These new observations are causing architects and urban designers to re-examine their preconceptions of the urban dwelling and react to their new findings on a number of levels. In addition to architectural reactions, the housing types must also satisfy the economic and political needs of a housing development. Developers are keen to cut costs in any development and are looking at ways to deliver large amounts of urban housing in a small amount of time.

In Britain, this has lead one housing association in particular re-discovering the prefabricated housing unit as one possible way to meet some of these new urban demands. The Peabody Trust, based in London has recently shown how the historically ostracized prefab could once more be used to quickly deliver a housing development without any additional costs. The residential cell and the structural grid are seen as particularly relevant to this new housing typology. Their development at Murray Grove in Hackney, east London, used steel frame modules 8 x 3.2 x 3 metres high, which were fitted with all plumbing, electrical and bathroom fittings in a factory in Leeds prior to construction. Special consideration was given by the architects Cartwright Pickard to transportation of the modules, as they were small enough to be transported by road without a police escort. As the units themselves were of a monocoque construction, the building as a whole did not require any further structural grid in its construction. The building was merely clad with a tiling system once the dwellings were in place.