Ph.D. Qualifying Examination

Department of Architecture

University of California, Berkeley

Ioana Chinan April 14, 2014

Qualifying Exam Committee:

Paul Groth (Exam Chair)

Nezar AlSayyad

Greg Castillo

Ananya Roy

Heba Mostafa

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1. Field Question: Housing and the Modern State

Historically, housing has always been an essential part of urban development throughout the world. The modern state and its housing policy have become a central catalyst for housing provision, shaping the spatial formations of many cities.

Why and when did the state get involved in housing in different parts of the world? (You dont need to cover the entire globe in your answer! Select four or five salient examples.)

How have approaches to housing policy and the production of urban space addressed the problems of social inequity?

In the course of your answer, compare and contrast three major attempts to operationalize housing policy in the Post World War II era, using examples from the free market and from planned economies. Where appropriate, use visual illustrations that help to make your case.

Avoid using Romania in your answer.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Social Equity and the Modern State ....................................................... 2 1 The Welfare State: Embedding Markets .................................................................. 4

1.1 Housing Policy after World War II: The United States and Britain ................................... 8 1.2 The Continental European Welfare State ......................................................................... 11 1.3 The Socialist State and the Central Planning of Housing ................................................. 15 1.4 The Third World, Nation States, and Housing ................................................................. 16

2 The Neoliberal State: Disembedding Markets ....................................................... 18 The Housing Problem: Gentrification and Homelessness ......................................................... 19

3 Post-Neoliberalism: Reembedding Markets ........................................................... 22 Citizenship, Social Movements, and the Just City ..................................................................... 22

Conclusion: In Search of a New Utopia? ...................................................................... 23 Bibliography .................................................................................................................... 27

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Introduction: Social Equity and the Modern State

A welfare state can be defined as a country in which the welfare of members of

the community is underwritten by means of state-run social services. These can include

health, education, social insurance, pensions, and housing (which always involves a mix

of state and market activity). Traditionally, the welfare state and its social services are

meant to protect people by fostering a fair distribution of resources and addressing issues

of social inequity. State policy should take account of class stratification, income

inequality, and differential housing opportunities based on race and gender. As I show in

this essay, this has not always been the case.

Historically, there have been different approaches to housing policy in different

parts of the world. For reasons of brevity, in this essay I will concentrate on the liberal

(United States), social democratic (Western Europe), socialist (Soviet Bloc), and mixed

approaches (typically found in post-colonial nation-states of the Third World). I will

focus on the period after World War II, which includes the modernization period of the

1950s and 1960s followed by the shift to neoliberalism in housing policy from the mid-

1970s through the 1980s. The latest stage, which I refer to as the post-neoliberal phase,

involves in a unique way housing issues that relate to social equity and the idea of the just

city. It deals with different forms of social movements and political action that demand

the active involvement of the state for the purpose of ensuring social equity in housing.

Since my analysis starts with the question why and when the state got involved in

housing policy and how did states grapple with issues of social inequity, it is necessary to

first understand what social inequity is. Therefore as an overarching idea I seek to

understand the relationship between the modern states, housing, and social inequity.

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Housing policy is central to debates in public administration over the distribution

of resources. The discussion below looks at the concept of social inequity as it is situated

in this context. The liberal ideology claims that private housing is not necessarily a public

good. Dwellings should be private property, which is defined in opposition to the public,

meaning the state. Private housing markets exist, many argue, outside the realm of the

public or the state. I will argue here that historically the state has played a crucial role in

the construction, distribution, and allocation of housing through housing policies that

counteracted social inequity. As I will show in the following sections, even privately

owned housing units must be considered public housing because of the level of state

subsidy (particularly in the US) that homeownership for the middle-class entails.

The concept of social equity, as it will be used in this essay, points to nuances that

complicate our understanding of social equality.1 It refers to challenges to power

relations, attempts to make sense of the individuals intersecting advantages and

disadvantages, cultural and economic cleavages, political disenfranchisement, and

differential access by race and gender to recourses and opportunities.

Policy studies sometimes involve the question, Who gets what? When social

equity becomes an administrative concern, one must add the normative question, Who

ought to get what? It has been suggested that [t]he modern discussion of social equity

1 As Mary Guy and Sean McCandless explain: To be clear, equity and equality are terms that are often used interchangeably, and to a large extent, they have similar meanings. The difference is one of nuances: while equality can be converted into a mathematical measure in which equal parts are identical in size or number, equity is a more flexible measure allowing for equivalency while not demanding sameness. Mary E. Guy and Sean A. McCandless, Social Equity: Its Legacy, Its Promise, Public Administration Review 72, no. s. 1 (November 1, 2012): S8, doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02635.x.

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largely began with philosophers reflecting on why societies that had been influenced by

social contract theory still had great inequities.2

The concept of social equity is usefully situated in the context of the hegemony of

global capitalism. My analysis is rooted in the US liberal system of housing policy,

referring also to other forms of housing policy in West Europe, which can be compared

with approaches in the Third World and opposed to the socialist approach of centralized

planning of the Soviet Bloc during the Cold War.

1 The Welfare State: Embedding Markets

The following discussion will analyze some of the most important historical shifts in

American housing policy. The historical outline is meant to illuminate some of the ways

in which the US government after World War II intervened in housing policy with

specific goals targeting specific outcomes. The European case involved a different

approach, with stronger state intervention in housing provision, and with social concerns

forming the main agenda. The American model of homeownership and the hegemony of

market supported state policy eventually took over in Europe from the much stronger

welfare state.

In Britain as well as in colonial America there were several phases in the

relationship between the colonies and England. In both England and colonial America the

interest of the ruling elite in the welfare of its people started with addressing the needs of

the pauper population. While in England the Poor Law went back to the sixteenth and

2 Ibid.

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seventeenth centuries, in colonial America, poorhouses dominated the structure of

welfare, or relief, as it was called back then.3 The Poor Law refers to the system of the

provision of social security in the United Kingdom from the sixteenth century until the

establishment of the welfare state in the twentieth. The Poor Law was intended to take

care of those unable to work, to board out children, and to set the poor to work. 4

Equally in colonial America, the social institutions in place were meant to provide

relief for the mentally ill, criminals, and the children of the poor. In colonial America the

poor were institutionalized in outdoor relief or auctioned off to local farmers.5 In both

approaches, the emphasis was on labor, on how to train poor people for work. In both

contexts, welfare institutions of this time were put in place with a rehabilitative vision;

they would suppress intemperance, the primary cause of pauperism, and inculcate the

habit of steady work. 6 But the true concern for social cohesion and public health and the

fear of social unrest on the part of the ruling elite surfaced in the urban slums of the early

industrial city.

The fear of social unrest in the mid-nineteenth century drove the social elite of

Britain to consider what it meant to have to take care of the crowded urban population,

and deal with health dangers and the crime-ridden workers quarters of London. From

Peter Hall7 we learn that the very first pieces of welfare legislation in Britain and the

United States was implemented as a result of the fear on the part of the middle and upper

3 Michael B. Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America (Basic Books, 1996), 3. 4 Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Political Economies of the Welfare State, Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 26, no. 1 (February 1, 1989): 1036, doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.1989.tb00411.x. 5 Katz, In the Shadow of the Poorhouse, 11. 6 Ibid. 7 Peter Geoffrey Hall, Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century (Wiley, 2002).

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classes of social unrest among the poor and working class crowded in the tenements of

London and New York. Specifically, in 1885, the British Royal Commission regulations

and later the 1901 Tenement Act in New York. The recommendations arising from the

Royal Commission were designed to ensure that local authorities use existing powers to

classify, categorize, and determine what was to be done with respect to housing

regulations and provisions. In both cases, moral considerations on the part of men who

believed themselves good middle-class Christians were placed at the heart of the matter.

