Should high rise housing be demolished?
High rise social housing should be demolished and replaced with low rise terraced accommodation, says a report by the think tank Policy Exchange.
It says that terraced streets can exceed the housing densities (between 75 and 200 units/hectare) of most existing high-rise housing developments.
Recent changes to the planning system mean that local government and neighbourhoods should take control of redevelopment in their area, according to the think tank.
Alex Morton, from Policy Exchange and the report's co-author, told Today presenter Sarah Montague "if you demolished these multi-storey estates in for example London we think you could get an extra quarter of a million house built".
"Only one to two percent of people want to live in these kind of apartments," he added.
Maxwell Hutchinson, architect and former president of RIBA, explained: "low rise living cites in just doesn't work... the consequences of low rise living is commuting and the waste of precious land."
24 Jan 2013
- From the section World