The street in the sky ... Lifts took homes higher than ever; new factory-style building methods produced flats quickly and inexpensively. And government subsidies were offered for high density developments; the taller the tower the higher the handout. ibid.
Eleven years in which the high-rise experiment had collapsed. The decline began when many of the rapidly built tower blocks that shot up from the 1950s were exposed as cheap and shoddy. By 1967 the government had withdrawn its subsidy for tower blocks. ibid.
When Margaret Thatcher swept to power in 1979 the building of council estates came to an abrupt halt. In 1980 she introduced a right to buy scheme. ibid.
It was that sense of permanence that gave so many British people ... a reason to have an investment in their homes, in their estates, in their neighbourhoods. ibid.
This town is like a wild animal in chains, Molly. A Lawless Street 1955 starring Randolph Scott & Angela Lansbury & Warner Anderson & Jean Parker & Wallace Ford & John Emery & James Bell & Ruth Donnelly & Harry Antrim & Michael Pate & Don Megowan et al, director Joseph H Lewis
But towards the middle of the 19th century, a small community with no significant history was transformed into an industrial hell-hole, its name to be known around the world: a bawdy, brawling Klondike, attracting both the rural Welsh and swarms of immigrant workers – English, Irish, Italians, Spaniards – many to endure conditions of indescribable squalor: infant mortality of such devastating proportions that a child was lucky to survive five years.
Thousands settled long the infested banks of the River Taff and the Glamorgan Canal that carried iron down to the sea at Cardiff; exploited, corrupted, amoral, condemned to a miserable existence in cheap lodging-houses and in a shanty town of such pervading awfulness that the district of Georgetown around the Iron Bridge (notorious ‘China’) evoked a sense of everlasting doom.
It is no exaggeration to suggest that Merthyr once qualified as one of the hardest towns on earth, its riverside ghettoes the natural habitat of murderers, tricksters, shysters, thieves, prostitutes and footpads. Ken Jones, The Men of Merthyr
The whole lot of ya – you’re gonna get out of town. Rio Bravo 1959 starring John Wayne & Dean Martin & Ricky Nelson & Angie Dickinson & Walter Brennan & Ward Bond & John Russell & Pedro Gonzalez-Gonzalez & Estelita Rodriguez & Claude Akins & Malcolm Atterbury et al, director Howard Hawks, Wayne to gang
Looked like any other town of the ’40s and ’50s … That’s about it … The pits were on the outer limits of the town … No Direction Home I, Dylan, 2005
‘If anything happens like last year with that pie eating …’ Waiting for Guffman, 1996
‘Being a Fabin is not always easy. I can certainly understand how the Kennedys feel.’ ibid.
Blaine Bugle: Theater Burns, Dozens Flee!!! BACKDRAFT put on back burner. ibid.
We don’t socialise with the creative types; we’ve got our Scrabble club and stuff. ibid.
I went to taxidermy school instead; I took the correspondents’ course. ibid. bloke in caravan
I had to have penis reduction surgery. ibid. with friends over dinner
As the push to save the planet gets even more urgent, one town has already cut its carbon emissions by 80%. Il in northern Finland is the greenest town in Europe, powered by 100% renewable energy. And the next generation are already leading the way in energy-saving ways of living. People still hunt and fish as part of their everyday lives. But could there be a cost to being Europe’s greenest town? Our World: Europe’s Greenest Town, BBC 2019
In the 1990s strange things began to happen in the small town of Corby. Mothers began to give birth to children with severe deformities. As the number of cases grew, the mothers demanded to know why this had happened to their children. This is the unknown story of the worst child poisoning case since Thalidomide. A case that changed our understanding of the dangers of air pollution. Horizon: Toxic Town: The Corby Poisonings, BBC 2020
‘Mothers all from the same small area all of whom had given to birth to children with very similar deformities.’ ibid. Stephen Bevan, Sunday Time journalist
The waste sites were located on land where the town’s steel works once stood. Corby started life as a village but in the 1930s one of the largest steel plants in Europe was built. But in 1980, faced with huge government cuts, the steel work shut down, leaving 11,000 people unemployed. Corby Council devised a plan to regenerate the town (1983). This tiny council took on the biggest land reclamation project in Europe with a ten-year regeneration programme to help bring Corby back to life. But demolishing a steel work is a complex process: steel making generates toxic waste that must be carefully disposed of. ibid.
As this story spread, more and more mothers started coming forward. ibid.
‘It was such a cover up.’ ibid.
With the Council claiming no evidence of a cluster, the mother’s fight for answers seemed to be over … ‘My reading the article in the Sunday Times was complete happenstance … I had back in the day worked in the steel works.’ ibid. Des Collins, solicitor
‘It isn’t normal for secret documents to turn up; it’s like something out of a John Grisham novel.’ ibid.
The advice included that the contractors cover their lorries and make sure no dust is created particularly on public roads … ‘Lorries weren’t covered with sludge raining out of the back of these dump trucks. All the roads in this area are judged covered in this silt. And that’s where things went pear-shaped … A tremendous amount of pollution over the whole of the district. That is basically a toxic soup of dust hanging over a town … over many many years.’ ibid. Environmental health officer
18 families were now involved in the fight for compensation, and they were finally ready to go to trial … A case that had never been proven before: 10 years after their battle began, all 18 mothers made their way to court … The judge visited the reclamation site … The issue of how far the dust could travel … [Corby Council] was hit with a legal bill of almost £15 million. It was the first case in the world to rule that air pollution could harm babies in the womb. ibid.
Will there be a post-pandemic bounce? Or is the high street in terminal decline? What are the prospects for jobless shop-workers? And will the grey pound save our town centres? … Are the beating hearts of our towns and cities equipped to survive? Tonight: Can Your Town Centre Survive? ITV 2021
It’s too late for some shops. Nationwide, more than 15,000 have closed in the last year alone. ibid.