1985 Handsworth riots 1500 police officers drafted into the area, about 45 shops looted and burnt, and a trail of damage running into hundreds of thousands of pounds. As well as racial tension, unemployment was seen as a major factor in the riots; by the time of the riots, fewer than 5% of the black population to have left school that summer had found employment. The riots were the first of a series of similar riots across the country during the autumn of 1985, notably the Broadwater Farm riot in London which also resulted in a fatality (the murder of policeman Keith Blakelock).
Housing estate in Holloway, North London, the aforementioned Broadwater Farm estate situated in Tottenham, the Heygate Estate in Walworth, South East London and the Alton Estate in Roehampton, South West London. In the UK, some of the post war new towns were constructed "en masse" from housing estates rather than as organic growth from a population centre. In the former Czechoslovakia (now Czech Republic and Slovakia) during the Communist era a construction of large housing estates (Czech: "sídliště", Slovak: "sídlisko") was an important part of then urban planning. The government wanted to provide large quantities of affordable housing and to slash costs