ABSTRACT
Both the design of the estate and its location were often blamed for causing, or at the very least exacerbating, the social marginalisation of the high flats’ residents and ultimately social breakdown in those communities. Focusing on a city centre estate and a peripheral estate, this chapter shows how the design and maintenance of the environment around the high flats was perceived and experienced very differently by men and women and different age groups with discussion of landscape, transport, essential amenities and play provision. The chapter identifies how the outside was as important as the inside for those who were relocated to high-rise estates and how people’s enjoyment of their modern flat was increasingly compromised by the symbolic violence of the estate.
