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Wohnungsfrage
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investigat
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Essays
David J.
Madden
Spatial Projects:
The Politics of
Neighborhood
in New York City
The very name Dumbo itself was originally a manifestation of this sentiment. The name was coined by participants in these organizations as a gesture of resistance against the corporate development of the area. A
former resident and organizer wrote, In 1978, as the
inevitability of development became apparent, the community decided that, if we were to die, at least we should
be buried under a name of our choosing.19 The thought
was that Dumbo was sufficiently silly, even stupid
sounding, that it might deter corporate-led redevelopment, or at least shape it.
Working through the local community board, members of some of these groups put together a 197-a proposal
an official mechanism for community-based planning.
Calling the area Old Brooklyn, the plan offered a number of Old Brooklyn District Planning Principles, such
as, Development and planning initiatives should act to
draw the Districts various neighborhoods together, and
ensure that all the Districts residents and stakeholders
including youth, lower income, and elderly residents
benefit.20 The 197-a plan recommended various actions
that would have tied together the various parts of the
downtown Brooklyn waterfront area has instead established a developmental agenda that has no place for them.
It is this form of displacement that should be seen as the
major effect of neighborhood formation in this area.
Conclusion
Neighborhoods are made, not born. The making of
Dumbo has been predicated upon not only the displacement of industrial uses but also the exclusion of the areas
public housing residents. Dumbo might be an extreme
caseto an unusual degree, it has been built by a single
monopolistic developer intent on creating an exclusive
enclave. But in an unequal city, neighborhood development is always going to be implicated in inequality. It is
just particularly obvious when looking at the history of
Dumbo and Farragut.
The ideology and idolization of neighborhood often
helps to legitimize an unequal urban order. In contrast,
conceptualizing neighborhoods as spatial projects can
help shed new light on a number of contemporary issues in urban studies and urban development. Chief
among them is how to understand the consequences of
gentrification. When neighborhoods are seen in this
way, new forms of displacement come into focus. As has
been the case with Dumbo, even when only small
amounts of direct displacement have occurred, we can
still speak of a kind of displacement when new spatial
projects re-orient a neighborhood toward new goals and
uses. It is possible for a community to remain in place of
residence, yet still to be in an important sense displaced
as the subject of neighborhood development. Merely
staying putwhich itself is becoming increasingly
difficult for many city-dwellers32is cold comfort for
working class and poor communities when the neighborhoods in which they live are being re-oriented toward
new goals and new uses that generally exclude them. By
seeing neighborhoods as spatial projects, critical scholars
can refocus the discussion around the political questions at the heart of the gentrification debate: whose
spatial projects tend to prevail in the contemporary city?
Urbanists should dispense with the notion of neighborhoods as natural community areas. And city-dwellers
should resist the romantic affirmation of neighborhood
as an urban public good in itself. Instead, we should
inquire into the ways in which neighborhood projects
can be mobilized toward many different ends. Neighbor
hoods are political all the way downwhich is to say
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Mariana
Fix
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itself the new financing system used and still uses public funds to leverage resources, thus minimizing risk.
Once again, the discourse of flexibility, deregulation,
and a minimal state was concealing a new way to capture public funds, as Luciana Royer demonstrated.25
In the same decade, the true scope of urban need and
the scale of resources required in order to address the
problem was recognized. This, combined with the discourse of the minimal state,26 strengthened the case for
an urban planning model that would bring real estate
developers closer to the state. In Brazil, the hegemonic
prescriptions applied to cities took the form of urban instruments such as joint urban operations, urban concessions, PPP, projects to revitalize central areas, and, in
general, the strategic planning for cities and global cities.
At the beginning of the Lula administration in 2003,
due to the vision of planners and social movements
motivated by the size of the urban problem and aware of
the urgent need to tackle it, the Ministry of Cities was
created. The measures adopted by the Ministry meant
that between December 2004 and December 2008 the
housing finance supply in the country (at early 2014
prices) jumped from R$41.5 billion to R$84.5 billion,
raising its percentage of GDP from 1.3% to 2.1%.27
At the same time, policies to decrease inequality between workers incomes (not, however, in the functional
distribution of income between profits and wages) contributed to the inclusion, via consumption, of a portion
of this population of workers into the consumer society
and these businesses clienteles.
These changes affected the ownership structure and
strategies of real estate developers: the Initial Public
Offerings (IPOs) on the stock exchange, foreign capital
inflow through private equity and the purchase of
shares, and the concentration and centralization of capital.28 Soon, however, this movement ran to limits that to
some extent are intrinsic to the way the sector functions
in Brazil, accentuated by repercussions of the global
financial crisis.
The City Statute, the Brazilian law of Urban Reform,
a popular initiative submitted to the National Congress
with over one million signatures and approved in 2001,
gave municipalities the opportunity to put the principles of the social function of property into practice.
The ruling of the real estate growth machine, in the
words of John Logan and Harvey Molotch, however,
prevailed.29
16
2009, various real estate developers, which had previously focused on projects restricted to high-income sections, launched brands directed at the affordable or
economic segment. These development companies designed new products together with regional firms and
bought up some developers already working within
low-income housing provision. At the same time, expanding their geographic reach towards mid-sized cities
and other states, finally, many of these developers floated on the public stock exchange as a means of raising
more funds for yet more expansion.
Between 2005 and 2007, nineteen Brazilian developers issued IPOs on the Stock Exchange.37 This raised
R$12.8 billion for the companies (as primary offerings),
and approximately R$2.8 billion for their shareholders
(as secondary offerings). This combination of loans and
grants from public and semi-public funds (middle-class
savings (SBPE), and the workers funds (FGTS)) and
finance capital (private equity and portfolio investments
on the stock market) has brought about changes in the
real estate circuit, which includes changes in the ownership structure of companies.
The result of this is that former owners of several
real estate development companiesespecially those
that floated on the stock exchangehave lost relative
participation and been forced to share their power with
owners of the finance capital and their managers, asset
management companies, and private equity companies.
Managers assess which companies are most likely to increase their market value according to the location of
their land bank and the type of housing they produce.
The outside position of the shareholders (and their managers) often leads to disputes over decisions regarding
land purchases and allocation.
Local knowledge, pressure on public authorities (executive, legislative, and judiciary), a lack of articulation
with the worlds economy, and the distance between
capital markets and the housing market are all factors
that make the expansion of foreign capital in this sector
in Brazil nonetheless difficult. A number of companies
have thus remained entirely in the hands of Brazilian
families. These companies are fueled by public funds in
the form of direct loan subsidies, tax reductions for
building materials, and in some cases donations of land for
construction projects. In short, therefore, arrangements
are constituted, combining new legislation with old
elements, such as land rent extraction (land ownership
17
and real estate development), finance rent (share ownership), surplus value (construction profits), interest (loans),
and public funds.
Thus, the most significant changes in the housing
construction sector have come about as the result of a
combination of public and semi-public funds (federal
budgetary resources (OGU), FGTS, SBPE) and international finance capital. Real estate securitization mechanisms introduced in Brazil (such as CRIs, for example)
have not yet reached the same size as they have in countries such as the US and have had a lesser impact.
Where and How are the Large Estates of
Low-income Housing Developments Built?
The result of instructing developers to meet the socalled housing shortage38 has been a productivist model
for the construction of housingthe location, typology,
construction site, and architectural design of which is
determined mainly by developers within the parameters
of their profit forecasts, and combined with expectations
of rentier gains (land rent capture and stock market appreciation).
The range of proposals that have been advocated by
city architects and planners for decadesi.e. quality and
project diversity, mixed-use and integration, community
spaces and squares, resident participation in determining
design and construction management, the recycling
of buildings in central areas, slum upgrading with
the involvement of residents and with minimal relocation, public buildings for rental by the community, and
the use of technologies and materials appropriate to
the climatic, geographical, and cultural conditions
have largely been eroded by the Minha Casa Minha Vida
program, launched in 2009. Minha Casa encourages the
production of housing projects, by private companies,
that are large, massified, homogeneous, mono-functional,
and have low urban quality.39
Although an increase in the scale of production may
encourage progress at some construction sites towards
industrial-type rationalization, at the same time, it
strengthens the figure of the developer as the agent that
seeks to control the process.
Minha Casa projects tend toward constructions in
new or already-established suburbs far away from areas
with significant infrastructure, social services, or jobs.
Thus, while producing many city homes, the homes are
often without a city.40 Among the companies commercial
18
arose in the field of production. Several companies followed with traditional solutions from the point of view
of building techniques, on grounds that new technologies do not guarantee productivity gains. Other companies have introduced rigorous standardization processes
both in the design and in the specification of componentssometimes combined with working conditions
likened to slavery, for which some developers have been
sentenced to Conduct Adjustment Terms by the public
prosecutor. Still other firms sought to build systems
that enabled the production of large horizontal projects
in a short time, and adopted solutions such as aerated
concrete with sliding, reusable molds, previously seldom
used in Brazil. This has been the case for several companies operating in range 1 of the program: the financial
leap in this case needs accompanying by modifications
to the construction site, which is to say that in some
cases traditional techniques are barriers to accumulation.
Commodification of Housing and the Right
to the City: Brazil and the USA
The means of producing houses and cities today is an
expression of these tensions and contradictions, between
the advancement of commercial speculative capital and
finance capital in the urban environment, and the
progressive agenda of social movements and some democratic administrations in a very unequal society. These
contradictions are different to those posed by the transformation of homes into financial assets as seen in the
United States, where, besides use and exchange value,
property became one of the ballasts of financial appreciation, through securitization.
The financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the explosive nature of the ties between the right to housing, real
estate, and the financial sphere in the worlds core economies. In countries such as the USA and Spain, where
millions of people have faced eviction from their homes,
entire districts have been devastated, and construction
projects have been put on hold.
As David Harvey stated in 1982, The land must become a form of fictitious capital and be treated as an
open field for the circulation of interest-bearing capital.
Only under such a condition does the apparent contradiction between the law of value and the existence of
rent on land disappear.41 Thus, when property begins to
circulate like a financial asset and is priced in the secondary market then its price, like any other asset, is set
19
20
16 Ibid.
17 Flvio Villaa, Espao Intra-Urbano No Brasil (So Paulo: Studio Nobel,
1998), 327.
18 Ferro, Arquitetura E Trabalho Livre. See also Gabriel Bollaffi,
Habitao e Urbanismo: O Problema e o falso Problema (Rio de Janeiro:
Ensaios de Opinio, 1975).
19 The continuity of the program, similarly, is under threat by the
current political and economic crisis.
20 As David Harvey states, economic agents have taken on new roles:
Landowners receive rent, developers receive increments in rent
on the basis of improvements, builders earn profit of enterprise,
financiers provide money capital in return for interest at the same
time as they can capitalize any form of revenue accruing from use
of the built environment into a fictitious capital (property price),
and the state can use taxes (present or anticipated) as backing
for investments which capital cannot or will not undertake but
which nevertheless expand the basis for local circulation of
capital. See David Harvey, The Limits to Capital (London: Verso,
1982/2006), 395.
21 The expression is used by Carlos Lessa in some texts, e.g. in the
essay written with Sulamis Dain, Capitalismo Associado:
Algumas Referncias para o Tema Estado e Desenvolvimento,
in: Luis Gonzaga Belluzzo and Renata Coutinho (eds), Desenvolvimento
Capitalista no Brasil: Ensaios Sobre a Crise (So Paulo: Brasiliense, 1982).
22 Fabio Pahim Jr., A maturidade do sistema de crdito imobilirio,
Revista do SFI, 29 (2014): 1821.
23 Leda Maria Paulani, A insero da economia brasileira no cenrio
mundial: a situao atual luz da histria, Boletim de Economia
e Poltica Internacional, 10 (2012): 89102.
24 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are two government-sponsored
private corporations that bundle individual mortgages into
packages that are then turned into marketable securities.
See Peter Marcuse, Subprime Housing Crisis, online: http://www.
hic-gs.org/content/subprime_housing_crisis.pdf (accessed
08/20/15). The visit to Brazil by two representatives of a North
American corporation is documented in a report by the University
of Colorado, Denver: On April 8 to April 11, 1999, over eighty
respected Brazilian and U.S. business, government, non-profit,
and academic leaders participated in the second BrazilUS Aspen
Global Forum on Expanding Primary and Secondary Mortgage
Markets and Housing Opportunity, in Sao Roque, Brazil. They
included investors, rating agencies, mortgage bankers, originators
and servicers, government, quasi government and private sector
secondary market participants, and housing policy analysts.
