i live on a estate and they are quite rough places sometimes no go areas for police fire crews ambulances etc.. such notable bad estates in England are Moss side in Manchester unless your from moss side you dont go there the same goes for the manor in sheffield and st pauls in bristol as well as the white city in london,council estates were set up to help people with money problems unfortunetly as unemployment levels have risen so did crime on the estates
i dont really know how to define estate so ill let wikipedia do it as they will do a better job than me

Housing estates were produced by either local corporations or by private developers. The former tended to be a means of producing public housing leading to estates full of council houses and therefore known as "council estates".

In addition, the problems incurred by the early attempts at high density tower-block housing turned people away from this style of living. The resulting demand for land has seen many towns and cities increase enormously in size for only moderate increases in population. This has been largely at the expense of rural and greenfield land. There is now much evidence coming to light of a severe and detrimental impact on the environment as a result, partly from the change of land use caused by the estates themselves, and partly because most estates encourage rather than discourage the use of the car for transport. Recently, there has been some effort to address this problem by banning the development of out-of-town commercial developments, and encouraging the reuse of brownfield or previously developed sites for residential building. Nevertheless the demand for housing continues to rise, and in the UK at least has precipitated a significant housing crisis.