ABSTRACT
As a bold social experiment, it would be natural to ask what steps were taken to evaluate the social success – or otherwise – of council housing. This may be a legitimate question, but it is also a simplistic one. The mechanisms for monitoring major social innovations are seldom in place: indeed the more ambitious the experiment, the less likely it is to receive serious assessment, for this could only be arrived at after extensive periods of time, during which the original purposes are forgotten or changed. The century of council housing was one of immense social and economic transformation, and it can never be certain how far housing was an active agent in this, or how far simply a reflection of it. As always, the search for answers lies not only in its actual impact on a class or classes that were subject to many other influences, but the particular stance from which our knowledge of it was created: from whose perspective and in whose language.
