ABSTRACT
Chapter 1 establishes the character of the housing crisis in the city of Glasgow following the Second World War and describes the housing policy adopted by city and central government in the 1950s which embraced high rise flats as the solution to providing thousands of homes for the city’s working classes. Implicit in this were ideas about how people should live and how the new communities – whether in the city, on the periphery – should be organised. The chapter outlines the reasons underpinning the decision to build high and describes the embrace of, retreat from and removal of high flats over 40 years. It also described the methodology of this study, situates this book within the historiography and summarises the following chapters.
