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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: October 16th, 2024

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  • It’s not the social housing that’s the problem though, it’s specifically the tower blocks. Social housing by-and-large worked pretty well, with some pretty nice council housing being put up and people living in them without too much issue. The thing is, there’s a big difference between a socially isolated tower block and a council house in the suburbs, a lot of which was eaten away by Right-to-Buy because it turns out they were really nice houses so people wanted them. Almost nobody wants to buy a flat in a tower block.

    The 'Stay Put thing for Grenfell Tower was actually good policy… When the tower was built. Each apartment acted essentially as its own fireproof box, so under the original design, staying put is actually the best policy to have, because you knew a fire was only ever going to exist in one of the boxes. It’s when those boxes are compromised that things become a problem, stuff like unauthorised knock-throughs and especially the flammable cladding (that was added later) on the outside of the building. It turned all those fireproof boxes into fireproof boxes except on one side, so when that cladding caught fire, it just set fire to all of the boxes.


  • Except a lot of the brutalist architecture in the UK looks like shit and the towers are shit, which is why they’re being knocked down. Those tower blocks are SUPPOSED to have shops and amenities inside them, but the British ones don’t, so they exist solely as shitholes nobody with a choice wants to live in.

    It also doesn’t help that tower blocks very quickly became a dumping ground for local councils to throw unwanted tenants into, so troublemakers, those who can’t be housed anywhere else. The image of a tower block became one of high crime, social isolation and poor construction. Couple that with Grenfell Tower and you’ve got “Death trap” added to the list.