The scheme worked so far as construction costs went, but only so long as land costs and property values remained low. And that is the problem that will not go away. But there is land around the place, even in London, owned by local authorities for years and standing empty. There is space above other things - not only supermarkets, but also, for instance, a huge number of back courts of single-storey garages. There are still, amazingly, cleared bomb sites around. But very few of these sites are central. In the centre, every square foot of land has a value, and that value is sky-high.

The Microflats are not necessarily either a private or a public sector thing: people will get affordable homes wherever they can. But I’m going to have to utter the S-word. For such concepts to succeed, the land costs have somehow to be Subsidised. It’s unfashionable, but it’s true. And in central London at least, it always has been true.

What is unfortunately more likely to happen is that - as the Manchester Krashpads show - these places will be built and marketed by developers as funky city-centre living spaces, fully equipped with gadgets, and with a price premium to match. £70,000 in Manchester is relatively more expensive than the £100,000 figure quoted for the London Microflats.

So we arrive at a curious inversion. We are always told that space is the ultimate luxury, but simultaneously a conspicuous lack of space has now become a key selling-point, even in a city such as Manchester that has more space - hectares of it - than it knows what to do with. Thus a home becomes the equivalent of a DVD player or a BMW: the home ceases to be property in the accepted sense. Instead, it has become in itself a gadget, a desirable mechanical object. Which is a long way, I grant you, from 19th century notions of philanthropic housing.