In both Britain and the United States, the history of state involvement in housing

can be defined in terms of four main phases. The first phase starts with the social

concerns of middle class citizens for the welfare of their city. The charity and social work

phase resulted in the first housing program: tenement reform. This was meant to

address the immorality attributed to the slum dwellers. In New York, the resulting

reforms attempted to fix the conditions of the slums by bringing them up to minimum

housing standards.8 The physical conditions of the tenements were perceived as posing a

threat of disease and contagion, intertwined with moral decay.9 Issues of social equality

and the possibility of achieving it through public housing were not discussed. The

government intervention was minimal and did not address any social problems at any

level.

In England, the 1885 British Royal Commission came up with different and more

substantial solutions by implementing a particular model of public housing. This was

8 Thomas W. Hanchett, The Other Subsidized Housing: Federal Aid to Suburbanization, 1940s-1960s, Tenements to the Taylor Homes, 2000, 163. 9 Hall, Cities of Tomorrow; Peter Marcuse et al., Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice (Routledge, Chapman & Hall, 2011).

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rejected entirely in the American model.10 According to Hall, the Royal Commission of

1885 decided on rehousing workers within the urban frontier of London. However, this

idea was abandoned after the 1890s. 11 While suburbanization in the US was based on

private ownership of a single-family house, the British solution was of a more collective

nature. The council housing was under the authority of the London County Council

(LCC), which administered, built, and distributed housing for the working class. This led

to Englands investing in public transportation to serve the need of communities on the

outskirts of London.12

Ultimately, in both the US and England the liberal ideology and the differential

approach to housing policy based on private property and the market failed to address the

issues of social inequity brought up by the reliance on market mechanisms. As Peter

Marcuse rightly points out, the state actively constructs the market but is not benevolent

or concerned for the poor. It tends either to intervene with indifference, or to be meddling

and incompetent. If the state is involved in both the public and private spheres, then its

intentions must both be made transparent and evaluated.13 The true beginning of housing

policy in United States can only be placed within FDRs New Deal.

The first time in United States history that the middle class was deeply hit by

poverty was during the Great Depression. The New Deal housing policy defined

government welfare efforts up to the advent of World War II. The Housing Act of 1937

allowed for budgetary efforts in public housing, representing the first large-large scale

housing bill in the US. This meant housing that was owned by the government and 10 Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, 39. 11 Ibid., 50. 12 Ibid., 5152. 13 Peter Marcuse, The Myth of the Benevolent State: Towards a Theory of Housing (Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, 1978).

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directly subsidized. Together with public housing, slum removal and huge highway

construction were on the way. The first public housing policy determined an uneven

urban geography because municipalities could opt out of building public housing. In

order not to distort the market, slum clearances and massive displacement were not well

addressed. There were no new units added. The municipality provided one unit of

housing for every unit demolished, which did not affect housing supply in any way;

hence it did not disturb the market.

1.1 Housing Policy after World War II: The United States and Britain

Americas success in World War Two boosted the US economy in the wars aftermath,

while Europe was struggling to cope with the wars destruction and crumbling

economies. At this point, the American government embarked upon several decisive

housing bills that defined the way in which urbanization and housing would reshape the

American city. Homeownership was on the rise, which was accompanied by massive

suburbanization and the urban exodus that followed. A major step was taken to help the

returning soldiers by introducing the GI Bill, followed by the Mortgage

Insurance/Appraisal System (HOLC) and Mortgage Financing Reforms, which

introduced new types of mortgages (for 30 years, and fully amortizing, with a mortgage

interest tax deduction). The HOLC established standardized appraisal methods, ranked

neighborhoods according to risk factors, and lumped together things like construction

materials with racial elements and other desirable factors.14 The Federal Housing

Association (FHA) implemented these factors in financing schemes that involved private

14 Hanchett, The Other Subsidized Housing.

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lenders. These changes all made it more affordable to own than rent. The United States

was on the way of becoming a country of homeowners (Fig.1).

Fig. 1 Homeownership rate in US from 1900 to 200815

Loans tied to new construction and additional funding for developers fueled

Greenfield development, whereby suburban residents commuted to cities and became

dependent on their cars. Highway acts and population dispersal led to more driving.16

However, the homeownership ideology was racially exclusionary. People of color

were excluded entirely from suburbs and economic opportunities. FHA delineations,

which served for years as the guiding principles for private lending, made it extremely

15 Alex F. Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States (Routledge, 2013), 46. 16 Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States (Oxford University Press, 1985).

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difficult for minorities to buy or sell houses.17 Hanchett notes that attempts on the part of

blacks to move to suburbs were met by whites with hostility and at times horrific

violence. Massive government expenditures were framed mainly in terms of economic

reconstruction and market forces.18 Britain after the war took the opposite path. Public

housing became the only option for Londons post-war reconstruction.

The classic Welfare State that developed in England between 1945 and 1976

emerged to preserve stability and to block the socialist threat, and because of the

realization that the market does not guarantee equity. The destruction of the war caused

Londons public administrators to be face with a real revolution: government in

Britain had assumed responsibility for the welfare of the people in a way that would have

been unthinkable in the 1930s. Thus, against the populations desire for single-family

houses, the LCC decided to emphasize high-rise public housing. Hence, between 1945

and 1951 the LCC built 13,072 flats and only 81 houses (). 19 In the following years

the proportion of high-rises in public housing rose from 7% in the late 1950s to 26% in

the mid-1960s. The neoliberal years of 1980s drastically curtailed state investment in

social housing (Fig. 2).20

17 Hanchett, The Other Subsidized Housing'. 18 Ibid. 19 Hall, Cities of Tomorrow, 240. 20 Ibid., 241.

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Fig. 2 Social Housing trajectory before and after 1980s21

1.2 The Continental European Welfare State

The smallest cluster of welfare regimes is the social-democratic approach in

housing policy. According to Esping-Anderson, the social-democratic model was the sole

welfare approach that was based on the principles of universalism and the

decommodification of social services.22 The social democrat and the conservative

21 Brian Wheeler, What Future for Social Housing?, BBC News, August 4, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14380936. Accessed April 13, 2014 22 Esping-Andersen, The Three Political Economies of the Welfare State.

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model historically didnt support home ownership as Fig. 3.

Fig. 3 Here are comparative data from 2004, the last time the OECD updated its numbers.23

Jim Kemeny maintains that the welfare system in Sweden is based on the nations

intrinsic social homogeneity based in the middle class, and it developed historically as

such.24 Together with Sweden, other Scandinavian countries like Denmark and Finland

rejected the dualisms of state and market, and working class and middle class, promoting

social equity to a level not otherwise encountered in any of the Western European

23 Jim Kemeny, Divergence in European Welfare and Housing Systems., Housing, Theory & Society 28, no. 4 (2011). 24 Jim Kemeny, Swedish Rental Housing: Policies and Problems (Birmingham, UK: Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham, 1981).

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countries.25 My discussion here draws from the work of Jim Kemeny in housing tenure in

Sweden.

Kemenys work on housing research is up until today one of the most prestigious

conceptually oriented researcher in international housing theories. His scholarship ranges

from housing studies in Sweden to Australia, focusing on comparative studies on issues

of housing tenure. His strong critique on Anglo-American metanarrative of the

supremacy of owner-occupy housing is well known in the literature. As an acerb

challenger of the empiricist nature of housing research in 1980, Kemeny remained the

sole voice of Marxian and Weberian theory in social science and housing theory.26 His

main aim as a researcher in housing theory was trying to understand why English-

speaking countries (US, UK and later Australia) were so different form Sweden (where

he was living at the time). Trying to understand housing theories that would explain this

phenomenon, he started to apply interactionism and constructivism to housing. He then

published one of his main books The Myth of Home Ownership27 and then developed his

ideas of dualist and integrated rental systems. Later on he started the discussion of the

association of the welfare state and its role in housing provisions. For Kemeny, both

dualist and integrated rental systems were politically constructed.28

He struggled at that time with questions of how does social interest drive housing

policy. This question remained unanswered up until later in his research endeavor. He

25 Esping-Andersen, The Three Political Economies of the Welfare State, 112. 26 Chris Allen, Reflections on Housing and Social Theory: An Interview with Jim Kemeny, Housing, Theory and Society 22, no. 2 (2005): 94107, doi:10.1080/14036090510034608. 27 Jim Kemeny, The Myth of Home-Ownership: Private versus Public Choices in Housing Tenure (London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981). 28 Allen, Reflections on Housing and Social Theory.

