Why are modern houses so bad?

I caught an item on last night's Newsnight on house design. Wayne Hemingway, the oh-so-trendy person-famous-for-being-on-TV had slagged off Wimpey homes for being unimaginative. Unexpectedly, they decided to call his bluff and asked him to come up with some ideas of his own.

I have to say I rather agree with Mr Hemingway. During the 1997 general election I was helping a friend canvass in Preston. One of the places we canvassed was a brand-new housing estate. It was one of the greatest exercises in pastiche I have ever seen. They seemed to have taken a few photos of pre-WWI houses and sought to recreate them down to the last detail. It's at this point that I realise that I don't know how to describe architectural features. Let's just say there were a variety of differently-coloured bricks, tiles on the front, white-painted barge boards and various other frills.

I couldn't make up my mind whether I liked it or not. On the one hand, these sorts of estates are a vast improvement on the amazingly bland private developments of the 1960s and 1970s. On the other, we are an astonishingly prosperous and advanced society. In concrete, steel and glass we have a range of materials that our ancestors could only have dreamt of. Other, more traditional materials are available at a fraction of the previous price. And all we can do is produce is pastiche. What does this say about us?

Walk round almost any British town or city and something will shout out at you. Almost all the desirable properties were built before World War One. Drop a martian in Britain and tell him nothing but the approximate date of construction of each building and he would have to conclude that something awful happened shortly after 1910.

A good friend of mine also points out that quality is way down. Houses and flats, nowadays are much smaller, room sizes are smaller and ceilings lower. Brickwork, carpentry and roofing are done in a slapdash and amateurish manner. I find it difficult to disagree.

Why is that? Is it all the fault of capitalism? Well, I think we can dismiss that one out of hand - just ask yourself what sort of house you want to live in and then ask yourself whether it was built by the state or private enterprise.

Now I would dearly like to blame socialism for all of this. I would dearly like to point out that the bigger the state the worse the housing. I would dearly like to blame this crisis on the rise of taxation and especially the phenomenon of planning controls. But I have a problem with cause and effect. Sure, we have planning controls and sure, we have bland developments but what's the connection. I really don't know. I sometimes play with the idea that planning produces some highly undesirable results. For instance that major housebuilders are firstly machines for obtaining planning permission and only secondly builders of houses. I also toy with the idea that because of planning controls, the market for property is so tight that people are prepared to buy almost anything.

Perhaps it's our obsession with home ownership. As I understand it, in 1914, the vast majority of people rented. So, you had a cadre of experienced landlords who knew what to look for. In such an environment contractors had to be very careful to do a good job or else they would miss out on repeat business.

I also can't help feeling that the high-rise disasters of the 1960s have a lot to do with it. The vast majority of these were built in a rush by the state. Many were built badly and those that weren't were filled with some of the most undesirable tenants imaginable. High-rise became synonymous with hell hole and new tall buildings were to all intents and purposes banned. The fact that there are many successful privately-managed high-rise blocks in North America was ignored but the damage to the cause of modernity was done.

Well that's my two cents. Any comments would be very much welcome.