Example housing dissertation topic 3:

Perceptions of high-rises: A planner’s dream, a resident’s nightmare?

With broad party political support, the ideal of high-rise living came to dominate issues relating to the housing of urban overspill in the 1950s and 1960s. Seen as a way in which to check urban sprawl, remove citizens from the dangers of the street, and enable them to benefit from the privacy that hitherto only the wealthy had enjoyed, politicians from Tony Benn to Keith Joseph championed the cause of high-rise developments. In contrast, many who were destined to be rehoused into such accommodation fought against their construction – suggesting that such developments lacked both essential services and community identity. Charting the rise (and subsequent demolition) of a significant proportion of socially constructed high-rise tower blocks this dissertation could be extended to also comment on the reconditioning of tower-blocks by housing associations in the last few years.

Suggested initial topic reading:

• Cooney, E.W. (1974). ‘High flats in local authority housing in England and Wales since 1945’. In, Sutcliffe, A. (ed.), Multi-storey living: The British working-class experience. London: Croom-Helm.
• Gosling, R. (1963). Sum total. London: Faber.
• Kearns, A., Whitley, E., Mason, P. and Bond, L. (2012). ”Living the high life’? Residential, social and psychosocial outcomes for high-rise occupants in a deprived context’. Housing Studies, vol. 27(1), pp. 97-126.