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later went beyond his interest in macro approaches to housing and started paying more

attention to class hegemony and discourses rather than interaction. Kemeny stressed the

importance of the role of the ideology and political strategy, and he developed the

concept of policy constructivism in order to explain how social structure and housing

policy diverge without paying too much attention to the state. In his later work, Kemeny

argued that: current conceptions of European rental systems in comparative housing

research are implicitly based on profit-driven model of rental markets. [] The

alternative social market model is based on encouraging non-profit rental housing to

compete directly with profit renting in order to dampen rents and provide a source of high

standard housing on secured tenancy terms.29

Kemeny calls this approach to social services in the context of housing the social

market. Following Polanyi, Kemeny calls for the re-embedment of the market within

society. According to Kemeney, social markets represent an extension of Keynesianism,

in which the state tries to balance the effects of the profit-seeking market through

countercyclical measures.

An extreme example of this was found in Communist countries, where profit was

replaced with state control.30 The ideology of liberalism rests upon the belief that

freedom of the individual must be granted above all and that the state must support this

freedom and allow individuals to compete freely on the market. In contrast, both the

Keynesian and Communist models remained under the spell of economic determinism.

29 Jim Kemeny, From Public Housing to the Social Market: Rental Policy Strategies in Comparative Perspective (London; New York: Routledge, 1995), 5. 30 Jim Kemeny, From Public Housing to the Social Market: Rental Policy Strategies in Comparative Perspective (London; New York: Routledge, 1995).

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1.3 The Socialist State and the Central Planning of Housing

During the 1950s and 1960s, forced industrialization in the Communist countries

of Europe increased urban populations, and this in turn required new housing, which the

governments set out to provide. Throughout the Soviet bloc, housing allocation as a top-

down approach began at the national level and was delegated to individual counties,

where it was managed by local institutions called construction trusts.31 As Hamiltons

study of Eastern European countries has shown, the socialist neighborhood was intended

to be socially uniform, but because allocation priorities were based not only on need but

also on merit, one of the consequences was residential differentiation. Some

neighborhoods were regarded as more prestigious based on the profession of their

inhabitants: engineers and doctors consistently rank[ed] highest in social esteem.32

The criteria used in housing allocation included: (1) profession (and hence

education); (2) need (or class inversion), which was connected to allocation based on

merit; and (3) political role or status within the Party. Workers were typically placed on a

waiting list. The waiting list was based on a point system: the number of points that ones

family was accorded was regulated according to how long it had already been on the list,

and whether or not it was dispossessed (meaning that their house was about to be

demolished). Priority was also given to families that were living in substandard

conditions or that had more than four children. 33 Tenure was established based on

whether the apartment was state-owned or had been purchased from the state. In the latter

case, the apartment could be sold or bequeathed to family members, but there was a limit

31 John Sillince, Housing Policies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union (Routledge, 1990). 32 Richard A. French and F. E. Hamilton, The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy (Books on Demand, 1979). 33 Ibid.

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on ownership to one apartment per person or family. Differences also included variations

in size and proximity to the workplace.

In the final year of the socialist era, several of these countries saw a withdrawal of

state resources for housing provision and an increased interest in assembling private and

cooperative funds, which was accompanied by an increased role for the market and a

reduced role for administrators.34

Accordingly, private ownership of state housing stock increased tenfold during

the 1970s and early 1980s. After 1986, however, due to growing speculation and the rise

of inequality in housing, the state sharply curtailed the sales of apartments.

1.4 The Third World, Nation States, and Housing

Post-colonial countries in the Third World developed different forms of welfare

housing programs. In the process of nation-state formation many states adopted a mixed

approach in housing programs, combining state-designed and built public housing and

market-driven private housing.

The socialist model can be found in new nations in North Africa, Egypt, Algeria,

and Libya. All are known for having imported know-how regarding standardized housing

from countries in East Europe.35 AlSayyad argues that after the fall of the colonial world

many of the new nation-states found themselves in need of reconstructing their cultural

identity. These new states were in search of national identity based on shorter-term

34 Sillince, Housing Policies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. 35 Nezar Al-Sayyad, Culture, Identity, and Urbanism in a Changing World: A Historical Perspective on Colonialism, Nationalism, and Globalization, in Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the PastRebellions for the Future, ed. Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and Marion von Osten (Black Dog Publishing Limited, 2009), 7787; D. Vais, Exporting Hard Modernity: Construction Projects from Ceauescus Romania in the Third World', The Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012): 43351.

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political interests, and the ideology of struggle emerged as a driving force behind most

nationalist movements. 36 AlSayyad further notes that in their nationalist and

independence phase governments in the developing world were obsessed with modernity.

The construction of public housing was part of this obsession. AlSayyad brings

up the example of Egypt in this regard. Gamal Abdel Nassers nationalist government

built almost the entirety of Egypts public housing stock. But the state public housing

program could not keep up with the urbanization processes this involved. 37 Since public

housing failed to provide for the entire population, squatting and private accommodations

remained for many a welcome addition to public housing. Despite the short-lived

socialist period in Egypt, according to AlSayyad, Nassers policies of centralization and

social provision brought deep change to Egyptian society and closed the socioeconomic

gap between the aristocracy and ordinary Egyptians. 38

Many Third World countries grappled with the construction of national identity

through the built environment. Public housing was an active piece of the project that the

high modernism of the post- World War II era was meant to represent. There were many

cases of public housing provision with nationalist colors. Brasilia, Chandigarh in India,

and Dodoma in Nigeria 39 are all cases of administrative centers established together with

public housing projects. The arrival of globalization to newly created nation-states in the

Third World brought with it the neoliberal ideology. In the next section I will focus on

the neoliberal state, showing how state activities worked in favor of the market, and

with what social consequences.

36 Al-Sayyad, Culture, Identity and Urbanism in a Changing World, 80. 37 Ibid., 82. 38 Ibid. 39 Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (Yale University Press, 1992).

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2 The Neoliberal State: Disembedding Markets

The neoliberal phase historically developed after the financial crises of 1973 has

reached its highest point during the presidency of Ronald Reagan in United States and

Margaret Thatcher in United Kingdom. Both eras are known for the retreat of the state

from regulating market mechanisms and the end of the Keynesian institutional

framework of the welfare state. This study approaches neoliberalism as a political and

economic ideology that is based on the idea of freedom of the entrepreneurial individual

to exchange goods and services on the free market, outside the restriction of

governmental institutions.40 Under the neoliberal ideology housing market should

function separately from the society with a minimum institutional regulations. However,

state subsidies trough tax breaks for the middle class increased steadily since 1977

(Fig.2).

40 David Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, 2005), http://site.ebrary.com/lib/berkeley/docDetail.action?docID=10180656&p00=spaces%20neoliberalism.

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Fig. 4 Direct and tax expenditure for housing from 1977 to 2008 41

Neoliberalism promotes privatization, deregulation, and retrenchment of state subsidies

for social services in order to reduce state expenditure. It supports private property and in

the case of housing, indorses homeownership above all other forms of housing tenure. In

polanyian sense, the neoliberal creed is disembbeding the market out of the society,

meaning it creates a dualist system, while commodifying any form of resources from

money to land and labor.42 The exchange value of housing becomes more important than

its use value. In terms of access to housing and spatial and social segregation, this study

briefly touches upon two main housing related outcomes of neoliberal ideology within

the city: gentrification and homelessness.

