Among the first public authority-provided housing estates anywhere in the world is the Boundary Estate in Bethnal Green, London. Built in 1900, its thoughtful design touches – such as enamelled bricks to ease wiping off muck tossed up by passing horse carts – are still appealing, even if no longer strictly necessary. Other scattered efforts to house the working classes had been the occasional product of philanthropy, but the Addison Act of 1919 – led by Christopher Addison, a doctor who knew well the corrosive effects on health of squalid housing conditions – for the first time empowered councils to build planned public housing.

So where are we now, 100 years on? The ideal of quality homes for all has succumbed to economic forces – councils were disempowered to build as easily as they had been empowered, while the private sector profits from providing too few houses at too great a cost.

Jo Richardson explains the conundrum at the heart of UK housing provision, James Sommerville explains how the market watered down Addison’s quality housing ideal, while John Bryson looks to Singapore for inspiration from a system very unlike that found in Europe.

In the final podcast episode of our series on the moon we wonder what space exploration will look like 50 years from now, and look into the potential of space tourism.

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