Urban housing development in Scotland.

[MGR1]

Here's an interesting article I found about the history of Scottish urban housing: LINK.

Once you read through it you really see how radical left wing politics took root in the Clyde Valley. Massive overcrowding, poor health and low wages provided plenty of grievance against the powers-that-be. It also highlights the risks of a lack of affordable housing in the UK as whole isn't anything really new.

In a similar architectural vein, here's an article from Kingsreview: LINK, and a thread from a site called skyscraper city: LINK.

An interesting tid-bit from the latter link:

In case anyone's interested, I've done a bit of research into the reasons behind Scotland's development of tenements, as opposed to England's terraced houses.

A few people have wondered why Scotland is the only nation to embrace this form of flat building in Britain and have suggested continental influences or tradition of defensive concerns. I've known it was mainly a product of economic forces but the exact process was a bit of a mystery to me. Luckily a substantial chapter in this book from this book, 'Edinburgh - A Tenement City?' by Peter Robinson, covers the process in detail.

Scots property law was based on feudal principals, with a 'superior' holding the land, and a 'vassal' able to buy the titles to the land in exchange for a annual charge or 'fue duty' to be paid as long as the land was held by the vassal.

At this time, land holdings were seen as a very safe investment and opportunities to purchase were rare due to a reluctance to let go of these holdings, giving them a high value.

The vassals would typically be builders/developers who then allowed landlords to invest in flats in return for a charge to the builders. This chain of payments from tenant-landlord-vassal-superior gave many interests a source of income, but left the final say in land use and building form to the superior.

Therefore, fue duties were generally calculated based on the highest number of people that could be housed on a plot of land, pushing up density where the demand allowed it and resulting in the early 'high-rises' of Edinburgh's Old Town, but also smaller versions in other towns and cities in the pre-industrial era.

In the industrial area, huge growth in towns and cities resulted in property and development investment becoming common amongst 'small savers'; typically tradesmen who put money into the development of new tenement districts as a safe investment with a steady income. As security of investment became a priority, developers looked to reduce risk, and the Victorian tenement became a somewhat regimented, modular, building form that could be rolled out nearly anywhere, resulting in the common landscape of repetitive tenement streets.

This continued up until the early 20th century and the collapse/reform of the private rental housing market.

What the book didn't talk about was how this differed from the rest of the UK, but based on the economic arguments behind tenement construction, it could be assumed that lower costs of landholdings meant that it wasn't as necessary to develop land to that density.

Mike.