Last month, residents of the Wyndford estate in Glasgow barricaded themselves in their flats in a last-ditch attempt to save their homes from demolition. The 600 socially rented dwellings, designed by Ernest Buteux and sitting next to the River Kelvin, were denied listed building status in January, and will now make way for a development of half as many homes – and triple the rental value.
Wheatley, formerly called Glasgow Housing Association, has been demolishing social homes in Scotland for decades. In 2014, Wheatley even planned to “wow the world” by dynamiting 1,326 social homes during the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony. Footage of the dwellings being reduced to rubble was to be beamed on to a giant screen in Celtic Park Stadium and broadcast live on TV. The idea was dropped , having provoked international ridicule, but the estate was razed to the ground shortly after the games, and a decade later remains a fenced-off heap of rubble.
The Wyndford residents’ fight to save their homes has been replicated elsewhere. Since the introduction of the devolved parliament, 77,745 homes have been demolished in Scotland, while the UK as a whole obliterates 50,000 buildings a year, particularly targeting social housing.
London, which has demolished a larger proportion of its social housing than any other region in the UK, has knocked down at least 161 council and housing association estates since 1997, resulting in a loss of around 55,000 homes and the displacement of an estimated 131,000 people. A further 100 London housing estates are at risk, including projects of irreplaceable heritage value such as Central Hill in Lambeth, one of the few substantial 20th-century housing estates designed by a female architect, Rosemary Stjernstedt.
The environmental harm of this demolition-led development is astronomical; the UK Green Building Council estimates that 25% of the UK’s emissions are directly attributable to the built environment, due in part to the vast energy required to produce new construction materials. Cement production alone accounts for 8% of the world’s carbon emissions, and the construction industry consumes 50% of global steel production and 25% of all plastics, and produces 60% of UK waste.
As a rule of thumb, erecting a new building produces more than a tonne of carbon or equivalent greenhouse gases per square metre. This means that demolishing a 100 sq metre home to make way for another of the same size not only produces about 100 tonnes of CO2 but wastes all the emissions that were previously produced in building the original. In Wyndford for instance, Wheatley’s proposals will, if it goes ahead, produce the equivalent of 22,455 tonnes of carbon dioxide – more than double the ecological impact of upgrading all 600 homes to modern standards.
Britain’s addiction to the wrecking ball is not just trashing cultural heritage and polluting the planet, but crushing communities too. Property developers like to emphasise the benefits new buildings can bring, but they rarely acknowledge the harm demolitions cause. Paul Watt of Birkbeck University, who has studied the social impact of demolition, says: “There may be umpteen reports, but they never ever drill down into the long-term effect of these projects on people’s health. There’s a protracted process of physical and social degeneration that can roll on for decades. Residents know their home is going to be demolished but they don’t know when or where they’ll be going – it is very disconcerting.”
Plans to demolish the Aylesbury estate, for instance, a 1977 south London neighbourhood of 2,700 homes designed by Hans Peter Felix Trenton, featuring wide balconies and large green spaces, were first tabled more than 20 years ago but it still hasn’t been completed. As local councillors pointed out in a planning hearing last month, “If you were born when it began, you could have graduated university by now.”
The decades of neglect and demolition have led to marked declines in social infrastructure and cultural life, while the many vacant homes have enabled an uptick in crime. “When we looked at the Aylesbury in 2014, there were a lot of real strengths in that community, particularly around support for people from different migrant backgrounds,” says Nicola Bacon, former Director of Policy at Shelter, who has led research into the impact of the demolitions on residents. “When we went back in 2021, a lot of that social life had gone and won’t come back.”
There are outstanding refurbishments that exemplify a more ecological and compassionate alternative to demolition, notably the extensive overhaul of Grand Parc in Bordeaux. There, 530 flats were upgraded in just two weeks without any residents being evicted. While in the UK evictions are still far too commonplace, the reworking of Park Hill in Sheffield by architects Mikhail Riches, which completed in December, shows how a careful refurbishment can breathe new life into the most challenging estates.
Such inspiration is sorely needed. The obliteration of 50,000 British buildings a year is disgraceful – a pattern of myopic greed and unthinking vandalism that is wiping out the heritage of our cities while tearing apart neighbourhoods and accelerating climate breakdown. Cost-effective and low-carbon refurbishment opportunities that have proved themselves overseas are being ignored at the expense of people and planet. To get a grip on its emissions and protect its communities, Britain must end its addiction to demolition.
• This article was amended on 10 February 2023. The UK Green Building Council estimates that it is 25% of the UK’s emissions that are directly attributable to the built environment, rather than “about 40%” as an earlier version said due to incorrect source information.
Phineas Harper is chief executive of charity Open City, whose Stewardship Awards celebrate urban care of buildings, infrastructure and open spaces
