30 August 1935: Praise for Leeds’s slum clearance schemes
Spectator. 1935/08/30. The City Enterprise of Leeds Get it:
.Excerpt
The comprehensive schemes of slum-clearance and rehousing adopted by the Leeds Corporation is causing some uneasiness to cautious persons in that city, but it may well be that in ten years’ time it will be recognised that the Corporation in thus boldly adventuring has taken the most economical as well as the most imaginative course. In providing for the present it is providing also for the future. In six years 80,000 houses are to be demolished, and substitute dwellings provided. That is unquestionably desirable. But Leeds does not consider it enough merely to destroy slums and provide houses; those houses must also be habitable ten years hence in accordance with the standards of living ten years hence; and they should form part of a township or suburb which has adequate transport facilities, central baths, schools, and markets. Should such desiderata be provided now, when they can be fitted into a general plan from the start, or later, when there will be a clamour for them, and second-best expedients have to be devised? Leeds will no doubt make many mistakes in its bold efforts. But it is setting an example of municipal enterprise in getting rid of the remains of a discreditable past, and building up a civilised city worthy to be prosperous. And its latest experiment, the grant to its transplanted tenants of facilities for acquiring beds and bedding (to replace their old and probably verminous possessions) on easy hire-purchase terms gives evidence of both humanity and imagination.
To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.
Abbreviations:
- ER: East Riding
- GM: Greater Manchester
- NR: North Riding
- NY: North Yorkshire
- SY: South Yorkshire
- WR: West Riding
- WY: West Yorkshire
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Original
The comprehensive schemes of slum-clearance and rehousing adopted by the Leeds Corporation is causing some uneasiness to cautious persons in that city, but it may well be that in ten years’ time it will be recognised that the Corporation in thus boldly adventuring has taken the most economical as well as the most imaginative course. In providing for the present it is providing also for the future. In six years 80,000 houses are to be demolished, and substitute dwellings provided. That is unquestionably desirable. But Leeds does not consider it enough merely to destroy slums and provide houses; those houses must also be habitable ten years hence in accordance with the standards of living ten years hence; and they should form part of a township or suburb which has adequate transport facilities, central baths, schools, and markets. Should such desiderata be provided now, when they can be fitted into a general plan from the start, or later, when there will be a clamour for them, and second-best expedients have to be devised? Leeds will no doubt make many mistakes in its bold efforts. But it is setting an example of municipal enterprise in getting rid of the remains of a discreditable past, and building up a civilised city worthy to be prosperous. And its latest experiment, the grant to its transplanted tenants of facilities for acquiring beds and bedding (to replace their old and probably verminous possessions) on easy hire-purchase terms gives evidence of both humanity and imagination.
251 words.
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