Rowan Moore: UK architects should look elsewhere for council housing inspiration
In Britain, as our government has promised, were going to have a council housing revolution, the building of as yet unknown numbers of homes at genuinely affordable rents, a return to policies of 50 and more years ago in order to address the well-known housing crisis. Which is welcome. Luckily there are, close at hand, outstanding examples of how this might be done, in cities and countries on the continent of Europe.Moore points to Vienna, the city known for its ambitious development model for social housing, and Barcelona as two examples of what he says is a healthy "willingness to experiment" to be applied back home in the UK. The new Labour Party government has promised to usher in a "revolution" in council housing to deliver the up to 100,000 new homes needed per year to match current needs that have been made worse for years by bad policies and a lack of funding.The same set of issues are plaguing efforts back across the pond in New York City, where Moore's American counterpart Michael Kimmelman recently considered some "radical" alternatives being pursued as part of NYCHA's complicated new plans.