While they did not always agree on particulars, they did reach
consensus on a broad framework to reform Brazils housing
markets. They also concurred on many immediate strategies and
next steps to further Brazils current efforts to establish effective
primary and secondary mortgage markets. See Luciana de Oliveira
Royer, Sistema Financeiro Habitacional e Sistema Financeiro
Imobilirio: limites e possibilidades, unpublished paper presented
at the public meeting, Conferencia do Desenvolvimento CODE,
Brasilia (Brazil, 2011), available online: www.ipea.gov.br/code2011
/chamada2011/pdf/area7/area7-artigo3.pdf (accessed 08/24/15).
25 Luciana de Oliveira Royer, Financeirizao da poltica habitacional:
limites e perspectivas (So Paulo: Annablume, 2014).
26 For a critical view of the concept of the minimal state as
employed in the policies of Margaret Thatcher (UK Prime Minister
197990) and Ronald Reagans administration (US President
198189) and inspired by them, see Francisco de Oliveira,
O surgimento do anti-valor, New Studies, 22 (October 1988).
Oliveira shows that while this discourse is apparently directed
to [the] Moloch State, its goal is to dissolve the specific arenas
of confrontation and negotiation. That is, it is not really about
reducing the state in every area as publicized, but concerns a
dispute for public funds destined for capital reproduction and
funds to finance the production of public goods and social services.
27 Rafael Fagundes Cagnin and Claudia Magalhes Eloy, A expanso
do crdito e a valorizao dos imveis residenciais no Brasil
(2005 a 2013), unpublished paper presented at the public meeting
21
22
AbdouMaliq
Simone
Housing
Systems as
Environments
of Practice
and Information
23
24
important, built environments become the objects of reshaping, so that they might mediate the multiple provisioning of various affordancesto act alternately as
residences, markets, community centers, workshops,
storage spaces, retail outlets, and social hubs.
Like many metropolitan areas in the south, Jakarta
experiences substantial housing shortages. Policy-
makers repeatedly invoke the exigencies of climate
change, infrastructure adaptation, and the need to promote greater social equity as a matter of national security,
as rationales for finally doing something about urban
poverty. The need to mitigate the worsening flood-
related problems by re-engineering the Ciliwung River
that runs through the city will force the removal of
nearly 400,000 residents. The remaking of the north
shore to stem rising sea levels and to restructure the
port system is likely to entail the resettlement of nearly
one million people over the coming decade. The absence
of a functional public transport system, near-gridlock on
the roads, and the adamant demand for greater densities
of commercial and mid- to high-end residential complexes are displacing large numbers of inner-city residents to distant and largely dysfunctional peripheries.
In turn, extending one- and two-story residences into
multistory boarding houses and rooms to rent in the
urban core has become a means of supplementing the
incomes of the majority of inner-city residents.
The multiple problems faced by the national and municipal state in acquiring land, further complicates the
resettlement issue. The lack of available land for development is normatively attributed to an excessive volume
of urban sites having ambiguous status. The fact that
parastatal organizationssuch as railway corporations
and military complexesretain enormous amounts of
centrally located undeveloped land as devices to paper
over budgetary deficits and speculation is only rarely
calculated in as factors to these land shortages. Informal settlements are accused of complicating state and
municipal initiatives to provide affordable housing.
Acting in the name of more equitable and comprehensive housing and provisioning systems for the poor,
generates a wide range of ramifying effects. Take the
issue of low-cost housing, perumahan rakyat. As states
have largely signed on to a host of international concords proclaiming shelter as a human right, states have
largely withdrawn from any direct responsibility for
subsidizing the costs for constructing and maintaining
25
low-cost housing.4 Like many countries, selling mortgage-backed securities on capital markets has become
the dominant source of finance for housing projects in
Jakarta. It is true that even when the state continues to
subsidize low-cost housing its volume is woefully inadequate in relationship to need; but the assumption that
aggregating the not-insignificant savings of many lower
income (if not virtually destitute) households as the basis
for the long-term capitalization of sustainable housing
programs seems problematic. The assumption is that such
a strategy enables banks to lend at affordable interest
rates over long periods.5
However, in order for securitization to work, land
must have unequivocal status, its ownership clearly
determined and registered. Estimates suggest that up to
70 percent of land in Jakarta remains uncertified, with
most land parcels falling nebulously into the category
legally but not legitimately occupied. This is because,
historically, land transactions were agreed mainly at local
level and through localized processes of registration
with district authorities, a process from which ensues a
highly diverse mixture of lease rights, shared ownership, and land trusts.6 Responsibility for land certificationas opposed to the actual multiple modalities of
informal land transactionsbelongs with the Badan
Pertanaman Nasunal (The National Land Agency).
For a long time, the advantages of land regularization have been widely touted in terms of the ways in
which property can become a fungible asset for lowerincome households and institute greater security of tenure. But many Jakarta residents either cannot afford the
many different fees that surround the actual certification costs, or the subsequent rise in taxation that usually ensues from certification. These costs include investigations of any competing claims and payment of past
taxes to local district councils. Residents often cannot
deal with the social implications of definitive assignation of ownership in tenure situations where multiple
actors have long-worked out complementary responsibilities with regard to land use. Many land parcels are
sites of multiple subcontracting relationships, which
avail associated actors participation in several different
activities in the same spaceresidence for some, workshops, storage places, and meeting halls for others.
Certification is not just a matter of bureaucratic effi
ciency. The National Land Agency has initiated a program
that sends mobile offices across the city to accelerate the
26
It is for this reason that it is important to pay attention to the interfaces between different places within
the city and find ways of re-describing particular formations and situations, in terms of capacity and potential,
which at first they may not appear to embody. For example, take the Kalibata City complex in central Jakarta.
Built by the countrys largest developer, the Podomoro
Group, the complex is part-replication of the now-standardized middle-to-upper-middle-class all-in-one apartment block, combining residence, shopping mall, leisure
zones, schools and social services and part low-cost,
densely packed towers of small flats in which social
class divisions are built into the spacing and composition of dwelling.
Rusunami Kalibata Residences provides 6,000 units
averaging 26m2 spread out across seven towers. Kalibata
Regency offers 2,500 units in three towers, and Green
Palace Apartment has 3,000 units in six towers averaging
thirty-two units. Prices range from $21,000 to $50,000
for a one-bedroom apartment depending on the complex.
Roughly 30,000 people live in the complex, and unlike
many other similar developments, there has been some
effort in landscaping at ground-level with scores of small
shops, restaurants, coffee houses, and public spaces. As
residents are both thrown together in an environment
with limited history and situated in a context where rela
tions of authority and civility can no longer rely upon the
mores and practices of long-honed, thickly enmeshed
residential/commercial districts, those who live in Kalibata are still trying to figure out ways of working with
and around each other. Yet the complex is surrounded
by the old, working-class neighborhoods in varying states
of disrepair, which are folded into convoluted ecologies
precipitated by the complex, and which find new functionsas producers/procurers of low-cost items for the
residents of Kalibata.
In some respects, the project could be considered a
relatively slapped together attempt at cross-subsidization, where the provision of solidly middle-class designs,
space, and amenities are met, in order to cover some of
the costs for the provision of minimalist low-cost units.
The marked differentiations in construction values are
obvious, and whether most of the buildings can actually
absorb the wear-and-tear of such large numbers of residents in densely packed conditions for many years is
questionable. For now, though, it brings together elements
of the popular neighborhood and the mega-complex at
27
28
3
4
29
Sandi
Hilal
Roofless
31
32
33
34
Ayats Mother
Although I worked with Ayat for more than two years,
I never had the chance to meet her parents. Ayat had
been able to fill the plaza with women of her mothers
age, but she had never managed to convince her mother
to join them.
In June 2015, together with some colleagues, we visited Ayat and her group for some tea and biscuits in the
plaza. It was evening and everyone was in good spirits
as we chatted in the summer breeze while children
played around us. Prayer time arrived, and the women
wanted to go back home, but one of them said, Why
dont we pray in the plaza? Despite skeptical looks, this
woman began praying and another woman joined her,
while the rest of us continued chatting, laughing, and
discussing until they were finished. As night fell and
lights came on, it felt as if someone had rung a bell to
remind the men and young teenagers to get some fresh
air outside their homes, too. As I was saying goodbye to
everyone, Ayat proposed that we go to her Aunts house
to continue the evening together.
We arrived at the house of Ayats aunt and found
ourselves in a beautiful green garden, with an olive tree
planted in the middle, surrounded by mint, basil, rosemary, and oregano. Invited to sit in the salon for guests,
I insisted we remain outside in the garden. We sat under
the tree in semi-darkness, Ayats aunt sitting next to the
open door of the house through which some light escaped
from inside.
Later on, Ayats mother arrived and immediately
asked why we were sitting under the tree and not in the
salon. We all reassured her that we had requested to stay
outdoors. Her voice was identical to Ayats and we
kissed each other, both feeling that we should have met
up a long time before. Ayat interrupted and excitedly
announced that they were all celebrating that her mother
had finally been liberated from her illness. Her mother
began to tell us the story:
Two months ago I had a very bad pain in my knee.
I was unable to cope with it any longer so we prepared for the walk to Hebron to visit the doctor.
I woke up very early in the morning and walked for
three hours with pain that increased with each step.
When we arrived, I was completely exhausted. The
doctor was shocked to hear that I had walked all the
way from al-Fawwar camp to Hebron city, and insisted that he would call a car to take me back to
Fawwar. He gave me two injections, assuring me
that this would p
ermit me to get into the car. To be
honest we did not believe him. Six doctors before
him had tried to give me various injections to cure
me of the panic attacks, and it had never worked. As
I got into the car we were all elated that I was only
shouting; I did not hit the driver, hurt myself, or
destroy the car. Arriving at the camp, I felt like a
celebrity: everyone had gathered around to witness
the scene of me g
etting out of the car.
I did not know whether I should believe this story, it
was so fantastic it seemed as though Ayats mother had
invented it as a metaphor of the sixty-eight years of exile
in the camp. As she described the journey, it reminded
me of the image of Palestinian refugees preferring to
live under the heat of a zinc roof in the hot, Beirut summer rather than accept a more comfortable life under a
concrete roof.
To be uncomfortable and unsettled is a form of
struggle, a reminder of refugee status. As time went by,
the camp was turning into the only legitimate witness
of a refugees loss. Preserving the image of the unsettled,
roofless camp was a way of preserving their history and
their right to return home. Ayats mother never wanted
to leave the camp because she was afraid that, if she left
it unguarded, she might lose its existence; subsequently
she thought she would lose her grandfathers house as
well. The house she had always longed for in her dreams,
which she learned through her father and grandfathers
stories is only protected if the camp is still there to witness the loss and continue to remind the world of the
right of return of Palestinian refugees. As the entire
camp came outside to watch as Ayats mother arrived in
the car, were they publicly witnessing her relinquishing
responsibility for guarding the camp? Of course, she
was still shouting inside to show that she was suffering,
but she also accepted that, like others, she could leave
the camp behind.
Just as I realized at some point that perhaps Ayats
mother embodies the camp, it followed, then, that perhaps
Ayat represents the plaza. The condition of the camp is
the condition that lives inside Ayats mother. In order to
protect her family and her home she refuses to leave the
35
36
Rooflessness
As much as I would like this to be a story about how the
plaza improved life inside the camp and how Ayat managed to transform womens rights in al-Fawwar camp,
the truth is that both the plaza and Ayats revolution are
vulnerable experiments.
As much as Ayat seems to be a strong revolutionary
and visionary, she has also placed herself in a position in
which she is extremely fragile. The same applies to the
plaza. Its strong presence within the camp is what
makes it vulnerable: it challenges the very meaning of
the camp.
Ayat recently sent me a letter: I feel that the plaza is
the place that represents me. The plaza is a challenge for
the camp as it represents public space in a temporary
place. It is very similar to the challenges of women, proclaiming our right to be out in public, to my rebellion
against all the stereotypes, the reality in which I live. I
feel that there are many similarities between the plaza
and me: both of us are roofless; my thoughts have no
limits but are still contained within what is acceptable,
with walls built from religion and society. My thoughts
have no limits when I think about how much it is possible for me to change my reality and the reality of other
women my age in the camp.
