The director of the UK's Twentieth Century Society has urged prime minister David Cameron to ditch plans to demolish post-war housing estates or risk an architectural "tragedy".
Catherine Croft warned that demonising post-war estates would not solve the housing crisis, after the prime minister pledged to demolish or "regenerate" 100 of the social housing developments across the country.
She said Cameron was using emotive language to create a "knee-jerk" response that could leave residents worse off.
"It is still all too easy to condemn estates by describing them as 'high-rise' or 'Brutalist' (or worse, in today's BBC article, as simply 'brutal') and get a knee-jerk reaction that blames poor design for major social problems," said Croft in a statement issued today. "It would be a tragedy if any more decent, well thought out and essentially humane estates ? and yes, that can include both high-rise and Brutalist ones ? were to be demolished and replaced with schemes which will almost certainly increase the density of site development, meaning smaller room sizes and less amenity space, yet with higher rents."

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Cameron unveiled plans to spend £140 million on jumpstarting the redevelopment of 100 estates in an article published in last week's Sunday Times and on the government's website.
He described post-war social housing es...