LESSONS. FOR ENGLAND-

THE outcome of eight years' practical experience of slum- clearance and re-housing at home, followed by a year's intensive investigation of post-War working class housing schemes in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Holland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, Hungary and Czechoslovakia, _Europe Re-housed is a remarkable book, brilliantly illustrated, that will certainly take its place as a standard work and that should assuredly be read by every chairman and officer of. every municipal

housing committee.

Hers was a truly formidable programme,- but fortunately Miss Denby has a remarkably clear mind and a wholly admirable gift for the lucid tabulation of her findings. Further, the book has a quite unexpected charm. We are all inquisitive. We all want to know how other people eat and work and plan their day, and what she has to tell us has much of the interest of walking through a foreign town at that magic hour when living room lights are on, but the blinds have not yet been drawn.

For it was clearly impossible to consider these housing schemes intelligently without first having a clear idea of the national habits of life, requirements and aspirations of the inhabitants of the different places. So you may read of the communal steam-bath in Finland and Sweden ; of the provision of one free bath per head per month in Italy ; of the housewives' preferences here or there for this or that way of cooking or doing the weekly washing ; and of the method by which the men of the family prefer to go to and from their work.

She is just as clear and just as detailed in her exposition of various national methods of financing housing schemes, of actual building and general lay-out. Of all the re-housing schemes she has visited, I think Miss Denby would put those of Vienna and Sweden in the first place. Now though Miss Denby (wisely co-opted by the L.C.C. to assist in housing matters) may indeed patriotically wish not to appear slighting to England's efforts, one does seem to detect a wistfulness in her just admiration for certain foreign achievements that even her fair-minded loyalty cannot wholly dissemble. Sharing her enthusiasms myself I feel that in her place I should have been tempted to be offensively derisive of much of our democratic muddling where she is patiently explanatory ; a far more difficult and helpful thing to be.

Only as compared to one other great European democracy— the French—do we seem reasonably sane, but then their unbusinesslike negligence with regard to town-planning and housing in general is just fantastic, the few imaginative and most interesting experiments in new suburb building on the outskirts of Paris which have been so much publicised (Drance la Muette, for example) are brilliant exceptions to a rule of dismal hugger-mugger, and even some of these potential high-lights seem to have proved unnerving failures, either through sabotage by uncontrolled rival private interests or through inherent defects in transport and other necessary services. But the official French ineptitude with regard to housing generally is, maybe, one of the things that the new regime has a mandate to make an end of.

The author has some exceedingly sensible remarks to make about the general English attitude to housing : " Every town plan must be based on transport, since that is the essential framework which links each area to its neighbour. • But transport should not be considered in the spirit of the British Ministry, whose motto is It is better to travel than to arrive '."

Movement, she wisely says, should be subordinated to life and enjoyment :

" It is more important to make a town fit to live in than easy to race through. The aim should be how few and not how many roads are needed in such a 'small country as Britain."

Again and again admirably conceived housing schemes are reported as having been spoiled through " difficulties arising from the private ownership of urban land." The phrase runs like a refrain through the book, particularly when France and England are being discussed.

In Soviet Russia the entire absence of this crippling obstacle is, of course, notorious, and I have myself seen and marvelled at the town-planning results in MoScow and elsewhere. But I was not so well aware how little private interference with public works is brooked in totalitarian Germany and Italy, to the immense gain of the general public and of the national estate... One wonders how much longer the democracies can afford to be so tender to the private owners of urban land.

But then, after such a momentary pang of envy for certain spectacular yet" creditable doings in the dictator countries, one 'recalls the Scandinavian democracies, and particularly Sweden, probably the most civilised, prosperous and happy State in the world, and certainly, to me, the most attractive. How, does Sweden manage these things ? Miss Denby will tell you in detail, but this is her general appreciation :

" . . . Friendliness, security, ease, and dignity of life—all com- bining to create an atmosphere of happiness which is not dispelled, however often acquaintance is renewed. Democratic, with no great extremes of riches or poverty to distress the mind : alive, alert, eager, full of fun, its inhabitants seem to be well on the way to attaining the full life . . . as ill-designed and unregulated new building is prevented> by the town plan (which has had both local and Government approval), and as ' good ' but old buildings are carefully protected, the beauty and unity of. Swedish towns is increasing, and increasing rapidly. The general co-ordination of street-architecture is particularly fine, and the ' wild-west' appear- ance of the majority of our English redevelopment areas seems to have been entirely avoided. For the control of development is really stringent."

It is interesting to find that Great Britain has spent far more per dwelling than has any other country :

. . It is true that the British problem of large industrial slum towns was greater than that of any other nation, the policy of granting a direct subsidy for land and buildings has been surprisingly extravagant. It can be justified only if these expensive new British homes surpass those of every other nation, incorporate every requisite for happy and healthy lives, and combine to form new areas which will wipe out the ugly heritage of the old industrial slums."

But do they ? Too often our new housing estates are planned in England in such a way that

" Englishmen themselves deplore the ribbon-rash, the ruined country, the shoddy ugly dwellings which have sprung up to meet the urgent needs of the people ; hundreds of thousands of the poorest citizens have been segregated in lonely estates without adequate shops, without enjoyment, without sufficient anticipation of the help which they, as ex-slum dwellers, so urgently need."

In one particular, however, England ranks high, as it is only

here and in Holland that the desirability, is officially recognised of providing a living-room, with separate bedrooms for parents, boys and girls.

Also, no doubt, we should get creditably high marks for such admittedly important things as sanitation and sewerage, water supplies and road-surfacing—the only " Amenities " generally understood in our overwhelmingly urban-minded England.

But if we want a really civilised country fit for poets as well as for plumbers, that is not enough. We need to see to it that town-planning lay-outs, often admirably devised, are not immediately stultified by the inept ugliness of individual. build- ing that destroys all hope of final graciousness, and further, that the mere ownership of land should carry,with it no right of selfish exploitation.

Tardily, timidly, we have instituted certain checks to private trespass against public interest (often unwitting), but they are still grotesquely inadequate as all may see. Only new and fearless legislation can avail, coupled with an altogether more enlightened administration through a local government greatly changed in its personnel. But, in our democracy, these things must all wait on public opinion. How and when, if ever, can we arouse it to demand a better management of our national

estate ? CLOUGH WILLIAMS-ELLIS.