Book launch: Hartcliffe Betrayed

The long awaited launch of Paul Smith’s book Hartcliffe Betrayed: The fading of a poast-war dream, or how a garden city became a housing estate, 1943-1963.

A salutary lesson for current planners can be drawn from this detailed examination of the failure of an ambitious project in the immediate post-war environment to live up to its expectations. Houses were desperately needed: What principles should underpin a new ‘settlement’? Where should the houses go? Who were they for? And what provision should be made for the likely political and financial changes over the timescale of the project?

Changing governments, shifting priorities and inevitable cuts meant the dream was progressively trimmed and gradually became drowned in a sea of MUD.

In Hartcliffe Betrayed, quotes from official documents, contemporary newspapers and interviews with ‘pioneer’ residents show the downward slide from ‘ideal neighbourhood’ to dormitory estate.