Drawing on a unique archive spanning the lifetime of twenty council estate projects in the UK and using hundreds of resident voices, this book reveals the secrets of council housing's failures and successes, and the reasons for them.

Bringing to light the complex variety of the lived experiences of residents, it shows how estate pathways were predetermined by factors such as location, design and date, as well as by their local and national social, economic and political contexts. The book highlights what can be learned from some of the successes of less successful housing projects and provides lessons for building sustainable communities in the twenty-first century.