The government says it is determined to increase housebuilding rates to a level last seen 50 years ago, at a time when brutalist modernist schemes still carried a heady reek of utopia about them, and councils were building more than 150,000 homes each year themselves.

Prime minister Theresa May’s plan is to reach her 300,000-a-year goal some time in the next decade, and last month she unveiled a series of planning reforms designed to allow it to happen. But the government has said little about what it thinks those homes should look like, what kinds of communities they will be in, and how affordable they will be. 

With Building celebrating 175 years in 2018, the magazine is looking ahead 25 years to the construction, development and infrastructure industry we have to look forward to. This week we turn our attention to housing. 

From the completion of Edinburgh New Town in the mid 19th century and the era of the Victorian terrace, to the garden city movement, post-war planning, modernism and the Sustainable Communities Plan, Building magazine has seen it all. 

So, with this drive for a big increase in numbers, what will new homes and the housebuilding industry look like when the magazine hits 200?

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