Godina izdanja: Ostalo
ISBN: Ostalo
Jezik: Engleski
Autor: Strani

- Hardcover
socijalna istorija stanovanja

At long last we have a history of English housing that carries the story right up to the present period. In his well-researched and well-written account of A Social History of Housing: 1815-1970, John Burnett sets out to describe the types of dwellings occupied by the working and middle classes, to measure and evaluate changes in the quality of housing, and finally “to seek an explanation of the determinants of built form” (p. vii). He accomplishes his objectives very well.

Although Burnett docs not break new ground in his treatment of nineteenth-century urban housing, he presents a clear and concise synthesis based upon the standard primary and secondary sources. He is especially effective in his analysis of the middle-class house. According to Burnett, the middle-class choice of a house was less dictated by rational concerns like size, location, and cost than by Victorian values of privacy, respectability, social identification, comfort, and accumulation.

Burnett balances his treatment of urban housing with an excellent analysis of cottage homes and the general housing of the rural workers. Despite the publicity given to the deplorable condition of the laborers’ “rustic” cottages, Burnett argues that economic and financial considerations militated against significant improvement in rural housing until the end of the First World War.

Burnett does break new ground with his chapters on housing in twentieth-century England. He emphasizes the importance of the 1918 report of the Tudor Walters Committee, which gave its stamp of approval to subsidized local authority housing in low-density suburban estates. But the housing problem was not solved in the interwar years. Burnett suggests that private builders and local authorities failed to provide sufficient dwellings at a level of rent affordable to the poorer workers.

According to Burnett, the post-World War II period witnessed a dramatic increase in house building due to full employment and a rising standard of living. He sees the most significant improvement occurring in the houses of the working classes; the semi-detached house in a low-density development became much more available to the working classes. Because of the reduction in the size of the family and the disappearance of domestic servants, this post-World War II period saw a reduction in the size and number of rooms in the average middle- class house. Thus working-class and middle-class house types have converged since World War II. Burnett concludes that for the majority of the English people, the ideal still remains the individual house in a garden.

Burnett’s perceptive study of the social history of English housing is a welcome addition to the literature; it will be of interest to specialists in the field as well as to graduates and undergraduates.