If modern Britain lives in a terrace house and loves a cottage, it cannot make its mind up about the high-rise flat. Is the skyscraper a blot on the landscape, or the answer to the national housing crisis? For Dan Cruickshank, the idea of living high above the city streets really is the future once again. 21st-century London is the site of an extraordinary building boom. Hundreds of residential high-rise towers are being built at record speed, many hugely controversial, as private developers cotton on to what social housing idealists realised 60 years ago. Dan is in Bow in east London, charting the extraordinary history of one estate - the Lincoln. Designed in 1960 for the London County Council by a young idealistic architect, the 19-storey Lincoln was once the tallest residential building in London. Inside every flat were the latest space-age gadgets - a lift, a shower and a fitted kitchen. But the dream turned sour. The Lincoln became notorious for drugs and violence. There was even a brutal murder. It was the same all over Britain - the flat was a byword for deprivation and social exclusion. But then, just as everything looked lost, the Lincoln was saved and with, perhaps, the hopes of an entire generation for that most precious of things - a home. For Dan, as perhaps for Britain, 'the only way is up'.

Comments

1. 52:45 such a small flat, student accommodation in any other Country.
2. 44:00 She can always go Home.
3. Baked beans for breakfast, grim. :o/
4. British balconies are pointless, they are way too small to do anything real with, most around my way are just used for storage, kid's bikes etc.
5. British flats is so small and cramped, smallest in Europe.
6. Communist/Collectivist drivel imposed by the State. Horrid.
7. 3:11 😡
8. I liked how the one lady didn't LET him interrupt and JUST TALKED LOUDER OVER HIM until she finished her piece before he could start that fucking stuttering and Emphasis. On. Every. One. Of. His. Words. Nice block, lady whose name I'm too lazy to go back and find out!
9. I ate a plane have a job ickmnjknm
10. silly old fart.
11. Agenda 21 wants us all crammed in tiny high rises. You'll never get me off my land in the country.
12. Could someone tie his hands please?
13. I certainly meant TAKE ME HOME TO A COTTAGE on a tree lined lane......I will bring the tea cups, saucers and tea pot!
14. Take me home! I've been here since that Englishman landed...almost 500 years ago! So please come and GET ME! Hurry I can't stand another minute! :)
15. Today I learned that those shitty high-rise flats were literally a communist plot.
16. I can't watch this simply because of his empasis of every last word!!!
17. Excellent series. Thank you for sharing with the United States.
18. Loved watching this series. Thank you for uploading it.