Drawing on a unique archive and hundreds of resident voices, this book tracks 20 estates from the early 20th century to today. Each has been viewed as a success and as a failure, at different times and by different people. Initially they offered high-quality homes but all experienced falls in quality, safety, and popularity, and changes in resident mix. However, what were ‘20 unpopular estates’ in the 1980s and 1990s are today 19 fairly popular mixed tenure neighbourhoods.

The book shows how falls and rises were driven by factors from the local to the global, and suggests what can be learned from the successes of ‘less successful’ housing.