ome four million out of the twelve million families in this country live in houses owned by the local au±orities. The majority of these dwellings are in housing estates and occasionally the even tenor of the lives of these populations is disturbed by waves of resentment. In the restoration of harmony the authorities may provide expensive equipment such as community centres, incinerators, or playgrounds with apparatus; in all cases much additional work devolves upon bo± official and elected

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... sentatives. Regularities in the behaviour of housing estate populations have been known for some time; for example, relations between neighbours -on new estates have been found to follow a two phase pattern, at first friendly and open but later becoming more formal and wididrawn. To explain such behaviour social scientists have assumed that people when they first occupied their houses had common experiences which they could share with one another. At a later stage in their relations differences in outlook and aspirations are believed to become apparent and, as a consequence, relations between neighbours become formal.' This type of explanation rests upon the assumption that there are exchanges of views between individuals in these new housing commimities. WhUe such exchanges manifestly take place, field study has shown that, in die formal relations of phase two, gossip on an estate passes from house to house along the row owing to the fact that most people know only the two next door nei^boun. Kuper discovered in Coventry that, where the fiow of words from house to house was broken by a family who did not talk to their neighbours, plications to be transferred to another coimcil house were significantly higher than from adjacent streets which were similar in all odier factors that he could measure.' The concept of the gossip 63