Housing Estate - United Kingdom

United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom, housing estates have become prevalent since World War II, as a more affluent population demanded larger and more widely spaced houses coupled with the increase of car usage for which terraced streets were unsuitable.

Housing estates were produced by either local corporations or by private developers. The former tended to be a means of producing public housing leading to monotenure estates full of council houses and therefore known as "council estates".

In addition, the problems incurred by the early attempts at high density tower-block housing turned people away from this style of living. The resulting demand for land has seen many towns and cities increase enormously in size for only moderate increases in population. This has been largely at the expense of rural and greenfield land. Recently, there has been some effort to address this problem by banning the development of out-of-town commercial developments, and encouraging the reuse of brownfield or previously developed sites for residential building. Nevertheless the demand for housing continues to rise, and in the UK at least has precipitated a significant housing crisis.

Renowned Housing estates in the capital include the Andover Estate in Holloway, North London, the aforementioned Broadwater Farm estate situated in Tottenham, the Heygate Estate in Walworth, South East London and the Alton Estate in Roehampton, South West London.

In the UK, some of the post war new towns were constructed en masse from housing estates rather than as organic growth from a population centre.