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Governmentality on the Park Hill estate: the rationality of public housing

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2010

MATTHEW HOLLOW
MATTHEW HOLLOW*
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, University of Oxford, Linton Road, Oxford, OX2 6DU
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Abstract:

This article evaluates the inherent ambiguity of the landmark Park Hill housing estate in Sheffield, England. Incorporating Foucault's theories on governmentality and biopolitics, this article explores how techniques of power and control radically affected the way this building was both used and viewed. It shows how conflicting discourses about human needs and desires influenced the way that subjects were housed, managed and regulated in Sheffield during the supposedly homogeneous welfare-state years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 37 , Issue 1 , May 2010 , pp. 117 - 135
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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References

1 I. Soutar, ‘Park Hill in the limelight’, Sheffield Telegraph, 15 Feb. 2008, 5.

2 Note that Hyde Park, which was designed to complement the Park Hill project, was constructed between 1960 and 1965 on an adjoining site and provided a further 1,322 dwellings. See Sheffield Local Studies Collection (SLS), Housing and Local Government Files (HLG) MP 4107M, Sheffield Housing Corporation: Report of a Visit by Treasury Officers (Feb. 1968).

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5 See for example, Bacon, C., Park Hill in its Social Context (Sheffield, 1985)Google Scholar; R. Banham, ‘Park Hill housing, Sheffield’, Architectural Review (Dec. 1961), 403–10; Abbott, D. and Pollit, K., Hill Housing: A Comparative Study (London, 1980)Google Scholar; Glendinning and Muthesius, Tower Block, 125–31.

6 See Bacon, Park Hill, 47–61.

7 Quoted in C. Windle, ‘Retreat up the hill’, The Times: Bricks and Mortar (6 Jul. 2007), 7. See also SLS/HLG 711.595F, Sheffield City Council, Park Hill Development Brief (Sheffield, 2004).

8 In December 1998 the estate became a Grade II listed building.

9 Note that (at time of print) renovation work is now currently underway on the site.

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30 MHLG, The Density of Residential Areas (London, 1952).

31 Womersley's letter is reprinted in Bacon, Park Hill, 9.

32 Glendinning and Muthesius, Tower Block, 66–8.

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42 SLS/Local Pamphlets, vol. 205, no. 1 04256, City of Sheffield Housing Committee (CSHC), Multi-Storey Housing in Some European Countries: Report on Findings and Provisional Plan (Sheffield, 1955), 52–3.

43 SLS/Local Pamphlets, vol. 30, 04256, City of Sheffield Architects’ Department, Park Hill Redevelopment: Part II (Sheffield, 1958), 2.

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56 CHAC, Moving from the Slums (London, 1956), 6. This facet of the plan is also explored in SLS/HLG 331.8335G, Garnsey, S., The Community in the Sky: Life on the Park Hill Flats (Sheffield, 1980), 5Google Scholar.

57 SLS/HLG MP 4871M, ‘Appraisal of Park Hill redevelopment, Sheffield’ (Jul. 1963), 282.

58 Ibid.

59 SLS/HLG 331.8335G, CSHC, Park Hill Survey (1962), 9.

60 SLS/HLG MP 4871M, ‘Appraisal of Park Hill’, 283.

61 Foucault, Discipline and Punish, 170.

62 SLS/HLG 331.8335F, CSHC, Park Hill Redevelopment (1960), 1.

63 Rose, Powers of Freedom, 149. See also Morris, R.N. and Mogey, J., The Sociology of Housing (London, 1965), 165Google Scholar.

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72 Ibid.

73 SLS/HLG 331.8335G, Park Hill Survey, 1.

74 Department of the Environment (DoE), The Estate outside the Dwelling: Reactions of Residents to Aspects of Housing Layout (London, 1972), 4.

75 Ravetz, Council Housing and Culture, 158.

76 DoE, The Estate outside the Dwelling, 27.

77 SLS/HLG MP 4871M, ‘Appraisal of Park Hill redevelopment’, 283.

78 DoE, The Estate outside the Dwelling, 31.

79 Ibid., 61–2.

80 Gordon, ‘Governmental rationality’, 3.

81 Harvey, D., The Condition of Post-Modernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Social Change (Oxford, 1989), 35Google Scholar.

82 C. Jameson, ‘British architecture: thirty years wasted’, Sunday Times (6 Feb. 1977), 14; S. Bayley (ed.), ‘Housing in Britain, 1952–77’, Architectural Review (Jan. 1977), 421. A. Coleman's Utopia on Trial: Vision and Reality in Planned Housing (London, 1985) is perhaps the most comprehensive and vociferous example of this backlash against ‘planned’ estates.

83 Foucault, ‘Space, knowledge and power’, 248.

84 SLS/HLG 331.8335G, Park Hill Survey, i.

85 Joyce, P., The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003), 4Google Scholar.

86 Taken from a lecture entitled ‘The meshes of power’ (1976), quoted in S. Eden and J.W. Crampton (ed.), Space, Knowledge and Power: Foucault and Geography (London, 2007), 6.

87 SLS/HLG MP 4871M, ‘Appraisal of Park Hill redevelopment’, 281; Glendinning and Muthesius, Tower Block, 260.

88 G. Burchell, ‘Peculiar interests: civil society and governing “the system of natural liberty”’, in Burchell, Gordon and Miller (eds.), The Foucault Effect, 121.

89 From a lecture that Foucault gave at Collége de France, 5 Apr. 1978, quoted in Gordon, ‘Governmental rationality’, 20; Rose, Powers of Freedom, 87.

90 Foucault, ‘Space, knowledge and power’, 247.