Thats my point, because it wasn't run within the confines of the 1970+ social housing straight jacket (funding not dependent on tenants, no ability to control who was placed in there, centralised funding formula that meant you might gets loads of money one year, and none over the next ten.)
Which in a way actually does align with the OP's view on why it never became known as a dangerous sketchy place.
Much more thought gone into the aesthetics of the Barbican than the Heygate Estate though, which is why the Heygate Estate was the one that ended up as every film scout's first choice of "scary, deprived place" even though it reportedly actually wasn't bad by the standards of south London postwar estates. And that's before taking into account the Barbican's arts facilities and all the money spent maintaining its communcal areas
Yeah, there's an _artistry_ to the barbican that isn't captured by just listing off the features of the complex and apartments. Whoever designed it had excellent _taste_.
But a _lot_ of council estates were well designed, but suffered from failed assumptions. The underground parking in the barbican for example was the same design that cause so many issues for estates elsewhere. They were hidden and that meant crime, unless there was tight access control.
https://modernistpilgrimage.com/2015/10/18/trellick-tower-lo... The trellick tower is fucking ugly on the outside, just like the barbican, but even the trellick has some smashing design features. Like most estates at the time, the three bed flats had an upstairs. Not only that, they were bright! Had a balcony.
The difference between the trellick and the barbican is the barbican had middle class people growing plants on the balcony. Until the hipsters moved in, the trellick just had shit.
I think the biggest thing to take away is that for a long while council housing _had_ to be better than private. It was partly slum clearance, partly vote winning, partly "you fought for this in the war" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parker_Morris_Committee has the general plan.
Separate kitchens, storage, decent square footage, working heating as a _minimum_ something which even 500k flats struggle to do now.