2
3
4
5
6
7
37
Andrew
Herscher
Blight,
Spatial Racism,
and the
Demolition
of the Housing
Question
in Detroit
Blight is a cancer. Blight sucks the soul out of everyone
who gets near it, let alone those who are unfortunate
enough to live with it all around them. Blight is radio
active. It is contagious. Blight serves as a venue that
attracts criminals and crime. It is a magnet for arsonists.
Blight is a dangerous place for firefighters and other
emergency workers to perform their duties. Blight is
also a symbol. It is a symbol of all that is wrong and all
that has gone wrong for too many decades in the oncethriving world-class city of Detroit.
Detroit Blight Removal Task Force Plan, 2014
Introduction
The Detroit Blight Removal Task Force Plan
Splicing together references from science and religion,
disease and crime, and emergency and everyday life, the
all but hysterical prose that introduces the 2014 Detroit
Blight Removal Task Force Plan nevertheless emplots
blight into an all too conventional narrative.1 What
connects the disparate references in the plans introduction is its evocation of a condition that primarily affects
not those who are unfortunate enough to live with it
39
40
location in which to reinvest the surplus value accumulated by those same industries.5
In a gesture that would be continuously reprised
into the present, Lovejoys invocation of an urban future
threatened by an architectural cancer would lead, first,
to a comprehensive survey of the city to counteract this
danger. We intend to make a systematic study of conditions in Detroit, Lovejoy proclaimed. We will pick out
sections in different parts of the city, find out just what
is the environment of the people living in these sections,
and how it should be improved. We wish to be in a position to speak intelligently, not of isolated cases, but of
the actual situation in Detroit.6 As today, the city would
be studied in an effort to detect and manage seemingly
pathological conditions. As today, these conditions
would be posed as the product of marginalized urban
communitiesdescribed by Lovejoy as a poor and
ignorant alien immigration. And as today, the state
would act on these conditions by criminalizing those
who were compelled to inhabit them, so Lovejoy recommended that the inability to maintain property be regarded as a violation of the general nuisance act of the
citya legal translation of substandard housing into a
public danger would be consolidated and advanced with
the development of concepts of blight up to and through
the Task Force Plan.
The Detroit Housing Commissions invocation of
architectural conditions that presumably threatened
41
42
43
urbanism a management of that fear. The survey commissioned by the Task Force discovered 84,641 blighted
parcels among the 377,602 surveyed. The vast majority
of these blighted parcels72,328, or one-third of the
structures in the entire citywere single-family dwellings. What was new here, however, was not the documen
tation of this blight by individual parcelsclaimed as
an innovation of the plan itselfbut rather the propo
sition that every blighted parcel in the city be demolished and that existing legal and bureaucratic procedures structuring the administration of these parcels be
bypassed in favor of an expedited foreclosure process
and aggressive eradication timeline.
44
45
21
41
46
Justin
McGuirk
Honeywell,
I'm Home!
The Internet
of Things
and the New
Domestic
Landscape
In 1972, as part of MoMAs exhibition Italy: The New
Domestic Landscape, the Radical Design group Superstudio installed a small cubic room with mirrored walls
that appeared to replicate itself into infinity. The groups
proposal, submitted to the curator Emilio Ambasz, had
taken the form of a one-page statement describing exactly how this microenvironment should be installed,
followed by a further nine typed pages of theoretical
exposition by Superstudios co-founder Adolfo Natalini.
In those nine pagesa manifesto of sorts, veering off
into prose poems and short storiesNatalini outlines a
new way of living. The attributes of this hypothetical
existence include permanent nomadism, life without
objects, and life without work. These conditions are
made possible by a mysterious gridded structure that
Natalini refers to only as the network.
It is only too easy to root around in the archives,
extract something highly selective, and proclaim this or
that radical to have been prophetic. In this case, however,
Natalinis vision appears uncannily prescient. Of course,
the network of his imagination was simply an act of
wish fulfillmenthe hadnt the slightest idea what it
was exactly (although, by coincidence, 1972 was also the
year that ARPANET was first demonstrated in public),
47
It sounds benign enough, and may conjure Jacques Tatistyle mise-en-scnes populated by absurd devicesthe
smart home is prime territory for farcebut it is also an
ideology. It is the house-shaped manifestation of the inter
net of things, according to which all our devices and
appliances will join the network, communicating with
us and each other.
To say that the internet of things is an ideology is to
suggest that the use-value of the concept has yet to be
sold to the consumer. It is easily mocked by skeptical
hacks who question the need for talking fridges and
washing machines that you can program with your
smartphone (You still need to put the clothes in yourself, right?). Bruce Sterling argues that the internet of
things has nothing to do with the consumer and everything to do with the business interests of the service
providers. Given that data is the new currency, the inter
net of things is an epic power grab by the lords of the
networkSterling focuses on the big five of Google,
Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoftto gain control
of as much human data as physically possible.1 As the
primary interface of the internet of things, the smart
home is effectively the tendrils of the network rising
out of the ground and into every one of our household
appliances to allow mass data collection and digital surveillance.
That, at least, is one interpretation. It goes without
saying that the internet-of-things agenda is being driven
by the technology industry with the eager boosterism
of the business community, which sees a blizzard of dollar signs. And while the evangelists of the IoT would
hardly define themselves in Sterlings terms, neither do
they contradict him. As an effusive cover story in the
Harvard Business Review put it recently, It is the expanded
capabilities of smart, connected products and the data
they generate that are ushering in a new era of competition.2 For better or worse, the smart home is the new
New Domestic Landscape.
The question is, what are the implications for architecture? Do these developments have spatial ramifications? Should we plan and build in new ways to accommodate this technological surge, or is it just a case of
running a few extra wires into the walls? Can architects
continue to design according to age-old principles of
good form and sound proportions (or stick to the boilerplate floor plans prescribed by greedy developers, as the
case may be)?
48
49
of all our household devicestheir ability to sync and update and communicate with each otherdepends on a
single unifying platform. All tech companies agree on
this and that is why they are all beavering away at solving
the problem with their own proprietary platform that
will not work with all the others. The idea that all our
products may have to be either Apple-compatible or, say,
Samsung-compatible, is a disincentive. As for the rapid
cycle of updates and obsolescence, well, architects simply
do not think in such ephemeral time spans. There are
also security concerns: our houses become eminently
more hackable the more connected devices we have.
Experts evoke a cyber-security nightmare of botnet
armies using smart toasters to launch DDoS attacks, etc.
But lets concern ourselves with the ethical implications
of the smart home. Because if we are in the midst of a
subtle domestic revolution, its consequences are in new
forms of labor, the erosion of privacy, and the monopolization of control.
It is a truism worth restating here that our homes
are increasingly the primary sites of production. This is
not just true of new flexible labor models that allow
many people to work from home; it also applies to the so-
called sharing economy (read the digital rental economy)
that allows us to commodify our private spaces so
effortlessly. Already, the idea of the home as a retreat,
a sanctuary from work, comes into question. But it is
also literally true that our homes are sites of production
simply by dint of rising property values. In London,
with its 18 percent price rises in recent years, it is quite
likely that your home makes more money every year
than you do.
Added to this is the fact that the proliferation of
smart, connected products will turn the home into a
prime data collection node. It is estimated that there
will be fifty billion wi-fi-connected devices by 2020, and
all of them will collect data that is transmitted to and
stored by their manufacturers. In short, the home is becoming a data factory.
Our participation in this process has been underway for some time, not least through social media, which
has helped constitute the post-Fordist world in which
we no longer fabricate machine parts but subjectivities
opinions, lifestyle choices, our public image. Different
theorists come at this from different angles. Zygmunt
Bauman calls it the commodification of the self, while
Franco Bifo Berardi calls it cognitive labor, which is
50
51
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
52
Rana
Dasgupta
Landscape
53
the capital. It is striking in fact how Delhis rich, a quintessentially metropolitan set of people, who have made
their money by tirelessly networking in the capitals
many clubs and corridors, eschew the urbane. They do
not, as the rich do in Mumbai or New York, dream of
apartments with sparkling views of the city from which
their fortune derives. They are not drawn to that energy
of streets, sidewalks and bustle which was so heroic a
part of great nineteenth- and twentieth-century cities.
No: the Delhi rich like to wake up looking at empty,
manicured lawns stretching away to walls topped with
barbed wire.
Modern Delhi was born out of the catastrophe of
Indias partition, whose ravages turned its culture towards security and self-reliance. The compounds in
which its richest citizens take refuge from society are
only the most extravagant manifestations of a more
widespread isolationist ethos. Delhi is the pioneer, after
all, of Indias private townships, where life is administered by corporations and surrounded by fences, and
where one is cut away, therefore, from the broad currents of the country. Gurgaon, the Delhi suburb established by real estate giant DLF in the 1990s, is the largest
such township in Asia, and now has imitators all over
the country. An expanse of fields until thirty years ago,
Gurgaons looming apartment blocks and steely towers
now look as if they have emerged from a computer game
set in some super-saturated future. Gurgaon makes no
pretence of being a public space: the great numbers of
the poor who clean and guard its houses and offices, for
instance, cannot live there. To live in Gurgaon is to live
in a housing complex protected from the outside by secu
rity cameras and armed guards, where residents pay corporations to service all their fundamental needs: garbage
collection, water supply and even, in the frequent event
that state-owned electricity fails, electricity generation.
It therefore appeals to a group of people for whom the
corporation has come to seem a far more fertile form of
social organisation than the state, and who seek out
enclaves of efficient, post-public living.
The place where I now sip my bottled water is venerable. For far in excess of a millennium, men and women
have made their lives on the soil where my feet now rest.
From my seat by the pool I can gaze up at the soaring
trunk of the Qutab Minar, the triumphal tower built in
the wake of an ancient conquest of Delhi by central Asian
invaders: massive and serrated, it has punctured eight
54
55
Atlas
57
Reinhold
Martin
Preface:
The Neoliberal
Housing System
59
2
3
60
Anne
Kockelkorn
Introduction:
A Sample Atlas
61
non-simultaneity increases the more they get instrumentalized in the crossfire of actors interests (state,
communes, investors, building societies, and housing
associations), the more and the faster urban territories
get transformed by the leverage of fictious capital flows,
and the more a project or location is apt to be charged
with ideological meanings or affects.3 This instability of
the representation of the housing productwhich in turn
inflects upon the physical worldis a general feature of
housing under a capitalist economy; but it is intensified
and accelerated under a neoliberal agenda that considers
the economic growth of a perfect market with idealized
homogenous products as an end in itself, and which
confounds traditional liberal claims of achieving social
justice with particular class interests of the richest part
of the population.4
Housing as a commodity: Three contradictions
There is a series of obvious problems and contradictions
which arise if one considers housing as a commodity
alone (let alone a homogenous one) and which raises
legitimate questions why a neoliberal agenda can be
considered at all as meaningful with regards to housing;
one could also ask why most nation-states have followed
this agenda in the housing sector since 1989 with
increasing bias and consequence. These contradictions
derive from the double character of housing within
a capitalist economy as being both a commodity and
a means of production. One of the most decisive contradictions between housing systems and an idealized
neoliberal economy is related to this latent property: the
all-pervasiveness of government intervention in the
housing economybe it through direct or indirect subsidies, tax regulations, or rent control, either with the
goal of enhancing growth or to assure satisfactory
access to housing, or bothrefutes the assumption that
governments shouldnt intervene in a perfect market.
A second contradiction arises with the complexity and
indivisibility of housing as a social practice and a sitespecific object; neither of these characteristics matches
with the concept of a homogenous commodity that is
endlessly divisible and thus apt for the maximalization
of transactions, maximalization of contracts, as well as
a minimization of inter-assessment intervals. The third
contradiction points back to the means of production:
the inherent inequality of the manifold relationships
which constitute the housing market (owner-occupier,
62
63
7
8
64
1.
Beginnings
196881
65
66
and run on the principle of self-management.9 Jobs secured access to housing and rights of permanent tenancy
that was hereditary; but the latitude within Yugoslavian
housing production extended beyond a unique mode of
ownership and occupation. It also comprised formal
experiments in the building of public apartment complexes that bear a number of similarities to late-postwar
modern
ity in Western countries: those innovations
included flexible ground plans, the adaptability of structures to changed living conditions, and a precise urban
layout of buildings to articulate and respond to features
of the urban surroundings. [ p. 74]
Developments
In the housing markets of developing countries, meanwhile, the 1970s already saw the emergence of the global
ization-driven deregulation and restructuring that would
shape urbanization processes worldwide in the 1990s:
city quarters for those living at the minimum subsistence
level and gated communities for the upper class. This
applied particularly to South America. Prototypes of such
two-speed cities are Previ in Lima and Nova Ipanema in
Rio de Janeiro. [ pp. 76, 77] The first gated community
in Rio de Janeiro guaranteed its residents luxurious
shared facilities, such as well-looked-after streets, a
swimming pool and a tennis court, on a beach property.
