A council estate is a housing estate provided originally by the local authority for renting out at rents that were intended to be manageable for local authority workers, and those in the stupidly poorly paid caring professions (eg: nurses, firemen, policemen, ambulance drivers, dustmen etc.). Maybe they are like the Projects in US cities that I have read of, but thinking back to Last Exit to Brooklin (Hubert Selby Jr, not Mark Knopfler), I am not too sure. Maybe none of the Projects are as full of hopelessness as that now (hopefully), after all, Selby was writing of the 1950s.
Councils today have often made over their estates to housing associations, and there has been a ‘right to buy’ policy operating for some years. These things have resulted in improvements to many council estates.
A housing estate’s roads normally serve only the estate, they are not through routes. (Think of a simple maze with only one way in/out). These days estates are required to have a minimum acreage of green space – since so many are built on flood plains this can often be overcome by allowing space for a ‘balancing pond’ for the stream to flood into if the rain is extra heavy. These can be attractive if done well with proper planting.
Housing estates may consist of low cost housing or pretty/very expensive housing and an increasing trend is to mix the two somewhat in hope of getting a more varied and successful community.
