I believe that “these developments” refers to the fact we are looking at normal looking houses. Prior to this, as mentioned previously, people lived in town centres mostly but conditions were squalid. Poverty was large scale. Overcrowded housing with generations in the one house, outdoor toilets etc, and they’d have been built upwards rather than individual houses like this. They were the slums. Multi-story housing was very common because of the concentration of people in towns for work and the lack of transport etc. I remember my mum pointing out where her granny used to live in Edinburgh and how even she remembered the outdoor toilet from her childhood. The place still stands and I’m sure it’s residential but no doubts it has seen an upgrade or two since the 50’s and 60’s.

Housing like this in the photo wasn’t too common around the 30’s. I believe after the war it become more common and later on around the 50’s (I think) we saw new high rise tenements going up but of course keeping living conditions far from what they were at the turn of the century.

I’m trying to remember my history from school where we were taught about turn of the century poverty and the laws and standard changes that took people from the slums into good housing but my memory is failing me. Slum housing was a huge problem but thankfully the governments of the time did something to change that.