The Housing Problem: Gentrification and Homelessness

The gentrification process is one of the most common outcomes of market

mechanism and has been a point of contention for many critics of the neoliberal urban

policy. In the context of US, according to Beauregard,43 gentrification has the following

characteristics: renewal of housing markets and revitalization of urban neighborhoods;

restoration of deteriorated urban property, particularly in working class neighborhoods,

usually undertaken by middle or upper class owners; movement of middle class

households into urban areas, causing property values to increase and often having

secondary effects of pricing out poor households. Economic process of valorizing and

41 Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 28. 42 Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (Beacon Press, 1957). 43 Robert Beauregard, The Chaos and Complexity of Gentrification", in Gentrification of the City, ed. Neil Smith and Peter Williams (Routledge, 2013), 3555.

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devalorizing undervalued urban land markets: landlords, with state assistance, participate

in cycles of investment and disinvestment.

Gentrification is often described as a process of subtle violence: displacement

followed by transformation of the communities. Urban revitalization affects only the

renewed buildings, not people. The real estate industry strives for constant renewal,

gentrification being the poster child of the housing market, justified and encouraged

through numerous discursive constructions. In terms of social equity, class stratification

and gentrification go hand-in-hand.

Certain neighborhoods are ripe for development, transformation, and

improvement. It is thought that older residents are dangerous and should be cleared out,

invoking racialized notions of safety and neighborhood stability. Gentrification is often

seen as part of a process that makes neighborhoods safer, but renders invisible prior

residents. Governments provide assistance to real estate interests, and financial

institutions manipulate land markets.44

Displacement is a change in the class composition of the neighborhood over time.

Once the rents and housing prices are no longer affordable to people with lower incomes,

they cannot move into the neighborhood, and people in the neighborhood will have a

harder time staying. Displacement, whether via urban renewal and the bulldozer or by

market forces, is an act of force.

The lack of incentive for public housing and interdictions on the occupation of

unused building space (e.g., squatting), among other factors, have caused American cities

to be riddled with cases of homelessness. The main causes of homelessness include 44 Robert Beauregard, The Chaos and Complexity of Gentrification, in Gentrification of the City, ed. Neil Smith and Peter Williams (Routledge, 2013), 40.

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affordability and the rent versus income imbalance. In addition, the drastic budget cuts of

the neoliberal policies of the Reagan administration in the 1980s contributed to the

closure of many mental institutions. The budget cuts meant the direct release into the

society of persons with severe and persistent mental illnesses.

Fig. 5 The homeless population on a single night in 2005-200845

In mid-90s as a result of Clintons welfare reform, the American government

reintroduced welfare term limits, restrictions on benefits for immigrants, and harsher

requirements for people with disabilities. Policies criminalized homelessness and

medicalized it through attributions of mental illness. The new state policy imposed

conditional access to shelter for homeless people based on minimum wage work. Local

administrations showed persistent neglect except in policing areas of the cities occupied

by homelessness.46

45 Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States, 85. 46 Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States.

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3 Post-Neoliberalism: Reembedding Markets

The analysis presented in this essay follows Gosta Esping-Andersons idea of three

political and economic welfare regimes, to which I have added the socialist welfare state.

Following his idea, I attempt to understand the ways in which welfare states following

different models constructed housing policy and operationalized housing programs. In his

2013 book The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism,47 Esping-Anderson attempted to

address the question whether there may be a better welfare regime that lies beyond the

classical approach to social welfare. With the advent of neoliberalism and the retraction

or reengineering of the state in support of market mechanisms, the reconceptualization

of the welfare state is more important than it has ever been. In the world of urban studies,

discussions have surfaced around the newly emergent Asian countries. In general, there

are a series of questions concerning the politics of development, urbanization, and

housing that are rendered urgent by the reliance upon the capitalist path to globalization.

Citizenship, Social Movements, and the Just City

Many of the Global South countries, as well as so-called Asian Tiger economies

(Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and Singapore), have recently registered economic

growth of unprecedented levels: Major cities in the developing world have become

centers of enormous political investment, economic growth, and cultural vitality, and thus

have become sites for instantiating their countries claims to global significance. These

countries and their main cities aspire to reach the level of the world city such as New

York, London, or Paris. Under the neoliberal creed governments aim to do away with

urban poverty, slums, and poor infrastructure and services. Neoliberal housing policies 47 Gosta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (John Wiley & Sons, 2013).

23

involve slum clearances and land development carried out for the benefit of the middle

and upper classes to achieve the status of a world-class city. 48 The slum integration and

counter-eviction mechanisms raise the question of power relations between the state and

its citizens.

The new middle and upper classes of the city center are dependent on service

labor by persons from the slum communities. Some neo-Marxist critics of neoliberal

ideology have referred to Henri Lefebvres concept of a Right to the City, which

asserts a collective and equal right for all inhabitants of the city to participate in urban

life, in this privileging use value over exchange value. Following Lefebvre, David

Harvey sees cities as involving a geographic distribution of inequality. For social equity,

he suggests, we should think of modes of redistribution and reciprocity beyond capitalist

accumulation by dispossession.49 Social movements can accordingly be seen as

advocating for the re-embedding of the market through the counter-measures taken by the

state within and under the protective countermovement forces of the society, what

Polanyi calls the double movement.50

Conclusion: In Search of a New Utopia?

The market-driven housing economy has been for a long time facilitated by the

selling of the ideal of homeownership. The suburban American Dream ideology could

48 Aihwa Ong, Introduction: Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global, in Worlding Cities, ed. Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 4, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444346800.ch/summary. 49 James L. Greer, Review of Social Justice and the City by David Harvey, Ethics 90, no. 4 (July 1, 1980): 6047. 50 Polanyi, The Great Transformation.

24

only be realized by those who could pay enough for it for its suppliers to make a profit.

As seen above, starting in the 1980s, in the United States and most of the West European

countries, housing policies made homeownership possible mainly through private

speculative markets. At the same time, governments withdrew themselves not only from

the public housing sector but also from regulating the market. In the 1990s, the mortgage

market shifted from being dominated by savings and loans to being led by mortgage

companies and investment banks.

In this new neoliberal system regulation was declared unnecessary and little was

done to adapt its supervision mechanisms to the new market structure. As in the case of

the American housing crisis , the fact that subprime mortgage access had been bestowed

upon the least advantaged individuals rendered them helpless under the effects of

financial speculation and an unprotected housing market. Since anyone could get a

mortgage, home purchases and housing prices skyrocketed. The result was the financial

bubble that triggered the global financial crisis of 2008 (Fig. 4).51

Now that we can begin to look beyond the neoliberal creed, what is there to be

done? Re-embedding markets necessitates a stronger welfare state that supports and

guarantees social equity, identifies limitations of resources, and allows for sustainable

development. Housing provision and housing policy should and must account for

exclusionary market practices, and treat access to affordable housing as a right.

51 Schwartz, Housing Policy in the United States.

25

Fig. 6 Household debt-to-income ratio of selected countries (above) and the real house prices leading to the Great Recession (below) in 2002 to 2010 52

Harvey sees all individuals involved in the production of space as insurgent

architects. The insurgent architect should change the world: As crafty architects bent

on insurgency we have to think strategically and tactically about what to change and

52 Vishaan Chakrabarti, A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America (Distributed Art Pub Incorporated, 2013).

