Between 2007 and 2010 Southwark council licensed 76 films to be shot on the high-rise Heygate estate in London’s Walworth area, providing a gritty backdrop for dramas of poverty and crime. This “theatre of stigma”, a term coined by historian of modern Britain Holly Smith, had come to dominate the narrative of high-rise social housing.

But it didn’t chime with the reality of those who live in these places. A decade earlier in Liverpool, mostly elderly residents from the city’s high-rise tower blocks attempted to “challenge perceptions of high-rise living” through the creation of Tenantspin television productions.

The slippery relationship between the representation and reality of high rises and their residents is one that Smith identifies from the earliest case study in her book Up in the Air: A History of High-Rise Britain.

The history of the social housing high-rise has seen them exist in many forms, with varying designs and organisational structures. She also offers a nuanced account of the many contradictions in the high-rise, which “has signified modernity and decay, community and exclusivity, privilege and disadvantage, luxury and privation”.

Even during the boom periods of construction of social housing between 1945 and 1976, flats made up only a fifth of the dwellings built and the majority were in buildings of four storeys or less. Given how few high-rises exist, it is remarkable how these buildings became such a powerful symbol of social progress and of the problems and evolution of the welfare state.

There have always been those who romanticised high-rise living. For instance, the French architect Le Corbusier called it a “flirtation with the stars”. However, such sentiments were always offset by the pragmatic necessities of local authorities.

High-rise housing was seen as a crucible for forging a new welfare state offering radical new ways of living. The book illustrates how demolished tower blocks came to be seen by some commentators as the tombstones or ruins of this dream.

Smith makes the important point that it is not the high-rise’s design that is inherently broken, but the projections that we put on it. She contrasts, for example, the popular cultural denigration of high-rise council housing with New Labour’s portrayal of new, lavish, expensive and overwhelmingly private sector high-rise housing. These buildings became emblematic of thriving cities in a prosperous Britain.

A key contribution of the book is to get “within the walls” of high-rise Britain and document the lives of its residents. Smith documents their feelings about these complex buildings, which range from affection to ambivalence, to aversion.

One tenant reminds us how these towers were much-loved homes full of memories and friends, where individuals and families were powerfully invested, despite their frustrations and limitations: “During 35 years you become attached to the four walls even if they’re not very good walls.”

As Smith argues, the major failures in high-rise construction and management were also a devaluing of the lives and voices of their residents.

Smith avoids romanticising high-rise council housing, and tackles issues such as racism and a “welfare nationalism”, which is the prioritising of housing allocations for white British nationals.

However, one of her main goals is to debunk the myth, perpetuated by Margaret Thatcher and others, that high-rise housing resulted in passive tenants lacking initiative. Instead, she documents how local and national action by tenants was consistently creative, resourceful and visionary, leading to forms of democratisation, participation and cooperation.

Tragedy in towers

The failure to understand this is tragically illustrated in the two disasters that powerfully bookmark a key period in this history. The first is the partial collapse of the Ronan Point tower block in east London in 1968 only two months after it opened, which killed four people. The second is the Grenfell Tower fire in central London in 2017 in which at least 72 people lost their lives.

These disasters were the product of state neglect, corporate wrongdoing and inadequate regulation. There are depressing parallels between them and how the state responded each time.

In 1968, the investigation into what went wrong at Ronan Point found that a gas explosion had been able to blow out three load-bearing precast concrete wall panels. This triggered the catastrophic collapse of a corner of the tower.

The minister of housing, Anthony Greenwood, directed that the inquiry’s “terms of reference should be carefully considered to ensure that they implied no blame on the part of the local authority”. And, despite the incident exposing the vulnerability in the design, the government continued to approve the precast panels so as to cause no alarm to residents living in similar buildings.

The Ministry of Housing and Local Government told tenants to “leave the worrying to us”. Smith describes years of tenants raising concerns about potential future disasters. Tenant banners stating that “we live in fear” were a chilling foretelling of what was to come at Grenfell and after.

That is the key message from this book: that there are lessons from the history of high-rise housing in Britain about safety, investment, dispossession and the perspectives of tenants, that still have not been fully learned.

Delivering good quality, suitable and affordable accommodation for all has always been daunting. It remains to be seen whether we can collectively rise to the challenge.

Up in the Air:A History of High Rise Britain will be published by Verso Books on October 28 2025

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This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit, independent news organization bringing you facts and trustworthy analysis to help you make sense of our complex world. It was written by: John Flint, University of Sheffield

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John Flint is not currently receiving funding from an organisation. He has previously received research funding from the UKRI, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Nuffield Foundation, a number of UK Government Departments, the Scottish Executive/ Government, the Welsh Assembly Government and local authorities He is a Trustee of the Housing Studies Charitable Trust.