FACTS AS FOUNDATIONS
sm,—Mr. Clough Williams-Ellis's letter makes it clear that the one important alleged fact he doubts is that there is a general demand for individual houses and gardens for families. Oddly enough that is the one fact of which there is the most overwhelming evidence. It is possible to argue, that the demand is wrong-headed, or that for in- dustrial or other reasonsit cannot be met. It is surely not possible to argue that it is not a fact Brief list of selected proofs : Evidence taken by Tudor-Walters Committee at end of last war; standard universally adopted by elected authorities all over Britain for housing (except where space-pressure forced upward-building); colossal de- velopment of building-society movement; the so years' consistent outward trend of prosperous home-seekers to the• suburbs; the Mass- Observation inquiries; the Birmingham Survey and other local in- quiries; even the ribbon-building and bungalow-rashes that Mr. Williams-Ellis and I equally detest.
It is a matter of plain observation that the .trend of unplanned city-development has recently made it more and more difficult for people to get houses and gardens near their work. The revival of fats and tenements is solely due to this; as is obvious from the reading of any local authority's debates on its housing policy when the change occurs. Some architects welcome the tendency because they think high buildings more interesting to design; some defenders of the countryside welcome it because they believe (mistakenly) that it is in the interests of agriculture to wall-in the urban millions as tightly as practicable. These are expressions of preference, quite understandable and even arguable, but running counter to general demand. I don't pretend to impartiality on the issue. In my view the popular demand is an expression of pro- found bic;logical and psychological needs, and is in the long-term interests of our civilisation. I frankly admit that if the fact of popular demand were against me or this I should be pessimistic about the national future. But the point is academic. Our society is not in fact bent on self-cancellation. I just don't understand why, in a field in which everyone must agree there is room for much addi- tional research and assembly of facts, Mr. Williams-Ellis should pick out one of the best-established of all facts for questicin.
Previous page
