The British antipathy to high-rise living was eloquently underlined by Channel Four's programme Demolition This showed, unsurprisingly, that the tower block remains the public's most disliked building type. Yet high rise has been making a comeback in recent years. The blocks proliferating across the UK's major cities are just one aspect of a return to higher-density living, stimulated by government planning policies that appear to be working. The ODPM's most recent land-use statistics show that the average density of new development is 40 dwellings per hectare (dph), significantly higher than the minimum benchmark of 30dph laid out in the soon to be superseded PPG3. In the South East the figure is 48dph.
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