How a garden city became a housing estate, 1943-1963.
A salutary lesson for current planners can be drawn from this detailed examination of the failure of an ambitious project in the immediate post-war environment to live up to its expectations. Houses were desperately needed: What principles should underpin a new ‘settlement’? Where should the houses go? Who were they for? And what provision should be made for the likely political and financial changes over the timescale of the project?
Changing governments, shifting priorities and inevitable cuts meant the dream was progressively trimmed and gradually became drowned in a sea of MUD.
In Hartcliffe Betrayed, quotes from official documents, contemporary newspapers and interviews with ‘pioneer’ residents show the downward slide from ‘ideal neighbourhood’ to dormitory estate.
- Read the article on Hartcliffe Betrayed in the Bristol Post The lost ‘Garden City’ of Bristol – new book reveals how people on one of Britain’s biggest estates were ‘betrayed’
- Download the pdf of the article on Hartcliffe Betrayed in the Bristol Times history section of the Bristol Post Solution to housing problem never happened.
- Read the review article on the Bristol 24/7 website: Hartcliffe’s hidden history explored in new book.
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Sarah Dunwell
A very timely publication at the dawn of a more progressive council!
The appalling consequences of poor planning, the creating of a ghetto and the human costs are immeasurable and devastating to generations … and it’s not just Hartcliffe.
Broken promises and dreams have wrecked lives and families and immobilised their future opportunities.
I look forward to this book but it will tell me what I already know. I sincerely hope that it will influence a new generation of planners and policy makers. We need this!!