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Notes -
The quality of housing is poor in the UK by first world standards even compared to any other nation with similar income, so it’s not just that Europe is poorer than the US.
There are many reasons but most come back to the mid-1930s which, unlike in most of the world, was a period of great economic growth and development for the UK, which was less affected by the Great Depression than any comparable nation. (This also explains appeasement to some extent.)
Huge numbers of new suburbs were built. The default middle class British suburban house is probably still a 1930s ‘semi’[-detached] property that looks like this.
At the same time, local governments (later guaranteed by the national government) implemented policies that severely restricted suburban construction around all major British cities - seriously, look at the map in that link, especially around London. In addition, many of the wealthy long-standing commuters towns began exercising greater planning control over new developments; British local governments have very little power except over planning, and NIMBYism started early here.
For a long time, this didn’t affect much; the Blitz and postwar reconstruction destroyed a huge amount of housing stock, much of which was hastily and cheaply rebuilt in that era of austerity and rationing. Then, as London’s population declined by millions of people after WW2, there were plenty of beautiful old Victorian and Edwardian stucco townhouses and apartment buildings where homes could be had for cheap. Much of the population moved out into suburban towns build on brownfield sites or which had earlier been earmarked for development, to places like Slough.
After Margaret Thatcher restarted the British economy, millions of people began to return to London in large numbers, and the price of property began to shoot up. In the suburbs and city alike, local councils began to exercise their immense power over applications to prevent most new construction, to avoid loud works or annoyed neighbors or more strain on local schools or hospitals. In the city, much of the surviving pre-1945 stock of housing was ‘listed’ as architecturally important, which in combination with strict height limits meant London has a much lower density than comparable major cities and much less new construction.
That, coupled with the green belt itself, which all levels of government and almost all existing homeowners (who vote) guard zealously, means that British housing stock is largely both poor and expensive, especially in the southeast where most economic activity takes place. When housebuilders do get approval to build on even brownfield land, they cram as many ugly, cheap and small-windowed homes onto it as they can, because approvals can take decades of legal wrangling to achieve, thus the “Barratt box” (named after the largest UK housebuilder) negative descriptor of Deano meme fame.
If you have money and/or live somewhere with no jobs you can avoid all this and live in some of the most beautiful and well-preserved pre-1920s housing in the world. But most people can’t.
I thought those were all post-bombing 1950/60s stock? Those big windows don’t look prewar to me. We let the socialists get control during the crucial rebuilding period.
Yes, the housing stock in this picture is clearly postwar. Either the street was bombed, since Slough was apparently hit quite heavily, or it was new construction. But the reason why we can’t just demolish these houses and replace them with better ones, as happened elsewhere, is due to decisions made earlier and later than that.
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There's also government regulations that require houses to look ugly so that people don't fall out the window.
https://x.com/SCP_Hughes/status/1674006804076920834
I thought they literally don't allow windows to open more than an inch now for the same reason.
There were a lot of window opening loicense jokes on Twitter last summer because of that.
Edit: it's 100mm or ~4"
Haven't heard that. Pretty sure fire regulations require that people can egress out of windows (at least in bedrooms), so maybe it applies only to some windows.
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Yes, that is another BS regulation we have to deal with.
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For comparison, the US's de facto standard prescribes for window-sill heights a minimum of 18 inches (0.46 meter) and a maximum of 44 inches (1.12 meters).
It's even less restrictive than that; you can have floor to ceiling glazing (not uncommon in fixed windows and sliding doors) provided the glass meets the hazardous location standards. That standard isn't about people falling out of open windows, it's about breaking through closed ones.
There's another rule about that, R321.2.1. The minimum is 24 inches (0.61 meter), from the floor to the opening, unless a guard is provided. Obvious thing to do if you want a window lower than that is to make the top panel the operating one, and I think I've seen that. As long as it's above 18 inches you can use regular glass.
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