In Britain a series of reports and studies appeared alongside of the first multi-storey flats. These studies investigated, for instance, children living at height, new forms of neighbouring, use and vandalism of common spaces, the effect of technological breakdowns on everyday life, noise nuisance and experiences of anonymity. One such study was written by Pearl Jephcott in 1971. A researcher at the Department of Social and Economic research at the University of Glasgow, her book, Homes in High Flats reports her research on the human problems involved in multi-storey housing. [image_1] This book was one of the first British attempts to deliver, as it is said in the foreword, ‘a real study and knowledge’ of the ‘problems of living in high flats… in a practical sense’.[13]
We were interested in how this book convincingly assembled and mobilised ‘living in high flats’ as a fact. In seeking to understand these processes we have thought of the book and its production as an actor-network[14]. How did this book achieve an intelligible and plausible representation of the world of highrise living? How did it, for instance, link objects to certain objects and not to others? How did it render visible and evident relations between objects, researchers and institutions? Such linking work is central to the practice of fact making evidenced in the scientific text and influences considerably the ability of that science to produce irrefutable and thus influential facts.

In Homes in High Flats three techniques of fact making are used: (1) the making of distinctiveness, (2) the making of repetition, and (3) the making of an ‘ideal scheme’. Each of these is used by Jephcott to advance her science of highrise living in Glasgow and to make a case for it as emblematic of a more general condition of highrise living.

Distinctiveness: In Homes in High Flats distinctiveness is created by adding specificity to the phenomena. Jephcott sets her study up as concerning itself with non-typical blocks and non-typical tenants. In the introduction of the book, for example, she emphasises the uniqueness of  ‘highrise living’ in Glasgow, both in terms of the high number of highrises in the city as well as the specific ability of Glaswegians to acclimatise to such living.
‘The city has introduced high flats on an extensive scale and in many cases has built tower blocks that are exceptionally tall. It was thought that such features would outweigh the fact that in Glasgow the tenant’s reaction to multi-storeys might not be typical. Glaswegians are, for example, accustomed to flat life, since a 60-feet-tall tenement with perhaps 12 or more homes is the traditional from of dwelling’[15].
Jephcott does in this quote the very thing that is needed to produce a distinction, but it is through this manoeuvre that the Glasgow case study can stand for something more general about highrise living. The flattening and normalising of the distinctiveness of Glaswegian multi-storey housing allows Jephcott to put this exceptional case in a comparative relation with the same phenomena in other places.

Repetition: Jephcott’s study brings highrise living in Glasgow explicitly in touch with other ‘cases’. Her science uses data that was collected in highrise estates in London, Sheffield, Liverpool, Zürich, Berne, Stockholm and Utrecht. Glasgow as an emblem of highrise living stands side-by-side with other cities as repeated phenomena.

Ideal scheme: How are the household voices in Jephcott’s book arranged, so that they speak for the whole? We have arranged in a very linear way all visual representations and graphics to be found in Jephcott’s study according to the following ‘translation’ processes. Households ‘speak’ for their flats (through Jephcott’s use of quotes, photographs of people, handwritten documents, and including the famous ‘jelly piece’ song [image_2] ). Flats ‘speak’ for their blocks (through Jephcott’s use of floor plans, diagrams, charts) [image_3]. Blocks ‘speak’ for their estate (through Jephcott’s use of aerial photographs, drawings, tables) [image_4]. Estates ‘speak’ for Glasgow (through Jephcott’s use of maps, lists) [image_5] . Glasgow stands for the whole phenomenon of highrise living (through the book). In each of this steps socio-technical aspects of highrise living are brought into and translated in a new form. The creation of this chain of translations is necessary for the highrise science being produced, for it allows these household voices to be emblematic and, in turn, for Glasgow’s experience to stand for the whole.

How successful was Jephcott’s attempt to make Glasgow an exemplary city of highrise living? Or, perhaps more accurately, how successful was Glasgow’s attempt to be the successful city of highrise living? And what relationship exists between these two attempts to position the Glasgow highrise as the ‘distinct repeat’? Having set up the study enthusiastically and crafted a convincing network of evidentiary association, Jephcott none-the-less recommends in her conclusions to ‘discontinue’ the highrise housing type. Through her study a series of problems appear which prevent her from stabilising Glasgow as an emblematic city of highrise living. This includes: lifts that are too small, the problem of children playing with lifts, lift break-down, missing services and facilities on the estates, pensioners and disabled people not seeing out of their windows while sitting in their living room, too many children in multi-storey flats, anonymity and eroded communication [16]. For Jephcott each of these problems prevents her from maintaining a positively inflected  evidentiary chain in relation to Glasgow’s highrises. As a result her science could not secure Glasgow as a positive example of highrise living. Indeed, Jephcot’s science came to be one of the many that during the 1970s began to fill in the chain of associations with evidence that the highrise template was not working and produced problems.