During the years prior to and during the Sunrise Era, the UK population exploded with growth exceeding all previous prediction models. This extreme growth put significant strain on a housing market that was already struggling since the early 21st Century.
Previous governments had pledged and subsequently failed to deliver the housing required to sustain the market and reduce prices. As part of the Sunrise Plan, the coalition government enacted a series of planning permission changes and put forward an aggressive investment scheme designed to boost the production of housing by private developers and local authorities.
Many developers started buying and developing brown-field sites across the country, mostly in cities. When these sites were almost all developed, companies moved onto purchasing old high street shops that had closed. Most shopping had moved away from the high street and onto the internet or large retail parks and nothing had yet replaced the empty stores in towns.
Being the financial and jobs capital of the UK, London saw the largest boom in population. As time progressed it wasn’t enough to build 1, 2 and 3 bedroom flats. They were almost always overpriced as soon as they were built. It was during this time that there was a great shift in housing development. Local authorities started to take inspiration from Japan and investigated mass developing small city apartments in high-rise blocks.
The first council to explore such an option was Hackney Council. They selected one of their existing high-rise blocks that was overdue for a significant refurbishment and relocated all the tenants. The vision was to develop a mini community within the building. Each floor would have many smaller apartments, many catering for just 1 or 2 people but also family spaces. The apartments would have sleeping space, a small living area, storage and a small countertop large enough for a kettle and microwave. Shared between several floors would be a large communal kitchen and bathroom facility.
This new model of housing attracted a lot of criticism from human rights groups who saw packing people together like sardines as a dehumanising act. However, it was greatly accepted by the 20-35 year old demographic who had been struggling to find their own places to live. Over time, buildings inspired by the trial in Hackney started to spring up all over the capital and eventually the country.
Many of the buildings went further by shrinking down the living space until it was almost the size of a single room, with exceptions for spaces designed for families. This greatly increased the capacity of people each building could hold, reduced the cost for each individual tenant or homeowner and generated more profit for the developer. To compensate for the lack of living space many developers created larger communal areas such as roof gardens, floors dedicated to recreation for children and banks of computer stations.
Sunsets on Britannia 