26

where, about how to change what and with what tools. However, we also have to live in

this world. This is a fundamental dilemma that faces everybody interested in progressive

change.53 Accordingly, it is important to find tools of social justice that can help bring

about the end of social inequity within the city. A crafty architect of a space should

consider urban space as a quintessential locus for asserting citizenship rights. In turn, the

insurgent architect must function within the qualitatively different but related areas of

social and ecologic life. 54 Harvey suggests the need to return to and reconsider this

approach. The discussion on the just city, social equity, and the state leads us, according

to Harvey, to the question: Are we in need of a new utopia?

53 David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (University of California Press, 2000), 233. 54 Ibid.

27

Bibliography

Allen, Chris. Reflections on Housing and Social Theory: An Interview with Jim Kemeny. Housing, Theory and Society 22, no. 2 (2005): 94107. doi:10.1080/14036090510034608.

Alsayyad, Nezar. Cairo: Histories of a City. Harvard University Press, 2011.

AlSayyad, Nezar. Culture, Identity and Urbanism in a Changing World: A Historical Perspective on Colonialism, Nationalism and Globalization. In Colonial Modern: Aesthetics of the Past - Rebelions for the Future, edited by Tom Avermaete, Serhat Karakayali, and Marion von Osten, 7787. Black Dog Publishing Limited, 2009.

Beauregard, Robert. The Chaos and Complexity of Gentrification". In Gentrification of the City, edited by Neil Smith and Peter Williams, 3555. Routledge, 2013.

Chakrabarti, Vishaan. A Country of Cities: A Manifesto for an Urban America. Distributed Art Pub Incorporated, 2013.

Esping-Andersen, Gosta. The Three Political Economies of the Welfare State. Canadian Review of Sociology/Revue Canadienne de Sociologie 26, no. 1 (February 1, 1989): 1036. doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.1989.tb00411.x.

. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. John Wiley & Sons, 2013.

French, Richard A., and F. E. Hamilton. The Socialist City: Spatial Structure and Urban Policy. Books on Demand, 1979.

Greer, James L. Review of Social Justice and the City by David Harvey. Ethics 90, no. 4 (July 1, 1980): 6047.

Guy, Mary E., and Sean A. McCandless. Social Equity: Its Legacy, Its Promise. Public Administration Review 72, no. s1 (November 1, 2012): S5S13. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6210.2012.02635.x.

Hall, Peter Geoffrey. Cities of Tomorrow: An Intellectual History of Urban Planning and Design in the Twentieth Century. Wiley, 2002.

Hanchett, Thomas W. The Other Subsidized Housing: Federal Aid to Suburbanization, 1940s-1960s. Tenements to the Taylor Homes, 2000, 16377.

Harvey, David. A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford University Press, 2005. http://site.ebrary.com/lib/berkeley/docDetail.action?docID=10180656&p00=spaces%20neoliberalism.

. Spaces of Hope. University of California Press, 2000.

28

Jackson, Kenneth T. Crabgrass Frontier: The Suburbanization of the United States. Oxford University Press, 1985.

Katz, Michael B. In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America. Basic Books, 1996.

Kemeny, Jim. Divergence in European Welfare and Housing Systems. Housing, Theory & Society 28, no. 4 (2011).

. From Public Housing to the Social Market: Rental Policy Strategies in Comparative Perspective. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.

. From Public Housing to the Social Market: Rental Policy Strategies in Comparative Perspective. London; New York: Routledge, 1995.

. Swedish Rental Housing: Policies and Problems. Birmingham, Eng.: Centre for Urban and Regional Studies, University of Birmingham], 1981.

. The Myth of Home-Ownership: Private versus Public Choices in Housing Tenure. London; Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1981.

Marcuse, Peter. The Myth of the Benevolent State: Towards a Theory of Housing. Columbia University, Graduate School of Architecture and Planning, 1978.

Marcuse, Peter, James Connolly, Johannes Novy, Ingrid Olivo, and Cuz Potter. Searching for the Just City: Debates in Urban Theory and Practice. Routledge Chapman & Hall, 2011.

Ong, Aihwa. Introduction: Worlding Cities, or the Art of Being Global. In Worlding Cities, edited by Ananya Roy and Aihwa Ong, 126. Wiley-Blackwell, 2011. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/9781444346800.ch/summary.

Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation. Beacon Press, 1957.

Schwartz, Alex F. Housing Policy in the United States. Routledge, 2013.

Sillince, John. Housing Policies in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Routledge, 1990.

Vais, D. Exporting Hard Modernity: Construction Projects from Ceauescus Romania in the Third World. The Journal of Architecture 17, no. 3 (2012): 43351.

Vale, Lawrence J. Architecture, Power, and National Identity. Yale University Press, 1992.

Wheeler, Brian. What Future for Social Housing? BBC News, August 4, 2011. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14380936.

1

2. Methods Question: Housing in the First, Second, and Third Worlds

Identify and discuss three significant methodological approaches for studying housing practices, policies, and the resulting architecture. Your answer should examine the strengths and limitations of your choice of methodological approaches, by employing case studies from different countries that represent different stages of development. (If possible, do not re-use examples that you used in Question 1.)

Explanations for such housing practices have often been associated with modernization in the First, Second, and Third Worlds. Specifically, what role has the rise of scientific expertise played in architecture and urban planning in these three parts of the world?

As with the prior question, use illustrations to help support your answer, and avoid using Romania in your answer.

Table of Contents

Introduction: Modernity, Housing, and the Expert ...................................................... 2 1. Historiography ........................................................................................................... 3

1.1. A History of a Building Typology: The Panelk .......................................................... 6 1.2. A History of the Profession: The Communist Architect ............................................. 9 Strengths and Limitations ...................................................................................................... 11

2. Ethnography ............................................................................................................. 11 2.1. Experts and l'Homme Moyen ....................................................................................... 12 2.1. The Modern City and Its Residents ............................................................................. 13 Strengths and Limitations ...................................................................................................... 16

3. Case Study ................................................................................................................ 17 3.1. Single Case Study: Life on the Street .......................................................................... 18 3.2. Multiple Case Studies: Urban Centralities .................................................................. 20 Strengths and Limitations ...................................................................................................... 23

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................. 24 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................. 26

2

Introduction: Modernity, Housing, and the Expert

Marshall Berman has said that modernity is a mode of vital experience

experience of space and time, of the self and others, of lifes possibilities and perilsthat

is shared by men and women all over the world today. 1 In other words, various groups

of people experienced a change, at a particular moment in time and confined within a

particular space (a city, a region, or a country). According to Berman, this experience of a

rupture or sudden break with the past is a defining characteristic of modern existence.

Such rupture challenges individuals, and calls into question their identities and the ways

they position themselves against the other (e.g., as modern versus traditional).

Moreover, the change can bring at the same time a positive and a negative result,

in what Berman calls the dialectic of modernization and modernism. 2 Therefore he

further states, to be modern is to find ourselves in an environment that promises us

adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the worldand, at the

same time, that threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything

we are. 3

I start this essay with Marshall Bermans poetic description of modernity because

it underlines several of the points that I wish in this essay to bring together. The

modernist movement in architecture and urban planning represents a quintessential aspect

of a vast body of scholarship. In the interwar period and the post World War Two era, the

1 Marshall Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air: The Experience of Modernity (Verso, 1983), 15. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid., 16.

3

political and economic project of modernization, in housing policy, urban planning, and

architectural practice, fundamentally redesigned many cities throughout the world.

The modernist movement in architecture and its political and social agenda attempted to

reshape society and the individuals within it. Housing projects played a crucial role in

this humanistic and technocratic project. Planners and architects were the forerunners of

this process. Some of the authors mentioned in this study are critical of technocrats

involvements, while others are apologetic. Ultimately, what the essay attempts to unravel

are the methods used by the authors under discussion, in order to make sense of this

complex and intricate process called modernization, including its social and spatial

constructions, and its technocrats and their purpose: the transformation of the human

being.

