Scatology, Eschatology, and the Modern Movement: Urban Planning and the Facts of Life, by Tim Benton

It is perhaps a necessary feature of the human condition that our highest ideals and aspirations are often uncomfortably connected to the most basic and sordid conditions of existence. The most tender and altruistic acts of human compassion and care, especially with the very young and very old, deal with excrement. Take public housing. The burning flame of social idealism—the idea that the vocation of the architect and planner was to improve the life of working men and women—flickered and was sometimes quite put out by the harsh realities of managing the dirty clothes, the trash, and the effluent of high-density living.<br />
&nbsp;<br />
My subject was stimulated by a little book by Alice Coleman entitled Utopia on Trial.(1) Between 1980 and 1985, Coleman and her team of six researchers surveyed 4,099 blocks of flats in England containing 106,520 dwellings, with a further 4,172 houses “thrown in for good measure.” Her objective was to map “lapses in civilised behaviour” (litter-dropping, graffiti-scrawling, vandalism, pollution by excrement, and family breakdown leading to children being placed in “substitute care”) against design features (number of floors per block, dwellings per block, dwellings per entrance, blocks raised above garages, etc.). In general, her survey confirms many tenets of modern folklore. The research is flawed in several respects and motivated by a passionate commitment to Thatcherite values of individuality, family, and self-interest as the only guardians of stability. Her research provides, nevertheless, an important stimulus to the analysis of housing from the point of view of lived experience rather than planned intentions.