Municipal Dreams

Historian John Boughton will present a narrative history of council housing – from slums to Grenfell Tower.

In his book, Municipal Dreams Boughton offers a tour of some of the best and most remarkable British housing estates; asking us to understand their complex stories and to rethink our prejudices.

His accounts include descriptions of some of the extraordinary planners and architects who wished to elevate working men and women through design; the competing ideologies that have promoted state housing and condemned it; the economic factors that have always constrained our housing ideals; the crisis wrought by Right to Buy; and the evolving controversies around regeneration.

Boughton strongly believes that losing the dream of good housing has weakened our community and hurt its most vulnerable — as was seen most catastrophically in the fire at Grenfell Tower.

He will be in conversation with Andrea Gibbons – a researcher on housing, homelessness and health for the Sustainable Housing and Urban Studies Unit (SHUSU) at the University of Salford, Manchester, and author of City of Segregation: A Hundred Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles.

This event is part of Second Home's City Life Festival. Running throughout October, the festival will explore the relationship between urban spaces, communities and identities and champion London as a place of inclusivity and diversity.

For more details, please click on this LINK