The development project in Lima, on the other hand,
answered to the question of the minimum subsistence
level on the basis of an international competition for
one-to-two-story house typologies financed by the UN,
and demonstrated the possibility of creating a city with
collective facilities from this minimum. While both saw
personal property as the foundation of urban development, at the same time, they were tailored directly to
the economic and sociocultural capital of their residents.
It should be noted that the pilot projects mentioned
above were created amid the conflicts caused by the neo
liberal turn, and later themselves exploited for its aims:
the success of their potential for innovation became
their downfall, at least in relation to the original intention. As early as the 1980s, for example, the architectural
esthetics of the Brussels counter-projects served precisely
the purpose that they had tried to counter in 1969: the
gentrification of the inner city.10 Block 23 in Belgrade
was privatized after the Socialist Federal Republic of
67
Anne Kockelkorn
68
10
11
12
69
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
14 projects in the United States
on selected sites (out of 22
originally selected)
Type of housing:
Mainly multi-story modernist
high-rise buildings. The aim
was to attract investment capital
on the scale required to launch
a new high-technology industry.
Planning phase:
196974
Financing:
Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD)
Initiator:
George Romney, secretary
of HUD, 196973
Budget:
By the end of 1974, Operation
Breakthrough had cost the Federal
Government about US$72 million,
which is about 25% of the HUD
research and development budget
for fiscal years 197074.
Sources:
1. Roger Biles, A Mormon in
Babylon: George Romney as
Secretary of HUD, 19691973,
Michigan Historical Review, 2
(fall 2012): 6389.
2. Robert McCutcheon, Operation
Breakthrough, in: Andrew T.
Carswell (ed.), The Encyclopedia of
Housing, 2nd ed. (Thousand Oaks,
CA: Sage, 2012), 53739, online:
http://knowledge.sagepub.com/
view/housing2ed/n184.xml
(accessed 08/20/2015).
3. Report to the Congress by the
Comptroller General of the United
States: Operation Breakthrough:
Lessons Learned about Demonstrating New Technology (Washington,
DC: US Government Accountability
Office, 1976), 87 pages.
Source collection:
Susanne Schindler
70
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Summit Plaza in Jersey City,
c.4 miles east of Manhattan
Type of housing:
Tiered buildings and towers,
ranging from four to 18 stories;
153 units in the 16-story CAMCI
System Tower; 192 units in the
18-story and eight-story buildings
which were realized with the
Shelley Systems. Of these, 26%
were family-size with three or
more bedrooms.
Cost of construction:
Lump sum for the construction
of the non-residential facilities in
1973: US$2,400,000
71
Source:
Operation Breakthrough. Phase II,
Prototype Construction and Demon
stration, vol. 4 (Washington, DC:
US Office of Policy Development
and Research, Department of Housing and Urban Development,
c.1974), 194212.
Further reading:
Jersey City Gets a Break, The Jersey
Journal (December 16, 1969).
Source collection:
Susanne Schindler
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
The majority of subsidized projects
are situated in the regions of
le-de-France, Nord-Pas-de Calais,
and Rhne-Alpes
Type of housing:
Tiered housing cluster typologies
in the early 1970s (colloquially
called prolifrants), complemented
by solar houses and postmodernist
housing typologies in the late
1970s.
Program duration:
1971to date; the Plan Construction (Plan Urbanisme Construction
Architecture (PUCA) since 1998,
still operative); 197280: ralisations
exprimentales (REX)
Financing:
Ministre du Transport et de
lquipement
Main actors:
Paul Delouvrier, President of the
Plan Construction and Elctricit
de France (EdF) in 1971; Robert
Lion, Director of Construction
within the Ministre de lquipe
ment and permanent chief secre
tary of the Plan Construction
(196974)
Budget:
Allotted budget for the Plan Construction as a whole in 1971 for
a period of five years: 360 million
FF (c.US$62,350,000 in 1990).
Average subsidy per project by
REX was in the range of around
500,000 FF until 1979, and dropped
to an average of 250,000 FF in
1980.
Ownership system:
Rental social housing and/or
accession sociale (social ownership), enhanced through sub
sidized mortgages.
72
Sources:
1. Marie-Anne Belin et al., REX
(ralisations exprimentales): 400
exprimentations dans lhabitat (Paris:
ditions du Moniteur, 1981).
2. Lancement du Plan-Construction, Le Moniteur (May 29, 1971),
2328.
3. Jean-Pierre Monnet, tat de la
construction, construction de ltat,
LArchitecture daujourdhui, 174
(JulyAugust 1974): 29.
Further reading:
1. Joseph Abram and Daniel Gross,
Bilan des ralisations exprimentales
en matire de technologie nouvelle.
Plan Construction 19711975 (Paris:
Impr. centrale commerciale, 1983).
2. Anne Kockelkorn, Wuchernde
Wohnarchitektur. Die franzsischen
Prolifrants der 1970er Jahre als
staatliches Experiment, ARCH+,
203 (2011): 3741.
3. Christian Moley, Linnovation
architecturale dans la production du
logement social (Paris: Ministre
de lenvironnement et du cadre de
vie, 1979).
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Avenue Danielle Casanova, Rue
du Dr. Esquirol, Ivry-sur-Seine,
c.2 km south of inner city Paris,
connected to the city via the metro
line 7
Type of housing:
Different types of flats and maison
ettes based on a triangular geo
metry stacked one upon another to
form tiered star-shaped pyramids.
Ownership system:
Rental social housing (Danielle
Casanova); other housing projects
of the Ivry new town center
development also contain privately
owned apartments.
Sources:
1. Franoise Moiroux, La rno
vation du centre dIvry-sur-Seine
(19631988), AMC, 154 (2005):
9298.
2. My terrace, in front of my house,
over yours: Jean Hachette Complex,
Jean Renaudie, in: Aurora Fernndez
Per et al., 10 Stories of Collective
Housing: Graphical Analysis of Inspiring
Masterpieces (Vitoria-Gasteiz: a+t
architecture publishers, 2013),
42279.
3. Irne Scalbert, Ivry-sur-Seine
town centre, AA files, 23 (London:
Architectural Association, 1992),
4448.
Further reading:
1. Bndicte Chaljub, Les uvres
des architectes Jean Renaudie et
Rene Gailhoustet, 19581998.
Thorie et pratique, unpublished
Diss. (Paris: Universit Paris 8,
Vincennes-Saint-Denis, 2007).
2. Irne Scalbert, A Right to Difference:
The Architecture of Jean Renaudie
(London: Architectural Association,
2004).
Architect:
Jean Renaudie in collaboration
with Rene Gailhoustet
73
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
New Belgrade, left bank of the
River Sava opposite the historic
city center
Type of housing:
Four 20-story apartment highrises with vertical and horizontal
faade partitions, two longitudinal
ten-story condominiums (c.280
meters) and a meandering typology,
fragmented into horseshoe-shaped
segments. The towers were conceived with an open plan of approx.
60-m2 apartments with circular
communication around the basic
core (living and dining area),
adaptable to changing needs.
Ownership system:
Societal property provided by
the State Secretariat of National
Defense to army personnel, distributed and managed following
the modes of Yugoslavian selfmanagement; privatized in 1992.
Architect:
Boidar Jankovi, Branislav
Karadi, Aleksandar Stjepanovi
(OSNOVA) and IMS
Sources:
Block 23, in: Maroje Mrdulja
and Vladimir Kuli (eds), Unfinished
Modernisations: Between Utopia
and Pragmatism (Zagreb: Croatian
Architects Association, 2012),
30203.
Further reading:
1. Ivan Kucina and Milica Topalovi,
From Planned to Unplanned City:
New Belgrades Transformations,
in: M. Mrdulja and V. Kuli (eds),
Unfinished Modernisations (2012),
15673.
2. Brigitte Le Normand, The House
That Socialism Built: Reform, Consumption and Inequality in Postwar
Yugoslavia, in: Paulina Bren and
Mary Neuburger (eds), Communism
Unwrapped: Consumption in Cold War
Eastern Europe (Oxford: Tavistock
Publications, 2012), 35173.
3. Dubravka Sekuli, Glotz Nicht so
Romantisch! On Extralegal Space in
Belgrade (Maastricht: Jan van Eyck
Academie and Early Works, 2012).
Source collection:
Dubravka Sekuli and
Banu iek Tl
Contractor:
GP Ratko Mitrovi, a societally
owned construction company
74
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Between Rua Boavista and Lapa
metro station (in operation since
2002), parish of Ceidofeita, c.2 km
north of the historic city center
Scale:
Forty dwellings completed in
1977; completion of 130 units
in 2006
Type of housing:
Maisonette housing in comb structure referring to the Portuguese
inner city ilha (island); maisonette
at ground-level 80 m2; upper
maisonette 74 m2
Impact:
In terms of scale, morphological
unity, unit size, and modernist
iconography the project is one of
the grandest housing schemes
of the SAAL program in the 1970s.
Since completion of the second
phase in 200506, it functions
as a successful inner-city housing
development.
Sources:
1. Joo Arriscado Nunes and Nuno
Serra, Decent Housing for the
People: Urban Movements and
Emancipation in Portugal, South
European Society and Politics, 9, 2
(2004): 4676.
2. Wilfried Wang, Boua Residents
Association Housing: Porto, Portugal,
197377, Architecture and Urbanism,
12, 123 (1980): 5764.
3. Wilfried Wang, Boua and Public
Housing at the Beginning of the
21st Century, in: Brigitte Fleck
et al., Boua Residents Association
Housing: Porto 197277, 200506
(Tbingen: Ernst Wasmuth Verlag,
2008), 6573.
Further reading:
1. Ensemble dhabitations SAAL,
Boua, Porto 197377, Architecture
dAujourdhui, 211 (October 1980):
4651.
2. Joo Dias, After Dictatorship.
As Operaes SAAL, documentary
movie (Portugal, 2007).
Architect:
lvaro Siza
75
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
8 km north of Lima city center
close to the Pan-American
Highway
Type of housing:
High-density, low-rise development with courtyard houses
for low-income families (2,800
5,800 PEH per month, approx.
US$65US$134 in 1970), which
is adaptable over time to accommodate the changing needs of
users. The built-up area ranges
from between 60 m2 and 120 m2.
Cost of construction:
c.78,000c.164,000 Sol (PEH)
(c.US$1,800c.US$3,800), 15
20% of which is used for land and
services
Ownership system:
Owner-occupied houses purchased
by families via low-interest loans
with repayment periods of up to
20 years, calculated at 2025% of
monthly income.
Mortgage credits:
Savings & Loans Associations
in Peru
76
Sources:
1. Fernando Garca-Huidobro et al.,
Time Builds! The Experimental Hous
ing Project (PREVI), Lima: genesis and
outcome (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili,
2008).
2. Previ/Lima: Low Cost Housing
Project, Architectural Design, 40
(April 1970), 187205.
3. Tomeu Ramis, What is Previ?,
Digital Architectural Papers, 9
(April 7, 2012), online: http://
www.architecturalpapers.ch/index.
php?ID=91 (accessed 07/22/15).
4. The UN Experimental Housing
Project, Lima, Peru (PREVI), online: http://www.grahamfoundation.
org/grantees/4838-the-unexperimental-housing-project-limaperu-previ (accessed 07/22/15).
Source collection:
Banu iek Tl
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Barra da Tijuca, c.22 km east of
Copacabana beach
Type of housing:
Eight 18-story tower blocks,
c.100 single-family houses
Ownership system:
Private ownership of dwellings,
collective facilities included
Source:
Eckhart Ribbeck, Leben wie im
Club Mediterrane. Nova Ipanema
in Barra da Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro,
Brasilien, in: Tilman Harlander
et al. (eds), Soziale Mischung in der
Stadt: Case Studies Wohnungspolitik
in Europa Historische Analyse
(Stuttgart: Krmer, 2012), 13441.
