Book excerpt: Introduction -- 'How to provide housing for the people': origins -- 'The world of the future': the interwar period -- 'If only we will': Britain reimagined, 1940-51 -- 'The needs of the people': council housing, 1945-56 -- 'Get these people out of the slums': 1956-68 -- 'Anti-monumental, anti-stylistic, and fit for ordinary people': 1968-79 -- 'Rolling back the frontiers of the state': 1979-91 -- 'Thrown-away places': 1991-7 -- 'A different kind of community': 1997-2010 -- 'People need homes; these homes need people': 2010 to the present