Simon Jenkins (Spare these London flats the wrecking ball. But no more eyesore tower blocks please, 28 September) points out the potential defects of tower blocks, and favours a return to Victorian terrace housing as a better solution to high-density living. It is certainly possible to build good terraced estates, although in his example of Goldsmith Street in Norwich, planning regulations on minimum street width had to be suspended to fit in the required 100 dwellings.
Such dense terraces would have to be built across large swathes of land to provide an alternative to apartment blocks. If that happened, serious problems of access, service provision and adequate green space would soon arise.
