Transient nature of urban living

My home from 1965 to 1979. Copyright Brendan F.D. Barrett

Shaped by childhood experience

Throughout my life I have moved many times and as a result my encounters with cities have often felt transient. I have been fortunate to live in some amazing cities: Leeds, Edinburgh, Oxford, Kyoto, London, Tokyo, Melbourne and now Osaka. My longest stay is 22 years in Tokyo (four different homes), followed by 19 years in Leeds (three homes).

In fact, until recently I believed I was born in “Beeston, Leeds.” But this isn’t true. When looking at my birth certificate, for some official reason, I noticed the place of birth was Thorpe Place, Leeds.

I had always assumed this was somewhere in Beeston, without ever trying to confirm it. But when I googled it out of curiousity, I was surprised to discover only Thorpe Close and Thorpe Road in Middleton, Leeds. My grandparents (on my mother’s side) lived in Middleton, so there was a clear connection. I then searched online for old maps of Middleton hoping to find Thorpe Place.

Middleton is an expansive garden suburb, located about 6 km from the city centre, developed from the 1920s onwards. By 1934, over 2,300 council houses had been built as “cottages” surrounded by gardens and hedges

Initially, Middleton was connected to the rest of the city by a tram line. Unfortunately, the Leeds tram system was discontinued in 1959. This led to concerns about potential remoteness of the area in relation to the main employment zones in the city.

Searching online, I managed to track down a 1933 ordinance survey map showing the Middleton estate adjacent to agricultural lands. Comparing to the situation 90 years later using Google maps we can see how this agricultural land was eaten up by housing developments as the Leeds’ population grew.

Middleton in 1933 and 2023.

My first two homes no longer exist

Zooming into the 1933 map, I was able to find Thorpe Place near the centre of the Middleton estate. But looking at the Google map today, we can see that houses along Thorpe Place and Thorpe Terrace were demolished at some point and replaced with a new housing block renamed Thorpe Close. This may have been part of an urban regeneration project since in recent decades the area has been noted for its social issues and economic deprivation.

I know that my grandparents lived on Throstle Terrace in Middleton in 1935 (the year my grandfather passed away). As a child, I would often go to see my grandmother and it seemed to be a very nice residential area. She passed away in 1970 and after that, while I sometimes visited my remaining relatives (uncles and aunties), my familiarity with the area declined.

Mystery solved. Thorpe Place can be found on a 1933 map of Middleton.

It seems my family moved next to Flaxton Terrace in Beeston. This part of town has a very different atmosphere with high density, back to back terraced housing so typical of cities in northern England.

I remember that the nearby Beeston Road. My mother was a bus conductress and Beeston Hill was on her bus route. With my siblings we would wait for her bus at the bottom of the hill, ride up to the top, receive sixpence each, and buy hot cross buns at the local bakery.

Flaxton Terrace appears on a 1944 map of Leeds. Interesting it was one of the few locations hit by a bomb during a WW2 German air raid.

We did not live in Flaxton Terrace for very long and in 1965 moved to a new council housing estate called the Parkwoods. You will not be surprised to learn that Flaxton Terrace was also demolished and replaced with a new housing development as visible from the 1944 map and Google today.

The wonders of affordable social housing

Located in South Leeds, the Parkwood housing estate is wedged between a golf course and the main Leeds to London railway line. I was five when we moved there and I can remember being so very impressed by our modern new home with a wonderful fitted kitchen, large living room and four bedrooms. We had a front lawn and back garden. The estate was very open with large green spaces and lots of trees. Our neighbours were all very friendly (there was a screening interview for every working class tenant).

Nearly built Parkwood estate in Beeston, Leeds. Empty fields at the top would be the future site of the White Rose Shopping Centre. Copyright: Leeds Libraries.

On the other side of the railway, there were fields stretching into the distance (where the White Rose shopping center is now located) and a large turkey farm. One of the oldest buildings in Leeds (Stank Hall Barn) is located on the other side of the railway bridge, visible in the photo.

Disused railway lines that had served the local mining collieries made great exploration routes taking us towards Middleton Park or further out of the city. There were many local becks (streams) where we would play, although they tended to be polluted with sewage and infested with water rats.

My early memory of life on this council estate is that we would walk everywhere. For instance, my primary school was just over a mile away, or around 25 minute walk which I would do either with my brother or by myself.

It really did seem like the council was concerned with the general upkeep of the estate. Grass on the front lawn of each house was regularly mowed by council employees (or contractors). Every few years, our front doors were repainted in bright colours. If there was damage to any part of the estate, it seemed to be repaired fairly quickly.

Actually, we received so much support from our local government in those days. This included free education, free school meals, free bus passes to travel across the city to high school and when I left for university in 1979 my tuition and living expenses were covered by a grant from Leeds City Council. This may seem amazing to young people today who are stuck with student loans and high rents for their accommodation.

100 Years of Social Progress Thrown Away

1979, the year I went to university, was the year that Maggie Thatcher was elected. This marks the end of a very important era and a shift in thinking in the UK.

Social housing used to be a way to help people better themselves. In tracing the evolution of social housing in England from 1890 to 1990, John Boughton describes the early housing schemes of philanthropists, urban slum clearance in 1930s and construction of major local authority housing schemes in the post World War II period. Of the 2.5 million homes built between 1946 and 1957, 75% were constructed by local authorities.

Thatcherism brought this period of social progress to a close. By the mid 1980s, local authority housing construction had ground to a halt. Local government borrowing was capped and the introduction of right to buy legislation meant that by the late 1990s, 1.7 million council homes had been purchased by their tenants, half of which ended up in the hands of private landlords.

This is one antecedent of the current housing crisis where millions of people cannot afford to buy and millions more cannot afford to rent. In 2022, we find 1.2 million people in England on local waiting lists for housing.

This harsh reality is mirrored in wealthy countries across the globe. In Australia, for instance, the cost of housing is draining the incomes of the poor and driving wealth inequality. In the US, some commentators suggest that the housing crisis is tied into issues of obesity, income inequality, homelessness, falling fertility rates and even climate change.

In 2022, it was estimated that 580,000 Americans were experiencing homelessness, with 52% of them living in major cities. A 2019 study of 200 cities around the globe found that 90% were unaffordable to live in, with Hong Kong at the top of the list.

This is not a bug, its a feature

The overall lack of affordable social housing, tied into the ongoing cost of living crisis in many countries, should be understood as a design feature rather than an accident or miscalculation. In the period of social progress mentioned above, children might have a chance to be better off than their parents. Now that seems like an unachievable dream.

Instead young people today face a precarious situation. We have created what Guy Standing refers as the precariat – an ever growing proportion of our population with limited financial resources, trying to cope with long-term insecurity. Urban living for them is transient and their job and housing prospects are increasingly uncertain.

There is a very stark ethical dimension to the failure to provide affordable homes, especially when it affects the most vulnerable in society. Observing this situation (even from Japan), I appreciate that I grew up in a very different world.

A true ethical response would be to earnestly address the housing affordability crisis. Indeed there were calls for post-Covid recovery packages to focus on the provision on social housing with one plan proposing construction of 100,000 such homes each year. Sadly, this did not materialize (only 27,509 affordable homes were constructed between April 2021 and March 2022).

The solutions are already out there. They range from acknowledging the right to affordable housing as we find in Vienna. Or by promoting a social housing renaissance. Or by regulating private rents.

But most of all, affordable housing should be understood for its essential role in opening up future possibilities, as I experienced through my own childhood. It should be one secure factor in an increasingly precarious world.