Estate Regeneration: Learning from the Past, Housing Communities of the Future

One hundred years ago, the Addison Act created the circumstances for the large scale construction of municipal housing in the UK. This would lead to the most prolific phases of housing estate building the country has ever seen. The legacy of this historic period has been tackled for the last twenty-five years as these estates began to suffer from misguided allocation policies, systemic building and fabric failure and financial austerity. A series of estate regeneration programmes sought to rectify the mistakes of the past. Estate Regeneration describes 24 of these regeneration schemes from across the UK and the design philosophy and resident engagement which formed each new community. A number of essays from a wide range of industry experts amplify the learning experience from some key estate regeneration initiatives and provide observations on the broader issues of this sector of the housing market. Regeneration is inevitable; it is a matter of the form which regeneration should take. The information presented here is a guide to an intuitive approach to estate regeneration which commences with the derivation of strong urban design principles and is guided by real community engagement. The experience presented seeks to learn from the mistakes of the past to create the best possible platform for regeneration of the housing estates of the future.