Further reading:
1. Michael Janoschka and Alex
Borsdorf, Condominios fechados and
barrios privados: The rise of private
residential neighbourhoods in
Latin America, in: Georg Glasze
et al. (eds), Private Cities: Global
and Local Perspectives (London/New
York: Routledge, 2006), 92108.
2. Eckhart Ribbeck and Miki Tahara,
Vom Appartementhaus zum
Luxusghetto, Stadtbauwelt, 134
(1997): 138089.
77
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Brussels city center
Type of housing:
Pre-modernist urban housing
typologies for lower middle-class
inhabitants
Main dates:
196579: Directorship of Robert
Delevoy at the cole Nationale
Suprieure dArchitecture et
des Arts Visuels de La Cambre;
196979 lectureship of Maurice
Culot at La Cambre
Cross-financing:
Ministry of National Education via
salaries and atelier infrastructure
Sources:
1. Robert-L. Delevoy et al.,
La Cambre, 19281978 (Bruxelles:
Editions des Archives dArchitec
ture Moderne, 1979).
2. Isabelle Doucet, Counter-projects
and the postmodern user, in: Kenny
Cupers (ed.), Use Matters: An Altern
ative History of Architecture (Abingdon,
Oxon/New York: Routledge, 2013),
23347.
3. Nan Ellin, Postmodern Urbanism
(New York, 1999/1996), 2934.
Further reading:
Andr Barey (ed.), Dclaration de
Bruxelles: propos sur la reconstruction
de la ville Europenne (Brussels:
ditions des AAM, 1980).
Project initiators:
Bateau dlie, a group of students
and teachers at La Cambre
around Maurice Culot; Atelier de
Recherche et dAction Urbaines
(ARAU), an urban activist group;
Archives dArchitecture Moderne
(AAM), a non-profit organization
co-founded by Maurice Culot
and Robert Delevoy.
78
2.
Postmodernist
Revisions
198189
In 1980, the Presence of the Past, the first Architecture
Biennale in Venice, marked the beginning of the short
decade of architectural post-modernity, which lasted
until the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was also the decade of
neoliberal reforms under Margaret Thatcher (197990),
Ronald Reagan (198189), and Helmut Kohl (198298),
who pressed ahead with the privatization of public enter
prises and assets and deregulation of the markets. As far
as housing was concerned, one of the fundamental global
principles of this decade was to mobilize the income and
savings of the middle class for a form of urban development that was increasingly based on the laws of the
private real estate market. But this took place in industrialized nations in completely different ways, both
economically and with regard to urban planning: while
Western Europe and the United States gradually rediscovered the inner city as a residential location for cosmo
politan elites, and Great Britain provided a model by
initiating the first big drive toward privatization of p
ublic
housing with the Right to Buy program, the E
astern
Bloc states continued to produce prefab housing for
state-owned rental accommodation to offset the still-
to-be remedied housing shortage of the postwar era. In
Singapore, in contrast, extremely dense public housing
79
80
81
82
Antigone, view of the central axis from the place du Nombre dor
eastwards towards the River Lez, 2008
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
The project is adjacent to the historic city center of Montpellier;
articulated by the shopping mall
called Polygone, it extends for
1 km eastwards to the banks of
the River Lez.
Type of housing:
The urban project consists of the
1 km-long axis with a sequence
of public squares of different size
and shape; the axis and the blocks
adjacent to it are lined by fouror seven-story perimeter block
buildings which constitute either
secondary squares or courtyards.
Planning and
construction phases:
Planning 197981,
construction 19822000
Commissioner:
Town council of Montpellier
presided over by socialist Mayor
Georges Frches (19792004)
Architect:
Ricardo BofillTaller de Arquitectura for the site master
planthe place du Nombre dor,
the Echelles de la Ville building,
and renovation of the banks
of the River Lez
Construction system:
Bton architectonique, that
is, the further development of
prefabricated concrete panels to
compose neoclassical building
faades; in the case of Antigone,
the architects combined factory
prefabrication and panels
shuttered on site.
Ownership system:
Subsidized and non-subsidized
housing
83
Sources:
1. Antigone by Ricardo Bofill
Taller de Arquitectura, online:
http://www.ricardobofill.com/
EN/672/PROJECTS/La-PlaceDu-Nombre-Dor-html
(accessed 08/26/2015).
2. Bartomeu Cruells, Ricardo Bofill:
Works and Projects (Barcelona:
Gilli, 1992), 3643, 23437.
3. Project summary on Housing
Prototypes.Org, online: http://
www.housingprototypes.org/project?
File_No=FRA010 (accessed
08/26/2015).
4. Yukio Futagawa (ed.), Ricardo
Bofill. Taller de Arquitectura
(New York: Rizzoli, 1985), 15767.
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Tegel, southern Tiergartenviertel,
southern Friedrichstadt,
Luisenstadt, Kreuzberg SO 36
Type of housing:
Reinvention or reconstruction
of perimeter block housing
typologies
Financing:
Berlin Senate via the
Bauausstellung Berlin mbH
Clients: Bauausstellung Berlin
mbH, public and private
housing companies
Budget:
Public budget allocated from
the Berlin Senate to the IBA:
85 million DM; total sum
invested in construction work:
approx. 3.4 billion DM
Source:
Wolfgang Nagel, Preface, in:
Internationale Bauausstellung (ed.),
1987: Projektbersicht, 3rd edition
(Berlin: Senatsverwaltung fr
Bau- und Wohnungswesen; STERN,
Gesellschaft der behutsamen
Stadterneuerung mbH, 1991), 3;
statistics on units, ibid., 40001.
Further reading:
1. Harald Bodenschatz and Cordelia
Polinna, Learning from IBA Die IBA
1987 in Berlin (Berlin: Senatsverwaltung fur Stadtentwicklung,
2010), online: http://www.stadtentwicklung.berlin.de/staedtebau/
baukultur/iba/download/Learning
_from_IBA.pdf (accessed 07/15/
2015).
2. Lore Ditzenet et al. (eds.), Inter
national Building Exhibition Berlin
1987 (Tokyo: A+U Publishing Co,
1987).
3. Gnter Schlusche, Die Internation
ale Bauausstellung Berlin. Eine Bilanz
(Berlin: TU, University Bibliothek,
1997).
84
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Kohlfurter Strae, Admiralstrae,
Fraenkelufer, Erkelenzdamm in
Kreuzberg
Type of housing:
Perimeter block collective
housing with maisonettes in
the new constructions
Cost of constuction:
For new constructions by Hinrich
and Inken Baller: 30.1 million DM
Ownership system:
According to the 1. Frderungs
weg of Land Berlin, subsidized
Sozialmiete (housing rent) was
guaranteed for 15 years, followed
by further supplementary funding
after that deadline. GSW still
owns the new constructions by
Hinrich and Inken Baller; other
urban renewal buildings in
Block 70, initially owned by the
housing association, were sold on
the open market in the 2000s.
Architect:
Baller/Baller, Pasch, GKK, Archi
tektengruppe Wassertorplatz,
client representatives
85
Source:
Internationale Bauausstellung (ed.),
1987: Projektbersicht, 3rd edition
(Berlin: Senatsverwaltung fr Bauund Wohnungswesen; STERN,
Gesellschaft der behutsamen Stadt
erneuerung mbH, 1991), 27879.
Further reading:
Simone Bogner, Block 70: Eckhaus,
Torhuser, Brandwandbebauung,
in: Institut fr Stadt und Regional
planung der Technischen Universitt
Berlin (ed.), Forschungsinitiative IBA
87, online: http://f-iba.de/block70-eckhaus-torhaeuser-brandwandbebauung (accessed 07/15/2015).
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Prosveshcheniya Avenue 87,
c.18 km northeast of Leningrad
city center
86
Source:
Citywalls, a collectively con
stituted website dedicated to the
architecture of St. Petersburg
online: http://www.citywalls.ru/
house15165.html (accessed
08/26/2015).
Further reading:
1. John A. A. Sillince (ed.), Housing
Policies in Eastern Europe and the
Soviet Union (Abingdon, Oxon:
Routledge, 1990).
2. Raymond J. Struyk (ed.), Economic
Restructuring of the Former Soviet Bloc
(Washington, DC: Urban Institute
Press, 1996).
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
pr. Abaja, ul. Ulugbeka
Impact:
The third generation of prototypes (see Meuser 2015) launched
in the middle of the decade allowed for greater adaptability to
existing contexts and new architectural elements such as juts and
recesses or arched windows in
the building facades. Yet many of
these new features are not really
new; impressive and inventive
contextual adaptations of Soviet
modernity had taken place in the
USSR since the 1950s.
87
Source:
Philipp Meuser, Ten Parameters
for a Typology of Mass Housing,
in: Philipp Meuser and Dimitrij
Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet
Mass Housing: Prefabrication in
the USSR 19551991 (Berlin:
DOM publishers, 2015), 10162.
Further reading:
1. Richard Anderson, Russia: Modern
Architectures in History (London: Re
aktion Books, 2015, forthcoming).
2. Philipp Meuser, Die sthetik der
Platte. Wohnungsbau in der Sowjetunion zwischen Stalin und Glasnost
(Berlin: DOM publishers, 2015).
3. Architekturzentrum Wien Az W
(ed.), Soviet Modernism 19551991:
Unknown History (Zurich: Park
Books, 2012).
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
2-22 Siu Hong Road, Tuen Mun
district, about 32 km west of
Kowloon Peninsula, located next
to two hospitals and the Hong
Kong MTR Light Rail terminus
Completion Date: First phase:
1982; second phase 1985
Type of housing:
High-rise housing for middle-class
families with 4362 m per unit
Ownership system:
The HOS of the Hong Kong Housing Committee, introduced in
1976, aimed to gain space for tenants on the housing waiting list.
Citizens below a certain income
ceiling are able to purchase the
properties at lower than market
price. An instant success, the
HOS attained 10% of the total
public housing sector in Hong
Kong until 1986. Yet the majority
of the 2.4 million people covered
by the Housing and Development
Board (HDB)-supply still lived
in rented apartments (total population: 5.4 million in 1986).
Sources:
1. Manuel Castells et al., Economic
Development and Housing Policy in
the Asian Pacific Rim: A Comparative
Study of Hong Kong, Singapore,
And Shenzhen Special Economic Zone
(Berkeley, CA: Institute of Urban
and Regional Development, University of California, 1988), 10, online:
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/
1fh7t14f (accessed 07/24/2015).
2. Hong Kong Housing Authority
official website, online: https://
www.housingauthority.gov.hk/
en/public-housing/index.html
(accessed 7/27/2015).
3. Midland Realty, online: http://
proptx.midland.com.hk/cs/detail_
layer.jsp?cs=y&stockId=NT169512
(accessed 07/16/2015).
4. Siu Hong Court, Wikipedia,
online: https://zh.wikipedia.org/
wiki/ (accessed 07/27/2015).
Source collection:
Yan Liang
88
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Block 207, Bukit Batok Street 21,
Bukit Batok New Town, c.16 km
west of downtown Singapore
or 45 mins by public transport
Type of housing:
High-rise housing of 72 threeroom apartments (73 m2) and
48 four-room apartments (104 m2)
Ownership system:
Individually owned flats with
99-year leases, according to the
regular HDB tenure contract.
Source:
This data was collected in the
context of the research project
Cultures of Climatisation in South
east Asia, in: Sascha Roesler (ed.),
Natural Ventilation, Revisited.
Pioneering a New Climatisation Culture
(Singapore: ETH-Future Cities
Laboratory, September 2015).
Further reading:
1. Official homepage of the HDB,
online: http://www.hdb.gov.sg
(accessed 08/15/2015).
2. Online forum for the sale of
HDB flats, online: www.h88.com.sg
(accessed 08/15/2015).
3. Private online archive of HDB
flat typologies, online: http://www.
teoalida.com (accessed 08/15/2015).
4. Aline K. Wong and Stephen H. K.
Yeh (eds), Housing a Nation: 25 Years
of Public Housing in Singapore (Singapore: Maruzen Asia for the Housing
& Development Board, 1985).
Source collection:
Ani Vihervaara
89
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Seaside, Florida, USA
Type of housing:
Fine-grained mix of housing
types labeled as traditional
neighborhood planning
Ownership system:
Private
Sources:
1. Andrs Duany and Elizabeth
Plater-Zyberk, The town of Seaside, The Princeton Journal, Thematic
Studies in Architecture, Landscape,
2 (1985): 4450.
