Building Democracy.

The air of authority of the printed word in book form imbues Graham Towers' version of events with a status that may soon become the perceived truth. Students and others will read this and accept what is said. No other publisher is likely to print another version, so whether it is true or not is almost irrelevant; this will become the recorded history of the community architecture movement of the 1970s and '80s, even though it is frequently incorrect.

Perhaps it doesn't really matter - Graham Towers' subtle re-writing of history to reflect his own view is not always that far off beam. And this book does contain a lot of information about projects and events that otherwise might not get into print.

The book is a substantial piece of work covering a lot of ground and thoroughly referenced. Unfortunately many of the things it describes were relatively poorly documented and ephemeral. It is strange to read a book about events in which one was involved and which shaped one's life and views of architecture, especially when the account of these events is incorrect. Towers should have done far more, in interviewing participants, to get his facts straight.

For instance, I recently showed Leslie Forsyth the section of how COMTECHSA in Liverpool was set up. Towers says that Forsyth brought together a consortium of community groups to set up COMTECHSA's technical aid service. This simply isn't how it happened. Unfortunately Towers, as with Wates and Knevitt before him (Community Architecture, Penguin 1987) tends to give the impression that professionals were always in charge and always the people who took the initiative. In reality the Technical Aid movement grew in response to demands and initiatives in the voluntary sector. Towers under-plays the importance of ACTAC and the Technical Aid network despite its growing strength and membership. For me it is intriguing that despite all the cuts during 16 years of Tory government, the Technical Aid Network and activity has grown, yet this barely gets a mention in the book.

Towers' own perspective seems to be informed by a nostalgia for the public sector architects' office, but his examples of public sector participation, PSSAK, Haringey and Lea View, are not set in the context of asking why such an approach was not adopted elsewhere. The public sector offices have been largely dismantled and in my experience, local authorities were the main opponents of community participation. Towers dodges many of these difficult issues and the book lacks a critical and analytical edge.

On the other hand, what Towers has done is to reveal just how much fascinating material needs exploration here. His is a long and dense book packed with a lot of useful material, yet he has left a lot out, ignored many important things and even failed to cover all the literature on the subject.

What it achieves most successfully is drawing attention to the fact that 'community architecture' (or whatever you want to call it) has not gone away. The movement of user-controlled projects, architects and planners and others concerned to work in a socially responsible way is still there and (despite the changing political context) has produced a lot of buildings.

The book lacks any real architectural critique of what has been built. The quality of architecture has gradually improved and there is now a substantial body of well-designed work. Some of the case studies illustrate this, but their relationship to the overall argument is not clear.