1. Historiography

In her book History in Practice Ludmilla Jordanova starts by identifying several

meanings of the word history. She states: The word history has a number of

meanings, and a wide range of connotations, some of which are charged with intense

emotion. We use it to invoke the authority of precedents, to refer to what is no longer

relevant, to endow objects with value and status, and to mobilize longings for better

worlds. Since one of the main meanings of history is simply the past, then almost any

association with the past times can be transferred to history. 4 Indeed, addressing the

past, identifying historical facts that are representative, defining periods and ultimately

constructions of the historians subjective understanding of the past, represent the

4 Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice (Bloomsbury USA Academic, 2013), 1.

4

repertoire of the discipline of history. How then can we think of the author, his choices of

historical facts, and modes of emplotment in writing architectural history? Why do

historians choose distinct buildings as historical facts or advance a particular architect as

quintessential and representative of a style or a movement?

My study here will address historiography in the context of modern architecture. I

will attempt to construct the how of a particular form of modernity, that of the post

World War Two period in Eastern Europe, chiefly with reference to modern architecture

in former Czechoslovakia. I will bring as an example the work of Kimberly Elman

Zarecor and her book Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia,

1945-1960. 5 I have chosen this book as an historiographic example for three reasons:

(1) architectural historical fact: the standardized structural panel buildings (panelk) as

used for collective housing in Communist Czechoslovakia; (2) the concern for

architecture practice within the Communist system and the consequences of this practice

for housing design and policy in the socialist era; and (3) Zarecors position as an

historian outside the vilifying rhetoric about socialist standardized mass housing in

Eastern Europe.

In one of her earlier articles, Zarecor argues that the socialist block of flats in the

post-war era was not an expression of raw technicality, or of a preoccupation with

quantity than quality and aesthetic sensibility, but a symptom of local cultural, political

and economic changes in Czechoslovakia which recalibrated the relationship between

artistic creativity and technological determinism in design, altering the role of architects

5 Kimberly Elman Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity: Housing in Czechoslovakia, 1945-1960 (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2011), 218.

5

in society, their relationship to the structures of power, and the types of buildings they

produced. 6 Her book followed the same line of argument, highlighting the continuity

between the pre-Communist and Communist eras, the place of the architect in serving the

public, and accepting ones role as an architect who had been stripped of his individuality

and creativity in order become a mere technocrat in the massive project of housing

provision in the postwar period. The author specifically points to the local specificity of a

new type of Czechoslovak modern architecture subjected to historical contingencies and

defined independently of the Soviet leadership of that time.

Zarecor focuses on the period from the start of the Kosice program in 1945 to the

end of the Second Five-Year Plan in 1960. She explains: These events are points of

entry and exit along a continuum of architectural modernism in Czechoslovakia.7

Zarecors method is a compilation of different approaches to historical facts. She uses

archival materials and the only architectural journal in her country at the time,

Czechoslovak Architecture. Primary sources are from various institutions (like the

Stavoprojekt research institutes and the Institute of Prefabricated Buildings), appeals to

the authority of secondary sources, and an enormous collection of photographic

material8 of plans and buildings. She pays particular attention to the architects Vladimr

Karfk and Jir Kroha and their role in the design and production of mass housing.

Housing policy and architecture go hand-in-hand. The fast pace of industrialization not

only demanded housing new workers in increasingly expanding industrial cities, but also

6 Kimberly Elman Zarecor, The Local History of an International Type: The Structural Panel Building in Czechoslovakia, Home Cultures 7, no. 2 (July 1, 2010): 21735, doi:10.2752/175174210X12663437526250. 7 Zarecor, Manufacturing a Socialist Modernity, 6. 8 Ibid., 4.

6

addressed the severe housing shortage of the post-war period. Zarecor argues that

architects working for the socialist housing project after 1948 were already invested in

functionalism, along with various political and social commitments. For Zarecor, their

pledges were only a continuation of something they had already accepted: a social agenda

that architects took upon themselves in the pre-socialist era. Zarecor constructs her

overall historical narrative along two lines. One is a history of a building typology in post

World War II era and the other is the transformation of architectural practice centered on

several preeminent figures in modern architecture of the time.

1.1. A History of a Building Typology: The Panelk

To follow the narrative of building typology, Zarecor looks first at the short-lived

socialist realism of the early post-war era. She starts with the example of the Ostrova-

Poruba housing units, the so-called T-series housing. These housing units were built in

the early 1950s and they were still under the spell of socialist realism (Fig. 1 left). The

Stavoprojekt Institute together with the Ministry of Technology and Education

constructed the first housing project for miners in the city of Ostrava. The Model

Housing Developments in Ostrava after 1948 was planned as a large complex with

apartment houses, schools, and a town square offering a department store, house of

culture, health clinic, post office, butcher, and groceries store.9 Unfortunately, because

of budget overruns the Czechoslovak Building Works seized the project in early 1950.

9 Ibid., 95.

7

Fig. 1 Archway on the main street in Poruba,

Ostrova; apartment building showing socialist

realist style (left); Buildings containing

T1 type units in the Prosek neighborhood

of Prague (right)10

The next housing model Zarecor presents is the T-series (Fig1, right). This new

housing model represents a more standardized version, which was based on several

typologies under study by Stavoprojekt and the Typification Institute along with the

Department of Housing.11 Following the Ostrova model, Zarecor takes the narrative to a

more advanced era of typification. The next phase in housing policy and design was the

industrialization of housing, the evolution of panelk: particularly experimentation

with new industrial building technologies and housing prototypes.12 The housing

program was instituted by the new Ministry of Building Industry with the coordination of

the Stavoprojekt institute. The new model of panel technology modular housing was

meant to achieve a faster design and construction process and be more cost-effective.

10 Ibid., 104, 168. 11 Ibid., 97. 12 Ibid., 224.

8

Prefabricated housing became the topic of extensive research by architects and engineers

in the early 1950s. The typification efforts of this period brought the BA system13 (Fig.2):

The technology was notable for its use of pre-stressed concrete frames that were filled

with lightweight, unreinforced concrete to create a single panel.14

Fig. 2 BA system prototype Bratislava 195515

13 The BA system was named for Bratislava since the system was first used there. Zarecor further explains that the Bratislava project (see figure 2) won the best housing design in 1955. Ibid., 274. 14 Ibid., 275. 15 Ibid.

9

The next generation of panelk was the G-series, which allowed for a faster and more

sophisticated construction process, while still bearing the marks of socialist realism: relief

columns at corners, detailed cornices, and pitched roofs. The later versions of the same

G-series were further stripped of the stylish details reminiscent of socialist realism, and

revealed a return to the functionalist creed of early modernism. Housing units in this

phase were at the core of all the criticism that followed in the late socialist and post-

socialist periods.

1.2. A History of the Profession: The Communist Architect

In the second line of her narrative Zarecor follows the transformation of the

architecture profession by looking at several figures whom she deems representative for

this period and at the architectural profession overall. Zarecor constructs her story by

presenting the development of the profession as collectively unified and mediated, but at

the same time acknowledging the importance of several outstanding figures who were

representative of ways in which architects were embedded within the political system. At

the same time Zarecor does not charge the architect with the political stain of the

Communist creed. She craftily depoliticizes the technocrat, architect, and engineer,

arguing that each was perceived as part of a collective force within the Stavoprojekt

Institute.

The author specifically follows the career path of Jir Kroha. Zarecor identifies Kroha as

an important cultural figure who provides a rare opportunity for an in-depth study of the

10

implementation of socialist realism in Czechoslovakia and the region.16 Kroha was

important not only for his cultural contributions, but also for his ties within the

Communist Party and his support for the Soviet architecture of the time. To support this

the author uses personal correspondence between Kroha and Communist Party President

Zdenek Nejedly.17 Accordingly, Zarecor follows Krohas career by showing plans,

elevations, and images that portray the architects contribution to the built environment

between 1945 and 1950.

