It is an interesting take, but I'd be wary of two things: reading backwards from the current standing terraced housing, and using such big units of comparison.
As Alan Crosby has pointed out, the majority of standing Victorian housing dates from after 1870 i.e. after the impact of the housing by-laws you rightly discuss. It's the good stuff that has survived by-and-large, and certainly in the East Midlands much of this stock was intended by its private developers for skilled workers, clerks and the shopkeeper/tradesman class, rather than manual workers. Commentators in the 1920 and 1930s were pretty favourable to Northampton, Leicester and Nottingham. Before 1940, people said very nice things about Coventry. The main criticism of these places were that they were a bit dull, rather than that they were horrible.
The problem with comparing everything to London is that the capital was so much bigger in population terms than other British cities from 1700 to now. It performed multiple national and international functions within one city, so contained overlapping economies and multiple urban landscapes.
It had a large middle class and a large working class. Some areas match your line of analysis, but others, such as outer north-west London don't. Wembley, Northolt, Ruislip can be no one's idea densification. They were also widely criticised in the 1930s and 1940s because of this.
As someone who has moved in the opposite direction to you, my main observation about the cities of the East Midlands, is the amount of underused ex-industrial sites, joined since 2008 by under-used retail and office space, not the lack of people living in the city centre. Most of the industrial sites of West and North London have left no trace, because of the scale of re-development in the 1980s and 1990s. This hasn't happened in parts of the Midlands, Sheffield, the West Riding and Lancashire. This seems to me a problem of the economic base, not the housing stock.
Thanks - yes I’m aware of the problem that the better older housing has been “selected” as it were.
As to the comparison with London, I agree and that’s why i think Bristol, more comparable to the cities we are talking about, is so important, and why I use it as a reference throughout.
Living in inner-city Nottingham for 40 years, my family having arrived in 1979 when housing was cheap enough for workers at the likes of Raleigh, Boots and Players to buy Edwardian and late-Victorian houses. They were our neighbours. It was the expansion of Nottingham and Trent Universities and the arrival of private landlord HMOs and studentification which brought about the working class move to the suburbs (we eventually followed in 2014 by moving to nearby Beeston because there was no houses for old couples like us to downsize to) The blitz of apartment buildings in the city was, and continues to be, fuelled by students, parents and landlords still. It is a story repeated in university towns and cities across England. There remains little appetite among families for leasehold flats and apartments with their high service charges. What they bring with them are 30 week economies fuelled by the academic year. I see what has happened in the Midlands a little differently, but I did enjoy your take. Thank you for testing mine.🐰
It is an interesting take, but I'd be wary of two things: reading backwards from the current standing terraced housing, and using such big units of comparison.
As Alan Crosby has pointed out, the majority of standing Victorian housing dates from after 1870 i.e. after the impact of the housing by-laws you rightly discuss. It's the good stuff that has survived by-and-large, and certainly in the East Midlands much of this stock was intended by its private developers for skilled workers, clerks and the shopkeeper/tradesman class, rather than manual workers. Commentators in the 1920 and 1930s were pretty favourable to Northampton, Leicester and Nottingham. Before 1940, people said very nice things about Coventry. The main criticism of these places were that they were a bit dull, rather than that they were horrible.
The problem with comparing everything to London is that the capital was so much bigger in population terms than other British cities from 1700 to now. It performed multiple national and international functions within one city, so contained overlapping economies and multiple urban landscapes.
It had a large middle class and a large working class. Some areas match your line of analysis, but others, such as outer north-west London don't. Wembley, Northolt, Ruislip can be no one's idea densification. They were also widely criticised in the 1930s and 1940s because of this.
As someone who has moved in the opposite direction to you, my main observation about the cities of the East Midlands, is the amount of underused ex-industrial sites, joined since 2008 by under-used retail and office space, not the lack of people living in the city centre. Most of the industrial sites of West and North London have left no trace, because of the scale of re-development in the 1980s and 1990s. This hasn't happened in parts of the Midlands, Sheffield, the West Riding and Lancashire. This seems to me a problem of the economic base, not the housing stock.
Thanks - yes I’m aware of the problem that the better older housing has been “selected” as it were.
As to the comparison with London, I agree and that’s why i think Bristol, more comparable to the cities we are talking about, is so important, and why I use it as a reference throughout.
This is amazing stuff - the sort of history writing I love.
Living in inner-city Nottingham for 40 years, my family having arrived in 1979 when housing was cheap enough for workers at the likes of Raleigh, Boots and Players to buy Edwardian and late-Victorian houses. They were our neighbours. It was the expansion of Nottingham and Trent Universities and the arrival of private landlord HMOs and studentification which brought about the working class move to the suburbs (we eventually followed in 2014 by moving to nearby Beeston because there was no houses for old couples like us to downsize to) The blitz of apartment buildings in the city was, and continues to be, fuelled by students, parents and landlords still. It is a story repeated in university towns and cities across England. There remains little appetite among families for leasehold flats and apartments with their high service charges. What they bring with them are 30 week economies fuelled by the academic year. I see what has happened in the Midlands a little differently, but I did enjoy your take. Thank you for testing mine.🐰