Sometime ago, on the eve of a study trip to Amsterdam to visit projects by Uytenhak, Claus en Kaan and West 8, an architect-friend and I prepared a list of what we might want from good housing in the city. A terrace; a good room; private space; storage; dual aspect, and a long view, if possible. Since then, I have thought of that conversation (and the list I kept in my back pocket) as a rubric, of sorts, on which to consider the many housing projects I have visited and studied. Ross Street, off Albert Street, opposite St Peter’s Cathedral, fifty metres from the Falls Road, around the corner from St Comgall’s (imaginatively restored by Hall Black Douglas), is a twenty-minute walk from Belfast city centre. Unfortunately, the trauma of the conflict and severe levels of multiple deprivation and poverty affected levels of crime and disorder and spiralling levels of anti-social behaviour in the Ross Street flats, to the extent that they were almost impossible to let, notwithstanding high levels of homelessness and housing crisis. Ross Street Mews by Studio Rogers, is a fine terrace that replaces the former flats, built just after Divis Flats which also suffered many decades of neglect. The new terrace changes the character of that legacy and will mature in its contribution to the increasing sense of positivity in the neighbourhood. It deservedly gained the 2026 RSUA award for ‘best social housing project’. Almost fifty years ago, the 1979 general election brought in a Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher that spelled the end of the bipartisan programme of local authority construction in England that had prevailed throughout the post-war years. That led to our ‘right-to-buy’ programmes and demolition of the Victorian-era housing stock in our red-brick pocket city. Essentially suburban housing typologies changed the morphology and fabric of the inner-city, diminished experience of neighbourhood, and reduced the inner-city population by forty per cent. The housing developments in the mid-conflict period have left a mixed legacy, much of which is now in the process of being replaced. The Woonerf and Essex Design Guide now gone, we remain uncertain how we assess quality. However, given reports by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation assessing built examples of developments in Britain, of different scales and typologies, it seems clear that our housing crisis is a failure not just of supply but of quality. That informs our socio-economic context, and there is merit considering the work and words of others to inspire and enthuse us. Peter Barber has advised how to de-commodify housing and end the housing crisis, by introducing private-sector rent controls, halting the selling of social houses, and by building tens of thousands of social houses every year funded by direct taxation.
