff, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Bristol, and Newcastle upon Tyne; but this time sometimes for wealthy professionals, rather than the "lower classes." Their developers market these properties by using the American term 'apartment buildings', perhaps in an effort to distance these newer buildings from the older tower blocks from the 1950s and 1960s. These are usually taller than their older counterparts and generally built in and around these provincial city centres. They are often glass and aluminium clad. Tonight with Trevor McDonald highlighted that in Leeds and Manchester (perhaps the cities that had seen most development) only approximately half were occupied and with owner occupation often being as low as 10%. In Southend there are controversial plans to build new tower blocks for social housing, a supporter claims this will be cheaper than paying to house poor people with private landlords while opponents fear the creation of ghettos. As of 2017, around 8% of Londoners live in a tower block, though there is still a mix of desirable property against lower-class social housing. A penthouse suite at 3 Merchant Square, Paddington, sold for £7.5m.
caption: The 31-story Red Road estate in Glasgow, the tallest public housing towers in Europe at the time of their construction. Like many 1960s British high-rises, they were condemned and have now been demolished.
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix S5000", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Digital Camera FinePix S5000 Ver3.00", "Image DateTime": "2004:04:08 13:10:53", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "252", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1252", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "9258", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/500", "EXIF FNumber": "63/10", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "160", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2004:04:08 13:10:53", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2004:04:08 13:10:53", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "13/5", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "9", "EXIF ApertureValue": "53/10", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "843/100", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "77/5", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1600", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "1200", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1104", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "3007", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "3007", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "EXIF Sharpness": "Normal", "EXIF SubjectDistanceRange": "0"}