The Housing Crisis sits at the nexus of all the failures we are seeing in the built environment: power transferred from public responsibility to private capital; the promotion of the individual at the expense of the community; “heritage” delivered through a weak, Prince Charles-approved makeover; and shoddy construction out of toxic and even incendiary (see Grenfell) materials. But there are, in Scotland, signs of a serious challenge to such orthodoxies, from the establishment of a National Investment Bank down to new models of Community Involvement and Empowerment.
Malcolm Fraser has been architect for big volume housebuilder and other private companies, Housing Associations and Local Authorities, and Communities and self-builders. He sits on the Board of Common Weal and will discuss his work including his and the Common Weal’s input into public policy.