The second individual whom Zarecor identifies as an important cultural figure,

specifically important for the technological advancement of the standardized housing

units, is Vladimr Karfk. He was responsible for the innovation of a hybrid system with

pre-stressed concrete frames embedded in the panels. This system is associated with the

G-series of mass housing. This first prototype was part of the temporary exhibition at the

1952 Architects Congress in Prague.18 The exhibition was the outcome of the research

program condudcted by the Institute of Building Materials and Construction in

Bratislava. Zarecor looks at Karfiks memoir An Architect Remembers, to understand the

importance of the BA system. Here she also shows the connection between the Soviet

experimental housing research conducted by architect A. Michailov in early 50s. Karfik

continues his research in prefabricated panels after his meeting with Michailov in

Moskow. The brief attention that Zarecor gives to Karfik versus Kroha is telling. While

Kroha is presented throughout the length of one chapter, Karfik takes one page and he is

just the one technocrat, among others involved in the prefabricated panel systems: Karel

16 Ibid., 178. 17 Ibid. 18 Ibid., 274.

11

Janu, Adolf Bens briefly mentioned. This approach is telling of the ways in which

Zarecor looks at the research of prefabricated technology for housing as a collective

effort.

Strengths and Limitations

Historical research taps into sources from the past, combining primary and

secondary sources, emplotted by the historian in a narrative that suggests interpretations

of the past, which might be relevant to imagining a possible future. The mode of inquiry

of historical research defines a style of documentation that should be grounded in the

hard facts of the archival past, which still exist in the present as unquestionable

artifacts.

The limitation of historical research lies within its interpretative character. The

subjectivity and positionality of the historian filters facts through the way in which order,

importance, and personal agenda are established. Sometimes the story itself can only be

evaluated by situating it within multiple stories that support a particular historical event

or fact.

2. Ethnography

In discussions of ethnography, one controversial aspect has been the issue of

representation and positionality. On the one hand, some have argued that ethnographys

biggest weakness concerns problems of representation, because of the holistic approach

12

to scientific inquiry.19 On the other hand, some argue that participatory observation

should account for the subjectivity of the inquirer and the different voices that comprise

an ethnographic representation.20 The dialogical experiment in ethnography, as Marcus

calls it, falls short precisely because of its uncritical engagement with representation. He

states, The key recurrent problem in pursuing this strategy is () a sense of corruption

involved in the description of the oral in the production of ethnography.21

2.1. Experts and l'Homme Moyen

In French Modern22 Paul Rabinow argues that modern discourses situates society

in a constant flux and that temporary stability is accomplished through a rationality that

involves standardization, mechanization, and efficiency, and that this intervention must

happen by transforming individuals. But in order to do so first one must identify the

homme moyen, the universal subject, who is able to be transformed in a new subject, and

the ways in which he can be transformed. The rationalization of space is the means to

achieve l'homme moyen. New forms and norms must be envisioned. The prvoyance

(prediction) of the future must be based on reforming the individual, the state, space, and

society. The ultimate target of reform is the society.23 Norms and forms in Rabinows

sense are the realm of the new experts: administrative officials, city planners, architects,

and engineers. The modern city was the realm of the expert.

19 George E. Marcus, Ethnography Through Thick and Thin (Princeton University Press, 1998); James Clifford and George E. Marcus, Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (University of California Press, 1986). 20 Clifford Geertz, Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture, The Interpretation of Cultures, 1973, 330; Clifford and Marcus, Writing Culture. 21 Marcus, Ethnography Through Thick and Thin, 37. 22 Paul Rabinow, French Modern: Norms and Forms of the Social Environment (University of Chicago Press, 1995). 23 Ibid., 169.

13

2.1. The Modern City and Its Residents

Ethnographic work, frequently used in sociology, anthropology, and cultural

studies, plays an important role in qualitative research in architecture studies. It involves

a mode of emplotment that concentrates on the study down inquiry, looking at

practices, interrelationships, and the cultural constructions of individuals in their natural

settings. It focuses primarily on empirical material and is also frequently cited in the

research methods literature as [involving] an underlying emphasis on an inductive

process. 24

As an example of the use of ethnographic research in the context of the

relationship of housing to modernity, I will use the case of Brasilia, analyzed by James

Holston in his book The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia.25 Here

Holston employs different tactics, including photo-documentation, architectural

inventories, place-centered observations, interviews with existing residents, and statistical

data (official census data) gathered from state institutions.

Holstons book example is representative for the ways in which he engages with

people, specifically Brazilians living in the newly designed housing units of the utopic

city of Brasilia. The study describes what the author argues was a failed experiment in

social engineering. He looks not only at Brasilias inhabitants but also to its technocrats:

engineers, office workers, and architects. The most interesting part of Holstons study is

his skillful shift from study up to study down. He not only unravels the lack of social

life in the streets and the problems of collective modern living, but also inquires into the

24 Linda N. Groat and David Wang, Architectural Research Methods (John Wiley & Sons, 2013), 218. 25 James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia (University of Chicago Press, 1989).

14

mechanism of nation-state crafting: The merging of state and society that the modernist

model presupposes: the identification of the state as the organizer of social life, through

work, in every sector of society. Thus, even though the functions are spatially separated

into homogenous zones, they are each motivated, organized, and regulated by the same

planning agent, the state.26

The ethnographic work that Holston presents is the result of his engagement with

the everyday life of the new pioneers, the public servants for whom the city was

intended to begin with, and the construction workers excluded from its modern spaces.

Holstons anthropological study engages with modernism critically. With reference to a

concept of everydayness, it critiques the built environment by pointing to the

shortcomings of utopia: failure in homogenizing the society, the marginalization of

workers housing through the construction of a workers periphery outside the

administrative center, and the denial of access to the city for lower-level technocrats and

construction laborers.

The city of Brasilia was planned based on an idea of modernist functional rationality,

residential uniformity, and monumentality. These are hallmarks of modernism. But there

is a social dimension to this. Each building brings together inhabitants of various classes,

in a building whose faade hides their status differences and invites social integration.

The result, however, differed from the premise of the project. The vision of its creators

proved untenable in a historically deeply segregated society. To show this, Holston

presents the attempt of Niemeyer to design some of the apartments with differential

means of access: different elevators and entrances for service workers versus the owner.

26 Ibid., 154.

15

There was also the attempt to integrate traditional spaces as copa,27 (Fig. 3) which

eventually became a space mainly associated with the kitchen but also equally accessed

by every occupant.

Fig. 3 Hostons two examples of copas and kitchens in the middle and upper-middle income apartments. The two plans are showing the separation between servant access area and the main private and public areas of the apartment. The servant and the main family side of the apartment were separated and accesses shouldnt intersect.

27 According to Holston, Copa began to appear on house plans at the turn of the century to identify the large cupboard in the passageway between the kitchen and the veranda that was used to store utensils, cooking spices, tea, biscuits, ripening fruit, vials of medicine, needle and thread in short the infinite trivia of household life. Ibid., 177.

16

The shift in scale from the design of the housing unit to the administrative plaza

and its monuments is telling. The public monuments are at the core of the city: the

ministries, embassies, and hotels. The bureaucratic centrality was telling of ways in

which allocation of housing and land was done according to the master plan.

Strengths and Limitations

Holstons account of his engagement with the inhabitants of superquatras I found

to be unclear with respect to who his informants really were. He only mentions his

conversing with a class of nine-year-olds, asking them to draw a house. The houses

they drew resembled single family, pitched roof dwellings, not the typical flat roof box

of the modernist utopia.28 This example is followed by a long list of statements from

Holstons interviews showing the discontent of the residents living in the superquadras.

