Forgotten Plotlanders: Learning from the Survival of Lost Informal Housing in the UK

Abstract

Abstract:Colin Ward's discourses on the arcadian landscape of 'plotlander' housing are unique documentations of the anarchistic birth, life, and death of the last informal housing communities in the UK. Today the forgotten history of 'plotlander' housing documented by Ward can be re-read in the context of both the apparently never-ending 'housing crisis' in the UK, and the increasing awareness of the potential value of learning from comparable informal housing from the Global South. This papers observations of a previously unknown and forgotten plotlander site offers a chance to begin a new conversation regarding the positive potential of informal and alternative housing models in the UK and wider Westernised world. Keywords:informal space, housing, Colin Ward, plotlanders, anarchism. Word count:8662, excluding endnotes, references, etc 12657, including endnotes, references, etc Forgotten Plotlanders:Learning from the survival of lost housing anarchy in the UK.If seeking to engage with ideas of alternative housing models in the UK architectural practitioners and academics alike confront the negative economic, political, and sociocultural assumptions that pervade informal, anarchist, and even self-build housing. In both the Global North and Global South respectively, the formality of housing can be perceived as acting as a 'yardstick' with which to measure the development of countries Thus, the paper concludes by suggesting that key spatial characteristics that define Studd Hill suggest a platform from which to re-consider the value of informal housing in the UK. This trajectory of analysis begins to re-imagine the social production of informal space (Shields 1999, 183) as an opportunity to confront, contest, and disrupt the seemingly unending housing crisis in the UK. However, instead of a strategy for revolution or an ideological vision of society, Ward's interpretation is grounded in practice and offers a model of anarchism as a theory of organization and social agency. His analysis of principles of self-organisation in relation to housing, schooling, family, self-management, and governance is an attempt to relieve the tension between practicality and ideological aspiration (C. Ward 1996a, 7-9). Thus, Ward came to recognise the importance of proposing a future that could be realised through social agency and action, instead of relinquishing political agency in pursuit of a model of a future utopia built on state revolution. Anarchism, Global Informality, and 'Plotlanders'Writing on plotlanders predominantly in the 1970s, Ward was not alone in exploring alternative housing models for the UK. Indeed this was a short-lived but highly innovative period for participatory housing in the UK, with projects including Walter Segal's self-build council housing in Lewisham, and Nabeel Hamdi's similar attempts to reinvent social housing for the GLC (Greater London Council) using a modified model of John Habraken's 'Supports ' (1972)

Hidden homes? Uncovering Sydney’s informal housing market

“…Traditions of informal housing provision in the global north include squatting in vacant dwellings or buildings, self-organised cooperative housing models, and forms of share accommodation (Hilder et al, 2018;Tummers, 2015). Longstanding, self-organised housing practices remain under-researched responses to current failures in the housing market (Crabtree, 2018;Bower, 2017), that represent non-market systems of organising space and distributing urban resources (Tonkiss, 2014: 109). But they have displayed limited ability in Australia as elsewhere to 'scale up' and gain policy traction (Crabtree, 2018: 28).…”

A sense of legitimacy in low-impact developments: experiences and perspectives of communities in South-West England

“…Urban environments in the global North leave little space for alternatives. The marginal spaces on which large areas of informal homes are created in the global South are virtually eradicated from cities in the global North (Bower, 2017), and particularly scarce in England. Despite being heavily regulated, the language of rural informality in the global North is significantly better developed than its urban counterpart.…”

“…Colin Ward remains an important yet somewhat overlooked thinker in planning and housing studies (see Bower, 2017;Wilkin & Boudeau, 2015 as notable exceptions). His writing on anarchy and citizen-led development demonstrates different ways of theorising the relationship between the state and market in contemporary settings, something that challenges dualistic thinking and the attendant categories of agency, 'formality' and legitimacy that this brings with it (Ward, 1976(Ward, , 1983.…”

Marginality and the Third Space of Unadopted Plotlander Roads

“…Yet this vast production of architecture is almost entirely absent from the popular architectural journals, most likely due to the harsh reflection that developer housing would have on the professional identity of the architect as hero artist. The contemptible lack of journalistic and professional engagement with anything but the microscopic fraction of expensive, glossy, and socio-economically fictional architecture that we like to present to the world remains startling.13 Studd Hill's informal planning history is extensively documented in a companion paper in the Housing, Theory and Society journal(Bower, 2016). This analysis also explores the contemporary implications of informal housing as an alternative model of development within a Western context.14 The story of the new housing development at Studd Hill is explored in detail in the companion paper noted above(Bower, 2016).…”

“… 1. Studd Hill’s informal planning history is extensively documented in a companion article in the Housing, Theory and Society journal (Bower, 2016). This analysis also explores the contemporary implications of informal housing as an alternative model of development within a Western context. …”