This quote from the report above from Ed Vaizey is perhaps interesting :
“I have thousands of houses being built in my constituency, many of them very poor quality. The blandness and anonymity of a lot of modern housing is the reason a lot of people object. There’s nothing exciting about a new housing development being built near you – it’s just a big fat pain in the arse.”
This should, by its very essence, suggest his understanding that the residential environment is less than dynamic and is ,in fact, rather disappointing. I would certainly agree with him and can only refer to such programmes that the German Government (West as it was then) implemented in Berlin and its environs during the 1970s-1990s (the Internationale Bauausstellung Berlin - IBA). In the UK the best that seems to emerge in the larger scale is a sort of Travel Lodge extravaganza that is so mediocre and bland. State of the Art design for the populous has not happened as the large "house builders", it appears, are quite happy to deploy this ghastliness primarily because people buy it. It is therefore important to engage in an "awareness" process to the "customers" so they begin to demand better products. Strangely enough this is called education which supposedly exists...........but has been, it seems, "dumbed-down" over the decades so most people are quite numb to this issue. This in turn creates the social castration we have seen over the same decades which has essentially been the driving influence of society. If Architects continue to blow their trumpets on a hill their sound will continue to be washed away in the heavy winds of consumer denial. It is a complex issue, no doubt, and one which requires some really bright people and good resources to tackle. Not impossible but with some proper soil-searching and purse gathering coupled with non-partisan politics one could bring this forward.