2. William Lennertz, Town Making
Fundamentals, in: Andrs Duany
and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberck (eds),
Towns and Town-Making Principles
(New York: Rizzoli, 2006), 2124.
3. Jennifer Parker, Seaside, about
the community and the building of
the Seaside Research Portal, online:
https://seaside.library.nd.edu/essays/
the-community-and-building-theportal (accessed 07/22/2015).
4. Laurie Volk and Todd Zimmerman,
Seasides Influence on New Housing, in: Andrs Duany et al., Views
of Seaside: Commentaries and Observations on a City of Ideas (New York:
Rizzoli, 2008) 15760.
Further reading:
Stphane Degoutin, Prisonniers
volontaires du rve amricain (Paris:
ditions de la Villette, 2006).
90
3.
New States
and Networks
19892004
The collapse of the Eastern Bloc from 1989 caused
massive political upheavals that concretely led to huge
migrant movements after the dissolution of the Soviet
Union from 1991,1 and indirectly resulted in the Yugoslav
Wars. New state structures arose not just in Eastern
Europe and Asia; the way existing governments saw
themselves changed in the West, too. In Great Britain
and the United States, leftist parties that consolidated
the neoliberal reforms of the 1980s gave the deregulated
financial market precedence over industrial production.
In all post-communist countries and in China, the privat
ization of existing public housing was a major step
towards stabilizing new systems of government, a kind
of shock absorber that conveyed economic and political
security in uncertain times.2 In the other BRICS nations
Brazil, India, and South Africatoo, private ownership
prevailed as the dominant housing model, and at the
start of the 2000s, France, Hong Kong, Singapore, and
Japan followed the example of the United States by
trading both office buildings and housing on the stock
market through real estate investment trusts.
These processes made the status of housing as a
product the global norm, and thus produced new conventions with regard to the question of how housing
91
92
for the least-loved populations on this planet; their presence constituted a risk to the national security of industrial nations and their entry into these countries had to
be prevented at any cost.10 The new political dimension
to this extra-national governance necessitated new forms
of esthetic representation, of which the paper-tube constructions for a refugee camp in Rwanda by Shigeru Ban
architects, later the winner of the Pritzker Prize, is an
example. The intelligent design of the shelter helped
remedy an acute humanitarian emergency; however,
it also legitimated the UNHCRs methods of targeted
cultural and public relations work. It illustrated how
housing, particularly at the critical point of statelessness, remains integrated in a globalized network of
territorial and power relationships. [ p. 95]
Anne Kockelkorn
Emergency Housing
The power relationships of the housing system extend
beyond sociocultural norms and economic processes;
their direct impacts on the basic biological functions of
the human body are nowhere more obvious than in the
case of the refugee shelter. The global upheavals and
violent conflicts of the 1990s have conferred greater
political importance to this section of the housing system,
which has grown in parallel with the scope of NGOs
and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees
(UNHCR). By the end of the decade, 22.23 million people
were considered as being of concern to the UNHCR as
refugees, asylum seekers, or returnees to their original
place of residence. In this decade, the globalized refugee
policy underwent a decisive change; moving away from
offering asylum abroad, they now moved toward providing humanitarian engagement in the countries of
origin.9 While the UNHCR explained in 2000 how and
why local on-site administration had gained greater
importance, a decade later, urban researchers including
Eyal Weizman and Michael Agier described this new
humanitarianism as an impersonal form of management
93
10
94
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
4.2 km south of Byumba,
northern Rwanda
Scale:
50 dwellings
Type of housing:
Shelters of approx. 9 m2
Ownership system:
Refugee shelters provided by
the UNHCR
Budget:
Unkown, for the shelters from
1999. Comprehensive needs of
the UNHCR for all five Rwandan
refugee camps in 2015 estimated
at US$42.2 million; contributions
and pledges received by February
2015: US$2.6 million.
Sources:
1. Aspen Art Museum (ed), Shigeru
Ban: Humanitarian Architecture
(New York: DAP Distributed Art
Publishers, 2014), 11121.
2. UNHCR, Factsheet Rwanda,
(Geneva: UNHCR, Febuary 2015),
online: http://www.unhcr.org/524d
86a69.html (accessed 07/15/2015).
Further reading:
Eyal Weizman, The Least of
All Possible Evils: Humanitarian
Violence from Arendt to Gaza
(London: Verso, 2012), 5262.
95
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Hengfeng Road (east),
New Shanghai Railway Station
(northeast), Suzhou River (south),
Putuo District, Shanghai
Type of housing:
High-rise apartments ranging
from 75.31 m2 to 172.66 m2
per unit
Ownership system:
Individually owned by uppermiddle class households with
a 70-year lease under Chinas
current property legislation.
Cost of construction:
around 6.66 billion (0.95 billion
at rate of 7.1)
Developer:
Shanghai COSCO Liangwan
Property Development Co. Ltd
Sources:
1. East China Architecture
Design and Research Institute,
The Creation of Brilliant City,
Shanghai, China 20022005,
World Architecture, 3 (2006): 9498.
2. Florian Urban, Tower and Slab:
Histories of global mass housing
(Abingdon, Oxon/New York:
Routledge, 2012), 14568.
3. Shanghai COSCO Brilliant
City Copywriting, MBAlib, online
(Chinese): http://doc.mbalib.com/
view/47153a35b754ef1b7c2592e7c
f68e802.html (accessed 07/19/2015).
4. Sina Housing, online:
http://data.house.sina.com.cn/
sh4211/xinxi/?wt_source=data9_
dh2_lpxx (accessed 07/19/2015).
Further reading:
Fulong Wu: Housing and the State
in China, in: Susan J. Smith, Inter
national Encyclopedia of Housing and
Home (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2012),
32329.
Architect:
East China Architecture
Design and Research Institute
Landscape design:
EDAW
Contractor:
COSCO Construction Group
96
Faade, ground-floor plan, and typical floor plan of DLF Hamilton Court,
Gurgaon, India, c.2005
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
DLF City, Phase V, Sector 26A,
Gurgaon, Haryana
Type of housing:
According to Manohar (2006) DLF
Hamilton Court, a 24-story luxury
high-rise building, is the first
residential building designed by
Hafeez Contractor for DLF. The
total built-up area is 74,500 sq ft,
containing 260 apartments,
with a double-story basement for
parking. In reply to his critics
Hafeez describes his architectural
eclecticism as simply a response
to the aspirations of the consumer
and the market context.
Ownership system:
Private
97
Sources:
1. DLF Hamilton court on Emporis.
com, online: http://www.emporis.
com/buildings/130270/dlf-hamilton-court-gurgaon-india (accessed
08/29/2015).
2. Homepage of DLF, online: http://
www.dlf.in/dlf/wcm/connect/dlfcorporate/home/about-us/overview
(accessed 08/29/2015).
3. Homepage of Architect Hafeez
Contractor, online: http://www.
hafeezcontractor.com (accessed
08/29/2015).
4. Rohan Kalyan, Fragmentation
by Design. Architecture, Finance and
Identity, Grey Room, 44 (Summer
2011): 2653.
5. Prathima Manohar, Architect
Hafeez Contractor: Selected Works
19822006 (Mumbai: Spenta
Multimedia, 2006), 7, 13437.
6. Reinhold Martin and Kadambari
Baxi, Multi-National City: Architecture
Itineraries (New York: Actar, 2007),
11315, size of developments, 113.
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
In 2003, the South African
provinces with the highest
percentage of enclosed neighborhoods and security estates were
Gauteng, Western Cape, and
Limpopo Province, the first two
being also the most urbanized
provinces of South Africa. Both
types of gated communities
occur most frequently in the
peripheral and inner suburbs of
cities.
Scale:
The CSIR survey cited below
reports about 500 illegal road
closures in Johannesburg in 2003.
(p. 26); according to Jrgens and
Gnad (2002), the Eastern Metropolitan Local Council reported
that more than 360 roads were
subject to blocks in 2000 (p. 341).
Security Villages are not included
in that count.
Expansion outline:
The first plots of land protected
by a walled perimeter were on sale
in the mid-1980s. The demand
for security villages increased
significantly after the democratic
elections in 1994.
Origin:
In 2003, South Africa had the
fourth highest income-disparity
coefficient in the world (0.58).
The inequality in the distribution
of wealth is generally considered
to be the main reason for high
levels of crime and the reactive
responses to it, such as the gated
community.
Security villages:
New private developments
are mainly provided by a single
developer. Roads are private,
maintained usually by a private
contractor. Security villages
include also residential golf
estates, residential town-house
complexes, secure office parks,
and high-rise apartment blocks.
98
Sources:
1. Karina Landman et al., A National
Survey of Gated communities in South
Africa (Pretoria: CSIR Building and
Construction Technology, 2003),
2, 67, 13, 16, 23, 26, online: http://
www.csir.co.za/Built_environment/
Planning_support_systems/gatedcomsa/docs/Nat_survey_gated_
com_SA.pdf (accessed 08/29/2015).
2. Ulrich Jrgens and Martin Gnad,
Gated communities in South Africa:
Experiences from Johannesburg,
Environment and Planning B: Planning
and Design, 29 (2002): 33753, here
34041.
Further reading:
Patrick Bond, Elite Transition: From
Apartheid to Neoliberalism in South
Africa (London: Pluto Press, 2000).
View from villa portico to its opposite across the street, 2007
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Istrinsky Raion, Derevnia Voronino
(Istra region, Voronino village),
c.50 km west of Moscow.
Scale:
c.120 villas
Ownership system:
Individually owned private
property
Completion date:
2004
General contractor:
PSO-13 (Proektno-Stroitelnoe
Obedinenie-13/Design Construction Bureau-13), a company special
ized in financing and building
gated communities around Moscow.
Sources:
1. Contractor PSO, online:
http://www.pso13.ru (accessed
07/15/2015).
2. Alexy Muratov, Country Village
Residence Monolith, Project Russia,
38 (September 15, 2005).
3. Monolith Residence, online:
http://archi.ru/projects/world/
735/zagorodnyi-poselok-rezidenciimonolit (accessed 07/15/2015).
Further reading:
Sebastian Lentz, More gates, less
community? Guarded housing
in Russia, in: George Glasze et al.,
Private Cities. Global and local
perspectives (London/New York:
Routledge, 2006), 20621.
Architect:
Mikhail Belov
Source indicator:
Alla Vronskaya
99
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Block 330, Sembawang Close,
Sembawang, c.25 km north
of downtown Singapore and
one hour by public transport.
Type of housing:
High-rise four-room (100 m2)
or five-room apartments
(115120 m2)
Ownership system:
Individually owned flats with
a 99-year lease according to the
regular HDB tenure contract.
Source:
Data collected as part of the research
project: Cultures of Climatisation
in Southeast Asia, in: Sascha
Roesler (ed.), Natural Ventilation,
Revisited: Pioneering a New Climatisa
tion Culture (Singapore: ETH Future
Cities Laboratory, September 2015).
Further reading:
1. Forum for the sale of HDB flats,
online: http://www.h88.com.sg
(accessed 08/15/2015).
2. Official homepage of HDB,
online: http://www.hdb.gov.sg
(accessed 08/15/2015).
3. Private archive of HDB flat typo
logies, online: http://www.teoalida.
com (accessed 08/15/2015).
4. Aline Kan Wong and Stephen
Hua Kuo Yeh (eds), Housing a Nation:
25 Years of Public Housing in Singapore
(Singapore: Maruzen Asia for the
Housing & Development Board,
1985).
Source collection:
Ani Vihervaara
100
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
2 km north of Mehrabad Inter
national Airport
Scale:
15,593 residential units over an
area of 2,208,570 m2, housing
over 70,000 residents
Type of housing:
Large-scale housing blocks and
apartment slabs (up to 15 stories),
constructed in three phases. Phase I
and phase III are single-floor;
phase II is built mostly in duplex,
with hall and kitchen on the first
floor and other rooms on the upper
floor. In all three phases, there are
one-, two-, three-, and four-room
apartments, ranging from 50 m2
to 240 m2.
Impact:
Ekbatan was the largest housing
project in Asia in the 1970s.
Today it is still the largest housing
project in Tehran, providing
schools, shopping, and leisure
facilities, as well as green public
spaces atypical for Tehran.