There are no voices of contentment. The possible counterpoint seems to be either left out

or inexistent. The nature of Holstons informants is undisclosed: no class, no gender, and

28 Ibid., 171.

Fig. 4 The superquadra housing blocks on the North side (left) and the South (right). These images show the scale of the buildings in relationship with its landscape surroundings and the open space.

17

no political color, just a mass of unhappy residents stripped of their traditional living

environments.29

3. Case Study

According to Robert Yin, a case study is comprised of two parts: first, [a] case

study is an empirical inquiry that investigates a contemporary phenomenon within its real

life context, especially when the boundaries between phenomenon and context are not

clearly evident.30 Secondly, [a] case study inquiry copes with the technically distinctive

situation in which there will be many more variables of interest than data points, and as

one result relies on multiple sources of evidence, with data needing to converge in a

triangulation fashion, and as another result benefits from the prior development of

theoretical propositions to guide data collection and analysis.31 To put it in other words,

a case study comprises the logic of design, the means and techniques of collecting data,

and data analysis. A case study can be single, as in the case of Jane Jacobss book The

Death and Life of Great American Cities concentrating on the case of New York City, or

multiple, as in the case of Laurence Vales Architecture, Power, and National Identity. In

this section I will concentrate on Vales book, looking at his cases of capital cities: Abuja

in Nigeria, and Dodoma in Tanzania.

29 Ibid., 172. 30 Robert K. Yin, Case Study Research: Design and Methods (Sage, 2009), 18. 31 Ibid.

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3.1. Single Case Study: Life on the Street

A case study can be single, as in the case of Jane Jacobss book The Death and

Life of Great American Cities,32 concentrating on New York City, or multiple, as in

Laurence Vales Architecture, Power, and National Identity. In this part of the analysis, I

will discuss the difference between Vales multiple case study approach and Jane

Jacobss study of New Yorks urban spaces. In discussing Vales book, I will concentrate

on two cities designed in the 1960s: the capital cities of Abuja, the new capital of Nigeria,

and Dodoma in Tanzania.

Jane Jacobss critique of modernism is well-known in architecture and planning

theory. The book attacks modern urban planning, advocating a return to the traditional

American city. This is the city of the street, of small neighborhoods, single-family

houses, and local commercial spaces. Jacobss writings were an important influence on

the New Urbanism architecture and planning movement that emerged in the 1980s.

Jacobs envisions four generators of traditionalism: active streets with mixed functions,

short blocks allowing for pedestrian free movement, a variety of buildings in age and

level of repair, and ultimately lower density. The author advances this agenda through an

acerbic critique of the modernization projects carried out by Robert Moses in New York

during the Great Depression. Jacobs provides many examples of the socio-physical

dynamics of everyday life in New York. As she puts it in the introduction: The way to

get at what goes on in the seemingly mysterious and perverse behavior of cities is, I

think, to look closely, and with as little expectations as possible, at the most ordinary

32 Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (Random House Digital, Inc., 1961).

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scenes and events, and to attempt to see what they mean and whether any threads of

principles emerge among them.33

In order to build her critique Jacobs defamiliarizes the familiar, her own New

York neighborhood. Jacobs looks at problems found in other cities. She mentions the

fictional mixtures in Pittsburgh, speculation about street safety in Philadelphia and

Baltimore, meanderings of downtown in Boston, and the unmaking of slums in

Chicago.34 She continues: In every case, I have tried to test out what I saw or heard in

one city or neighborhood against others, to find how relevant each citys or each places

lessons might be outside its own special case.35

Jacobs wants to rediscover the street and save it from the modernist emptiness;

she wants to bring back a different modernism. In Bermans words, much of the

meaning for which modern men and women were desperately searching, in fact, lay

surprisingly close to home, close to the surface and immediacy of their lives: it was all

right there, if we could only learn to dig.36 Jacobss idea of the urban montage37

romanticizes the urban space, and attempts to rediscover diversity, contradictions, and

urban vitality.

Jacobss single case study is rich in details, nuances, observation techniques,

interviews, and schematic diagrams. She does not use any photographs, for which she

explains her reasoning behind this thus: The scenes that illustrate this book are all about

33 Ibid., 13. 34 Ibid., 15. 35 Ibid., 16. 36 Berman, All That Is Solid Melts Into Air, 315. 37 Ibid., 314.

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us. For illustrations, please look closely at real cities. While you are looking, you might

as well also listen, linger and think about what you see.38 All the illustrations that we

might need already exist within ourselves, and if not we should all create them with our

gaze by looking outside ourselves into the streets of our own cities.

3.2. Multiple Case Studies: Urban Centralities

Unlike, Jacobs single case study, Architecture Power and National Identity is

made out of a multitude of case studies. Some cases are standing on their own and others

presented in a comparative perspective. In his book, Vale argues that capitol buildings in

post-colonial contexts are the product of competing political and cultural forces, and that

more often those buildings are carriers of meanings in the service of the newly

established nation-state, but that in the end regimes built capitol complexes chiefly to

serve some personal, subnational, and supranational interests rather than to advance

national identity; designers cannot mold political change; and governments still find it

necessary to demonstrate their power through aesthetic exaggerations.39

In this book Vale presents case studies of different capitols in developing

countries, tracing back in time capitol cities in Europe, and identifying some of the main

criteria of political and symbolic power. Vale points to the traditional from of cities

like Paris, London, and Washington; to capitals that were renewed like Athens, Rome,

and Moscow; and in the post-World War II era, to high modernist capitals like

Chandigarh and Brasilia, and more recently, Islamabad, Dodoma, and Abuja.

38 Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 39 Lawrence J. Vale, Architecture, Power, and National Identity (Yale University Press, 1992), 293.

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Compared with the other case studies, these latter two capital cities contained designed

housing units, and they each took different approaches to residential solutions and their

relationships with the political power.

Both Abuja and Dodoma are expressions of post-colonial independence. Both are

products of rapid modernization, with a clear social agenda: achieving social unity. For

Abuja the master plan proposed a centralized city, with an institutional core and two side

extensions of housing units, similar with Brasilias bird shape (Fig. 5). The residential

units, however, are only intended for middle and upper class part of the population.

Fig. 5 Compared with Dodoma, Abuja shows an ordered capital city along a main axis with emphasis on government institutions.40

40 Ibid., 141.

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Fig. 6 Dodomas functional arrangements. It attempts to be a non-hierarchical capital city.41

Vale concentrates on the political and cultural meaning of the institutions

designed at the core of the city without too much attention given to housing. At the same

time, the modernization creed for social equality falls short in Abuja. Any form of

housing policy completely excluded the poor from the city. To support his claims of

spatial structuring of the city, in both cases, Vale shows several plans and sketches of

functional hierarchy, photos of the model and renderings showing the public spaces

situated on the main axis. Unlike Abuja, in the case of Dodoma the residential area is

more substantial (Fig. 6). Located around the administrative core, the residential was one

41 Ibid., 150.

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of the priorities in planning decision-making. Monumentality was not a priority for the

master plan. Government emphasized human habitation.42

Strengths and Limitations

Many of the critiques of case study method deal with the problem of

generalization to theory. How can one case study be used to create a theory? Yin strongly

contests this limitation and asserts that applying the theory to other cases can validate

findings within a particular case study. The problem of causation, therefore, is

fundamental to case studies: Jacobs sidewalks, parks, the mix uses, and the need for

small blocks generates a particular human conduct within the city. Moreover, as this case

is well known for the ways in which it has revolutionized planning theory and

represented a great contribution to the field.43

The multiple case study deals to the issue of how many cases should be enough to

generate a theory? In Vales discussion of capital cities the relationship between

architecture, power and national identity is manifold: firstly he looks at historical

developments of major capitals of the world in Europe and US, then he extrapolates to

Third World coun