TECHNOBUREAUCRACY AND CITY LIFE gencies. In the rich world, as Habraken puts it, « Man no longer houses himself: he is housed». (66). Hardly anybody living in British cities has these « three freedoms». Developers owning large areas in cities have to hire architects and negotiators to enable them to find a way round the regulations or arrive at a compromise with the authorities. Those who« own» their own houses, furthermore, have to adopt acceptable life-styles and have suitable occupations in order to gain permission to purchase their homes in the first place, and having purchased their home they have to abide by a mountain of regulations dictating what they can or cannot do in their« own» homes. However, the vast majority of home owners see no contradiction between the sense of « freedom » they think they possess and the limitations placed on them since their lifestyles and occupations, which rendered them acceptable in the first place, do not conflict with what are essentially the moral norms of a corporate society. As the present system of allocation of housing and other benefits leads to increasingly inequitable and inefficient cities, the violent response from those most adversely affected, leads those who have « made it » to call for more« law and order » As Colin Ward points out « Cries for law and order are greatest when communities are most isolated from other people in the city ». Those who argue that the problems of the city are caused by a system whose sole concern is the seeking of profit and the solution to these problems is to set up a system where the private ownership of property no longer exists have a very limited and blinkered view of the way that cities function. The squatting movement of the 60's and 70's found that the most violent resistance to housing homeless families in vacant property owned by local councils came from those authorities with Labour Party dominated councils. The Criminal Trespass Law, furthermore, which now makes « squatting » a criminal offence was drafted not by a Conservative, but by a Labour Government. What bothers the authorities about « squatting » is not the fact that people are taking « private property » which belongs to someone else (whether a private owner or a public authority) but that it interferes with the system of allocation of urban space. (66) COLIN WARD: op. cit., p. 80. 45
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