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Not all council estates are the same. A detailed historical account of the birth and social evolution of the Whitley council estate in Reading, Working-Class Suburb challenges many of the more depressing images and cultural stereotypes about council housing in twentieth and twenty-first century England. Key areas covered by the study are housing and politics; community campaigns; women and the corporate life of council estates; the uses of leisure; the relationships between tenants, residents and the local authority, and continuities in working-class life despite economic, demographic and political change.
The book will be of interest to anyone studying urban history and social history, to professionals working in the fields of housing policy and housing studies, and to the growing number of academics interested in suburban studies.
1. Introduction and orientation
2. The delayed birth of the Whitley Estate
3. Building a community during the 1930s
4. Whitley at War
5. New beginnings: postwar expansion
6. Social change, social problems and social action in postwar Whitley
7. Leisure and the limits of social exclusion
8. Whitley and the wider world
Bibliography
Index