The Evolution of a Community: A Study of Dagenham After Forty Years

In earlier studies, Peter Willmott and other investigators had documented the social problems of new housing estates – the loneliness, the tensions, the disruption of family and neighbourhood ties. But how far are such troubles transitory? What kind of life would develop in communities like these when time had rubbed off the newness?

Originally published in 1963, in search of an answer, Peter Willmott went to Dagenham in Essex, where forty years before the London County Council began to buil...