Ownership system:
Private and rental, all administered by ERDC
Architect, phase I:
Rahman Golzar and Jordan
Gruzen (now IBI Group, Gruzen
Samton, USA)
Contractor, phase I:
DIC, Underhill (USA), Starrett
and Eken S.A. (CH); French,
German, and Italian contractors
and engineers
Sources:
1. Ekbatan Renovation and Development Company, online: http://www.
ekbatan.ir/en (accessed 04/08/2015).
2. IBI Group, Gruzen Samton,
online: http://gruzensamton.com
(accessed 08/04/2015).
3. IranUS Claims Tribunal, DIC of
Delaware et al. v. Tehran Redevelopment
Corp., YCA 1986, online:
http://tldb.uni-koeln.de/php/pub_
show_document.php?page=pub_
show_document.php&pubdocid=
230300&pubwithtoc=ja&pubwith
meta=ja&pubmarkid=907000
(accessed 04/08/2015).
Further reading:
1. Ali Javan Forouzande and Ghasem
Motallebi, The role of open spaces in
neighborhood attachment (case study
on Ekbatan town in Tehran Metro
polis), International Journal of Archi
tecture and Urban Development, 2, 1
(2012): 1120.
2. Wouter Vanstiphout, The Saddest
City in the World, The New Town
(March 2, 2006), online: http://www.
thenewtown.nl/article.php?id_article=71 (accessed 08/04/2015).
Source collection:
Vesta Nele Zareh
101
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
United States
(nationwide program)
Type of housing:
Design based on the principles
of New Urbanism and Oscar
Newmans defensible space theory,
commonly labeled traditional
neighborhood patterns: mixeduse and dense historicist lowrise architectural morphologies,
street-facing housing, shopping,
and parks accessible via footpaths
and sidewalks.
Program Duration:
19932010, launched in the same
year as formation of the Congress
for New Urbanism (CNU) and
publication of the Charter for
New Urbanism.
Financing:
United States Department of
Housing and Urban Development
(HUD), seeking to promote mixedfinance partnerships.
Budget:
US$6.7 billion for all HOPE VI
grant schemes between 1993 and
2010; approx. US$6.2 billion in
revitalization grants.
Client:
Housing organizations and local
government officials in tandem
with private contractors
Main initiator:
Henri Cisneros, tenth Secretary
of the HUD, 199397 (Clinton
administration)
Sources:
1. HUD, About HOPE VI, online:
http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/
HUD?src=/program_offices/public_indian_housing/programs/ph/
hope6/about (accessed 07/29/2015).
2. HUD Revitalization Grants,
online: http://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/program_offices/
public_indian_housing/programs/
ph/hope6/grants/revitalization
(accessed 07/29/2015).
Further reading:
1. Henry G. Cisneros and Lora
Engdahl, From Despair to Hope: Hope
VI and the New Promise of Public Hous
ing in Americas Cities (Washington:
Brookings Institution, 2009).
2. Reinhold Martin, Jacob Moore
and Susanne Schindler (eds.), The Art
of Inequality: Architecture, Housing,
and Real Estate. A Provisional Report
(New York: The Temple Hoyne Buell
Center for the Study of American
Architecture, 2015).
Source collection:
Susanne Schindler
102
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Park DuValle neighborhood,
4.5 km southwest of downtown
Louisville, Kentucky
Type of housing:
Town houses and apartments
set out in a close-knit vernacular
style with porch.
Budget:
US$237 million for the whole
development; US$113.5 million
total public financing (HUD,
Housing Authority of Louisville,
State of Kentucky, and Jefferson
County and City of Louisville),
including US$20 million for
HOPE VI, allocated in 1996;
approx. US$124 million private
financing (Private mortgage
debt, homebuyer equity, program
income including land sales, and
LIHTC financing).
Ownership system:
Individually owned
Real estate value:
Median sale price in 2002:
US$143,424, close to the
upper-quartile value of homes:
US$155,633, according to the
US Census Bureau in 2003.
Sources:
1. Community Builders, Inc.,
The villages of Park DuValle,
online: http://www.thevillagesatparkduvalle.com (accessed
07/29/2015).
2. James Hanlon, Success by
design: HOPE VI, new urbanism,
and the neoliberal transformation
of public housing in the United
States, Environment and Planning A,
42, 1 (2010): 8098, here 8687.
3. Louisville Metro Housing
Authority, Park DuValle Revitalization, online: http://www.lmha1.org/
hope_vi/park_duvalle_revitalization.php (accessed 07/29/2015).
Further reading:
Oscar Newman, Creating Defensible
Space (Washington: US Department
of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Policy Development and
Research, 1996), online: http://www.
huduser.org/publications/pdf/def.
pdf (accessed 07/29/2015).
Source collection:
Susanne Schindler
103
4.
Global
Transactions
200215
The main parameters for the progressive deregulation of
the financial markets and their increasingly close interconnection with urban development via the mortgage
credit market were established at the start of the 2000s,
at least in the United States. In the decade to come, the
consequences of this policy gradually took effect. In
the USA, the combination of high-risk financial trans
actions and precarious loans led to the banking crisis of
2008a crisis that destroyed several trillions of dollars
of wealth and millions of jobs, expropriated millions of
homeowners, and unleashed a global recession. The b
asic
principle, according to which speculation with high-risk
financial products disconnects itself from territorial
processes while at the same time having an ever-
increasing influence on them, is now not just characteristic of the United States, even though it provides the
most egregious example. The principle is also evident at
work in processes such as the sale of state housing in
Germany, or the construction of new Chinese cities in
African countries. At the same time, deregulation should
not be confused with the absence of state intervention
in the market; indeed, it is made possible in the first
place by state institutions that, by introducing new
laws, naturalize the premises of economic growth on
105
106
This will grow within the next years: between 2014 and
2020, according to the National New-Type Urbanization
Plan, one hundred million rural migrants will receive
urban citizen rights and be permanently installed in new
cities for an estimated cost of US$6.8 trillion.9 [ p. 113]
Technical Assistance
The last section of this Atlas presents large-scale transnational housing projects in Africa that are emblematic
of the intercontinental trade in knowledge, loans, and
building commissions. They are the Kilamba Kiaxi
(Kilamba New City), built by Chinese banks and companies in the south of Angolas capital Luanda, and the
housing program in Ethiopias capital Addis Ababa initiated by the local authorities and the German Technical
Cooperation (GTZ). These examples render the character
of the territorial commodities and their contrast to
housing conceived and lived as a social space extremely
apparent; the disproportionality and nakedness of the
emerging urban landscapes make tangible the alter
ations within the logical sequence of the emergence
and succession of territorialization and reterritorial
izations.10 To produce these housing commodities, the
donor countries sell their know-how to the recipient
nations which in exchange receive an urban product
that, although based on expert knowledge, makes use
of this expertise only in relation to the absolute control
of the processes. Thus, failing to respond in the least to
the context, implementation is without any regard to
existing local conditions. The so-called Angola Model,
which is produced only within Chinese cycles of commissioning and capitaleven on siteis now a standard
term in the African urban discourse.11
The dimensions here are large-scale: for the 20,000
apartments of Phase I in Kilamba, US$3.5 billion were
given to Chinese banks and companies by the Angolan
state; for the 170,000 apartments in Addis Ababa, the
Ethiopian government invested the equivalent of around
136 million up to 2010, parts of which were paid to
GTZ International Services (GTZ IS)the operational
department of GTZfor planning and construction of
the first project phase, and to other local collaborating
firms involved in both initial and ongoing implementation. The complete abstraction from context, both with
regard to esthetics and urban planning, which is evident
even in photographic depictions of these projects, results
107
108
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Juan Francisco Gonzlez 9461,
Lo Espejo, c.10 km southwest of
Santiago city center
Type of housing:
Duplex house with a ground-floor
unit and a two-story maisonette,
both are expandable via the
backyard or patio; initial area:
3637 m, final area: 6068 m.
Ownership system:
Private ownership of individual
households; eligibility for mortgages was determined according
to the amount of individual
savings.
Sources:
1. Conjunto Lo Espejo, online:
http://www.scielo.cl/pdf/arq/n69/
art04.pdf (accessed 07/22/15).
2. Lo Espejo, online: http://
divisare.com/projects/280780ELEMENTAL-Alejandro-AravenaLo-Espejo (accessed 07/22/15).
3. Lo Espejo, online: http://www.
elementalchile.cl/proyecto/loespejo (accessed 07/22/15).
4. Un sueo por cumplir, online:
http://www.territoriochile.cl/1516/
article-78069.html (accessed
07/22/15).
Source collection:
Banu iek Tl
Cost of construction:
11 Unidad de Fomento (UF) per m2
(US$488 per m2)
109
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Near the sea, West Charlotte
County, Florida
Type of housing:
Single-family houses and villas
arranged around a circular
street pattern
Ownership system:
Projected as a site of individually
owned houses, foreclosed units
are now owned by banks
Sources:
1. City Data Forum Blog, Tough
Times for Rotunda West, Anyone
Live There?, online: http://www.citydata.com/forum/florida/339295tough-times-rotunda-west-anyonelive.html (accessed 08/04/2015).
2. Lucy M. Delgadillo, Mortgage
Default: Well-Being in the United
States, in: Susan J. Smith, Inter
national Encyclopedia of Housing and
Home (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2012),
35863, 360.
3. Homepage, the Rotonda West
Association, Inc., online: http://
www.rotondawest.org (accessed
08/04/2015).
4. Rotonda West foreclosures,
online: http://www.realtytrac.com/
mapsearch/fl/rotonda-west-fore
closures.html/p-7?sortbyfield=
price,dec (accessed 08/05/2015).
Source collection:
Vesta Nele Zareh
110
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Various locations in several
Brazilian cities that responded
to the program
Type of housing:
Mainly small single-family houses,
but also some multi-family homes,
apartment blocks, and apartment
slabs
Cost of construction:
The government budget for the
program was R$39 billion
(15.5 billion) in 2010 and
R$40.1 billion (17.3 billion)
in 2011
Ownership system:
The program is aimed at individual
ownership with 1.6 million homes
intended for families earning up
to three times the monthly minimum wage (R$545); one million
homes allocated to families earning
threesix times that; the remaining 400,000 homes for families
earning between six and ten times
the monthly minimum wage.
Sources:
1. Episode: Minha Casa, Minha
Vida, 2009, House Housing: An un
timely history of architecture and real
estate, online: http://house-housing.
com/#2009-Brazilian-Government-Launches-Minha-CasaMinha-VidaWorld-Bank-Endorsesthe-Program-While-Urging-aGreater-Role-for-the-Private-Sector
(accessed 08/05/2015).
2. Homepage, Minha Casa, Minha
Vida http://www.myhousemylife
brazil.com (accessed 08/05/2015).
3. Wikipedia on false claims of the
EcoHouse Group, online: https://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EcoHouse_
Group (accessed 08/05/2015).
Further reading:
P. N. Neto, et al., Housing Policy:
A Critical Analysis on the Brazilian
Experience, Comunicao e Meio
Ambiente, 5, 3 (December 2012):
6576.
Source collection:
Vesta Nele Zareh
111
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Argentinische Allee and
Wilskistrae in Zehlendorf
Type of housing:
Modernist rows of housing;
2-room apartments in the multistory buildings; 34-roomflats in the terrace houses.
Growth pattern:
Rents for apartments owned
by Gehag increased by c.30% after
renovation; the average rent increase of Deutsche Wohnen AG
in Berlin in 2014 was 4.6%. After
buying Berlin GSW, in the same
year, Deutsche Wohnen AGs net
proceeds rose by 74%, reaching
45.5 million.
Ownership system:
The terrace houses of the Wald
siedlung were sold to individuals;
the multi-story buildings designed
by Bruno Taut belong to Gehag
alias Deutsche Wohnen AG.
Sources:
1. Gewinn verdoppelt. Deutsche
Wohnen profitiert von GSW-bernahme, Handelsblatt (May 14, 2014),
online: http://www.handelsblatt.
com/unternehmen/dienstleister/
gewinn-verdoppelt-deutschewohnen-profitiert-von-gswuebernahme/9890560.html
(accessed 08/01/2015).
2. Roland Kirchbach, Wenn der
Investor klingelt, Die Zeit, 2 (2006),
online: http://www.zeit.de/2006/
02/Wohnungen_Head (accessed
07/23/2015).
3. Reiner Wild, Der Modernisierungszug stockt, Mietermagazin,
4 (2006), online: http://www.berlinermieterverein.de/magazin/online/
mm0406/040611a.htm (accessed
07/23/2015).
