Somewhere Decent to Live, 1967

 

 

Here's a brilliant documentary made for the GLC in 1967. It's about housing in London, and captures a vanishing world. This is the year before Ronan Point collapsed, when the high rise flat boom was at its most intense. It's when the Westway was being built and secret plans were underway to build a series or urban motorways in London. It's also a period just before gentrification began, when mortgages were almost impossible to obtain, when council housing was king. And it's a time just before the shift to public consultation, which when combined with the recession of early 70s did for most of the big planned redevelopment schemes.

What's so good about the documentary is that despite its objective, to celebrate redevelopment and rehousing, it doesn't entirely exclude voices against the narrative. There's the old couple in their terraced house, for example, and the family stuck in the high rise whose kids can't play outside.

Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of it is comparing it to our situation in London today, where once again there's a housing crisis, this time exacerbated by the obscene over-pricing of land and homes, and where there are no big schemes to alleviate the problem. Sure, this film might have been made moments before a series of crises came along to utterly change the postwar building boom and optimism of planners, but it shows people trying to solve problems rather than accept them. That optimism has long since departed the local government scene.