Tower block
A tower block, block of flats, or apartment block, is a multi-unit
high-rise apartment building.
Because apartment blocks have important technical and economic advantages, they become a distinguished form of housing accommodation in virtually all densely populated
urban areas around the world. In contrast with low-rise and single-family
houses, apartment blocks accommodate more inhabitants per unit of area of land they occupy and also decrease the cost of municipal infrastructure.
Encyclopedia
A
tower block,
block of flats, or
apartment block, is a multi-unit
high-rise apartment building.
Because apartment blocks have important technical and economic advantages, they become a distinguished form of housing accommodation in virtually all densely populated
urban areas around the world. In contrast with low-rise and single-family
houses, apartment blocks accommodate more inhabitants per unit of area of land they occupy and also decrease the cost of municipal infrastructure.
Apartment blocks around the world
United Kingdom
Tower blocks were first built in the
UK after the
Second World War, in many cases as a "quick-fix" to cure problems caused by crumbling and unsanitary 19th century dwellings or to replace buildings destroyed by aerial bombing. Initially, they were welcomed, and their excellent views made them popular living places. Later, as the buildings themselves deteriorated, they grew a reputation for being undesirable low cost housing, and many tower blocks saw rising crime levels, increasing their unpopularity. One response to this was the great increase in the number of
housing estates built, which in turn brings its own problems. In the UK, tower blocks particularly lost popularity after the partial collapse of
Ronan Point in 1968. The city of
Glasgow in
Scotland contains the highest concentration of tower blocks in the UK, and also some of the most notorious of such developments - examples include the derided Hutchensontown C blocks in the
Gorbals, and the 31-storey Red Road flats in the city's north east, which have recently been earmarked for demolition.
In recent years, some council or ex-council high-rises in the United Kingdom, including
Trellick Tower, Keeling House and
The Barbican Estate, have become popular with young professionals due to their excellent views, desirable locations and architectural pedigrees, and now command high prices. After a gap of around 30 years, new high-rise flats are once again being built in Glasgow,
London,
Leeds,
Manchester and
Liverpool, this time for wealthy professionals. Their developers market these properties by using the American term 'apartment buildings', perhaps in an effort to distance these newer buildings from the older tower blocks from the 1950s and '60s.
Asia
The unpopularity of tower blocks in the UK is in marked contrast to many Asian countries. In
Singapore and urban
Hong Kong, for example, land prices are so high that almost the entire population lives in high rise apartments.
United States
In the
United States tower blocks are commonly referred to as
midrise or
highrise apartment buildings, depending on their height. While buildings that house fewer flats , or are not as tall as the tower blocks, are called
lowrise apartment buildings.
Some of the first residential towers where the
Castle Village towers in
New York City completed in 1939. Their cross shaped design was copied in towers in Parkchester and
Stuyvesant Town residential developments.
The government's experiments in the 1960s and 70s to use high-rise apartments as a means of providing the housing solution for the poor resulted in a spectacular failure. All but a few high-rise
housing projects in the nation's largest
cities, such as
Cabrini-Green and Robert Taylor Homes in
Chicago, Penn South in
New York and the Desire projects in
New Orleans, fell victims of the "
ghettofication" and are now being torn down, renovated or replaced.
In contrast to their
public housing cousins, commercially developed high-rise apartment buildings continue to flourish in cities around the country largely due to high land prices and the housing boom of the 2000s. The
Upper East Side in
New York City and Chicago's
Gold Coast, both featuring high-rise apartments, are the wealthiest urban neighborhoods in the United States.
Former communist countries
Tower blocks were built by communist governments to provide
affordable housing for its citizens. Many of them are in countries like
Russia,
China and
North Korea, and provide the bulk of public housing. Modern, well maintained tower blocks may be very clean and comfortable and have many advantages over urban sprawl. Some consider them to be an excellent form of housing, while others see them as bland architectural monstrosities.
Such housing plans become popular during the presidency of
Nikita Khrushchev in
USSR. Here is the popular quote of Khrushchev on this matter:
See also
External links
