Here is a retrospective and history of this particular type of housing. It makes clear the importance of council housing to modern life and culture, both at a personal and a societal level. Council housing is germane to issues of crucial importance to today's world: how a society should regard and treat its poor; the perennial problem of the individual's relationship to the state, the alleged obsolescence of socialism; and the relevance, place and purpose of utopian thought and practice in modern society. This is a definitive text on council housing, which will be essential for students of housing, planning, social policy and geography.