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Since the 1980’s, investment by the UK government into the construction of new social rented housing has dwindled significantly. As a result of Right to Buy selloffs, the demolition of aging stock, and a relative lack of replacement social new-build, the per capita supply of social rented housing has dropped to a new low. At the same time, demand for these limited properties has risen drastically, particularly in London. What social rented housing resources do remain have also been fragmented between council-administered choice-based lettings schemes and housing association waiting lists. This research has sought to examine the effects of these changes on the lives of people applying to social rented housing using semi-structured interviews with participants from housing association waiting lists. 50 housing applicants were interviewed from across London. Interviews focussed on participants’ housing history, the process and outcomes of their various applications, and the effects of their continued failure to gain entry into social rented housing. Findings indicate participants to be fundamentally ignorant both of the growing scarcity of social rented housing and of the mechanics of its distribution. Many had made maladaptive decisions based on these misunderstandings. The majority of participants were overcrowded, overworked and/or occupying poor housing. Many felt that something had been taken from them, vaguely aware that earlier generations had an easier time accessing “good housing” but unable to explain why that was. Social rented housing in the United Kingdom has changed from a more widely available form of aid to an emergency program rationed only to those who are in emergency need. This would appear to have left vulnerable those who are in non-critical need. The aim of this research has been to explore that vulnerability through narrative.

My research explores the interrelationships between agencies involved in volume housebuilding, and their influence on the discourses and the actualities of housing quality in residential developments. The empirical focus is on urban design codes; as a planning tool with responsibilities and interests spread across a broad cluster of public and private agencies, they are intriguing artefacts of complex governmental processes. Though research on design codes has been done in the past, much of it addresses issues from planning and policy perspectives, focusing on best-practice and promotion. My research incorporates a suite of constructivist social theories to re-situate the process of design coding within the political relationships between institutions, individuals, central and local governments and private companies. Using the concepts of field and capital articulated by Bourdieu (1983, 1986) and governmental rationality after Foucault (1991, 1998), I investigate the way design values are co-constructed by these different parties, and the manner in which they attain force and effect within the contemporary UK political and cultural economy. I will also utilize approaches associated with actor-network-theory (Latour 2005) to evaluate the technical artefacts of design coding, to track their active contribution to the construction of design values, and how they interact with larger assemblages within the built environment. The empirical program includes in-depth interviews and two case studies of active design coding projects in order to develop a detailed and socially charged account of a process often portrayed and understood in “objective” disciplinary terms. Design codes are typically assumed to be a value-neutral tool, a technical instrument capable of delivering a broad range of styles and transparently communicating different design agendas. This thesis interrogates that assumption and examines how design codes, like other governmental technologies, are part of specific historical and political circumstances, and as such are the site of contestation and the embodiment of a multiplicity of values, whether by design or not.