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Description
An urban landscape drawing depicting the Whitfield area of Dundee as it would have looked ten years ago. I started this picture two or three years ago but didn't get round to colouring it in til today.

Whitfield was one of many huge council estates built in the late 60s to early 70s. There was a wide variety of public housing - it most prominently consisted of two 16-storey slab block 'multis' (which I jokingly thought looked like two big cardboard boxes dramatically towering over the skyline) and over 120 deck access 'Skarne blocks' built in a design similar to that of the Swedish system they were designed from. There were also numerous walk-up blocks and low-rise housing.

The district became one of the most run-down in the country by the late 1980s and from that point an extensive regeneration program spurned from it. Even over the last decade Whitfield has changed a bit. While the lower buildings in the foreground such as the walk-up blocks still exist (but are earmarked for demolition), the two multis and most of the lower 'skarne blocks' in the background have since been demolished in an ongoing regeneration project.

Today only a dozen or so of the Skarne blocks remain and are now owned by housng associations. Some nice (and some not-so-nice) low-rise houses have been constructed in recent years, but seem to lack the character of the original estate, though the quality of housing has vastly improved.

Description
An urban landscape drawing depicting the Whitfield area of Dundee as it would have looked ten years ago. I started this picture two or three years ago but didn't get round to colouring it in til today.

Whitfield was one of many huge council estates built in the late 60s to early 70s. There was a wide variety of public housing - it most prominently consisted of two 16-storey slab block 'multis' (which I jokingly thought looked like two big cardboard boxes dramatically towering over the skyline) and over 120 deck access 'Skarne blocks' built in a design similar to that of the Swedish system they were designed from. There were also numerous walk-up blocks and low-rise housing.

The district became one of the most run-down in the country by the late 1980s and from that point an extensive regeneration program spurned from it. Even over the last decade Whitfield has changed a bit. While the lower buildings in the foreground such as the walk-up blocks still exist (but are earmarked for demolition), the two multis and most of the lower 'skarne blocks' in the background have since been demolished in an ongoing regeneration project.

Today only a dozen or so of the Skarne blocks remain and are now owned by housng associations. Some nice (and some not-so-nice) low-rise houses have been constructed in recent years, but seem to lack the character of the original estate, though the quality of housing has vastly improved.