Further reading:
Sabina Uffer, The Uneven Development of Berlins Housing Provision,
unpublished PhD thesis (London:
LSE, 2011). See also introduction 4,
note 6.
Architects:
Bruno Taut, Hugo Hring, Otto
Salvisberg
Source collection:
Vesta Nele Zareh
112
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Kangbashi is a subdivision of the
Chinese city of Ordos, situated
c.30 km southwest of the administrative center Dongsheng.
Scale:
Planned for 300,000aiming
at one million inhabitants;
in 2013, the city had less than
70,000 permanent residents.
Impact:
Kangbashi, planned by the public
sector, is among the largest new
towns to figure prominently in
reports on Chinese ghost towns.
However, it is likely that the city
will attract inhabitants in the
near future as China continues
to undergo massive urbanization
affecting a couple of 100 million
people.
Type of housing:
The main typology is the multistory apartment tower, but
there are also villas, single- and
multi-family houses, and apartment slabs. Ordos 100, a project
of 100 villas of 1,000 m2, based
upon a master plan by Herzog
& de Meuron and Ai Weiei,
remains unrealized to date (2015).
Ownership system:
Most of the apartments are sold
by the construction companies to
private owners, mostly wealthy
Chinese. The city served as an object
of investment and speculation.
Cost of construction:
c.US$161 billion from public
funds to pay for public buildings,
facilities, and infrastructure
Sources:
1. Adrian Brown, Chinas Empty
Cities, SBS Dateline (September 10,
2013), online: https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=V3XfpYxHKCo
(accessed 08/04/2015).
2. Adam James Smith and Song
Ting, The Land of Many Palaces, documentary movie (USA/China, 2014).
3. Jody Rosen, The Colossal
Strangeness of Chinas Most Excellent Tourist City, The New York
Times magazine (March 6, 2015),
online: http://tmagazine.blogs.
nytimes.com/2015/03/06/ordoschina-tourist-city/?_r=0 (accessed
08/04/2015).
Further Reading:
Tom Miller, Chinas Urban Billion
(London: Zed Books, 2012).
Source collection:
Vesta Nele Zareh
113
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
Kilamba New City, c.30 km south
of Luanda city center
Scale (2012):
710 Blocks, 20,000 apartments,
on a 5-km2 site.
Type of housing:
Three building types (five-,
eight-, or 11-story) and three
apartment types (two, three,
or four bedrooms)
Financing:
Industrial and Commercial Bank
of China Ltd (ICBC) backed by
oil sales of the state of Angola to
Unipec, the trading subsidiary
of the Chinese oil firm Sinopec.
Contractor:
Citic Construction, a subsidiary
of the Chiness state-owned CITIC
group (China International Trust
and Investment Corp.)
Impact:
Kilamba is the biggest Chinese
new-town development in Africa.
The chinese construction sector
on the African continent is
growing rapidly. According to
the SAIA Policy Briefing No. 88
(2014), in 2012, contracts of
chinese construction companies
amounted to US$40 billion,
an increase of 45% since 2009.
Ownership system:
Individually sold apartments via
upfront payment or a mortgage
system over 1520 years. Prices
in the range of US$70,000 for a
two-bed apartment (US$350 per
month to rent) to US$180,000 for
a four-bed apartment (US$900
per month to rent). This is lower
than central Luanda, but only 20%
of Luandas population can afford
to live in Kilamba.
114
Sources:
1. Johannes Dieterich, Angolas
chinesischer Albtraum, Basler
Zeitung (November 4, 2012), online:
http://bazonline.ch/leben/reisen/
Angolas-chinesischer-Albtraum/
story/23792729 (accessed
07/15/2015).
2. Louise Redvers, Angolas
Chinese-built ghost town, BBC
News (July 3, 2012), online: http://
www.bbc.com/news/world-africa18646243 (accessed 07/15/2015).
3. South African Institute for International Affairs (SAIA), Policy
Briefing No. 88, by David Benazeraf
and Ana Alves, Oil for Housing:
Chinese-built New Towns in Angola
(Danish International Development
Agency: Global Powers and Africa
Programme, 2014), online: http://
www.saiia.org.za/policy-briefings/
oil-for-housing-chinese-built-newtowns-in-angola (accessed
08/15/2015).
DIMENSIONS
TYPE
Location:
120150 sites in Addis Ababa
Ownership system:
Individual home-ownership:
subsidized mortgages (issued
by CBE)
Budget:
The Ethiopian government
a llocates capital for housing
construction by issuing bonds to
the state-owned Commercial
Bank of Ethiopia (CBE): approx.
3 billion Birr (136 million)
as of 2010.
Type of housing:
Three to five-story housing blocks
with apartments varying from
22 m2 to 50 m2 (studio, one-bed,
two-bed, and three-bed units).
Small and medium sites are situ
ated mostly within Addis Ababa
center and past extension zones,
large sites are mainly located in
the newly developing peripheries
of the city (east, west, and south).
Sources:
1. Condominium Housing in Ethiopia:
The Integrated Housing Development
Programme (Nairobi: UN-Habitat,
2011).
2. Integrated Housing Development
Program: Management Manual
(Ethiopia: AAHDP/GTZ/
MH Engineering, 2006).
3. Technical Manual, Volume II
(Ethiopia: Addis Ababa Housing
Development Project Office
(AAHDPO)/GTZ/MH Engineering,
2005).
Further reading:
Sascha Delz, Development Co
operation at all Costs: How Global
Actors and Concepts Influence
Urban and Rural Transformation:
Case Studies from Ethiopia,
unpublished PhD thesis (Zurich:
ETH Zurich, upcoming, 2015).
Source collection:
Sascha Delz
115
Sources /
References
1. Beginnings,
196881
2. Postmodernist
Revisions, 198189
FLEXIBILITY
ALTERNATIVES
CRITICAL RECONSTRUCTION
[p. 70]
Operation Breakthrough, USA
Published in: Progressive
Architecture, 4 (1970): 126.
[p. 74]
Block 23, New Belgrade,
Yugoslavia
Photo Wolfgang Thaler (2009),
published in: V. Kuli et al.,
Modernism In-between: The Mediatory
Architectures of Socialist Yugoslavia
(2012), 139.
[p. 83]
Antigone, Montpellier, France
Photo Wolfgang Staudt,
Wikimedia, online: https://
commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/
File:Montpellier_Antigone_
(2404900471).jpg (accessed
08/26/2015).
[p. 75]
Boua Residents Association
Housing, Porto, Portugal
Photo lvaro Siza, published in:
B. Fleck and W. Wang (eds.), Boua
Residents Association Housing: Porto
197277, 200506 (2008), 26.
[p. 84]
IBA Innenstadt als Wohnort
(Inner-city as a place for living),
Berlin, Germany
Published in: Internationale
Bauausstellung (ed.), Berlin 1987:
Projekt bersicht (1991), folded
plan on rear side of back cover.
[p. 88]
Siu Hong Court, Hong Kong
Wikimedia, online: https://
zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/#/
media/File:Siu_Hong_Estate_
Pond_200908.jpg (accessed
07/22/2015) (L), Hong Kong
housing authority (HDB), online:
https://www.housingauthority.gov.
hk/hdw/content/static/file/b5/
residential/plans/siuhongcourt_
bN.pdf (accessed 08/26/2015) (R).
DEVELOPMENTS
[p. 85]
IBA Luisenstadt Block 70,
Berlin, Germany
Published in: Internationale
Bauausstellung (ed.), Berlin 1987:
Projektbersicht (1991), 279.
[p. 71]
Summit Plaza, Jersey City,
New Jersey , USA
Published in: US Department of
Housing and Urban Development,
Washington, DC, Operation
Breakthrough. Phase II, Prototype
Construction and Demonstration,
vol. 4 (c.1974), 21.
[p. 72]
Plan Construction and Ralisations
Exprimentales, France
Centre de recherche darchitecture
modulaire de Paris (CRAM) and
Plan Construction, Toulouse
La Terrasse, ralisation exprimentale de 203 logements (information
brochure), c.1971, Archives
Dpartementales du Val dOise
-1083 W6.
[p. 73]
Ensemble Danielle Casanova,
Ivry-sur-Seine, France
Photo: Fonds Vera Cardot et Pierre
Joly, Centre Georges Pompidou,
Bibliothque Kandinsky, published
in: I. Scalbert, A right to difference:
the architecture of Jean Renaudie
(2004), S. 63.
[p. 76]
Previ, Lima, Peru
Photo Peter Land, online: http://
archleague.org/2015/04/latinamerican-incrementalism-fromprevi-to-the-present/ (accessed
07/24/15).
[p. 77]
Nova Ipanema, Barra da Tijuca,
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Photo Philipp Meuser, published
in: E. Ribbeck and M. Tahara,
Vom Appartementhaus zum LuxusGhetto, in: Stadtbauwelt, 24 (1997),
1389.
CRITIQUE
[p. 78]
Counter-projects, Brussels,
Belgium
Archives dArchitecture
Moderne, Bruxelles. Published in:
R.-L. Delevoy et al., La Cambre,
19281978 (1979), 406.
SOCIALIST POSTMODERNISM
[p. 86]
Severomurinsky Housing
Complex, Leningrad, Soviet Union
Photo Citywalls.ru,
St. Petersburg, online:
http://www.citywalls.ru/
house15165.html
(accessed 08/27/2015).
[p. 87]
Microrayon Aksai-Zhetysu,
Alma-Ata, Kazakh SSR
Photo Philipp Meuser, published
in: P. Meuser and D. Zadorin, Towards a Typology of Soviet Mass
Housing. Prefabrication in the USSR
19551991 (2015), 87.
116
[p. 89]
Block 207, Bukit Batok New Town,
Singapore
Photo Ani Vihervaara, 2015.
NEW URBANISM
[p. 90]
Seaside, Florida, USA
Photo Alex S. MacLean /
Landslides Aerial Photography
(www.landslides.com).
4. Global Transactions,
200215
EMERGENCY HOUSING
SELF-HELP 2.0
TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE
[p. 99]
Country Village Monolith
Residence, Moscow, Russia
Photo Mikhail Belov, online:
http://archi.ru/projects/russia/
735/zagorodnyi-poselok-rezidenciimonolit (accessed 08/29/2015).
[p. 109]
ELEMENTAL in Lo Espejo,
Santiago, Chile
Photo ELEMENTAL, online:
http://www.elementalchile.cl/
en/proyecto/lo-espejo-3
(accessed 07/22/15).
CENTRALIZED STATES
ENTREPRENEURIALISM
[p. 114]
Kilamba Kiaxi (Kilamba New City),
Phase I, Luanda, Angola
Santa Martha - Kilamba Kiaxe at
Panoramio. Licence CC BY-SA 3.0,
Wikimedia Commons, online:
https://commons.wikimedia.org/
wiki/Category:Kilamba?uselang
=de#/media/File:Kilamba_
Kiaxi_-_May_2011_(3).jpg
(accessed 07/15/2015).
[p. 100]
Block 330, Sembawang, Singapore
Photo Ani Vihervaara, 2015.
[p. 110]
Rotonda West, Charlotte County,
Florida, USA
Photo Christoph Gielen, online:
http://www.uncubemagazine.com/
blog/11845293 (accessed
08/23/2015).
[p. 95]
Paper-tube Emergency Shelters
for the Gihembe Refugee Camp
near Byumba, Rwanda
Photo Shigeru Ban Architects,
published in: Aspen Art Museum
(ed.), Shigeru Ban: Humanitarian
architecture (2014), 122.
BRICS PRIVATIZATION
[p. 96]
Brilliant City, Shanghai, China
Photo Florian Urban.
[p. 97]
Hamilton Court, Gurgaon,
New Delhi, India
Published in: P. Manohar,
Architect Hafeez Contractor: Selected
Works 19822006 (2006), 137 (L),
136 (R).
[p. 98]
Enclosed Neighborhoods in
Johannesburg, South Africa,
Published in: U. Jrgens and
M. Gnad, Gated communities
in South Africa: Experiences from
Johannesburg, Environment and
Planning B: Planning and Design, 29
(2002), 343. Source: K. Landmann,
The urban future: enclosed neighbourhoods?," paper presented to
the Urban Futures Conference
Johannesburg, July 1014, 2000.
[p. 101]
Shahrak-e Ekbatan, Tehran, Iran
Photo Khashayar Sharifaee,
published in: A tour of Tehran
by Neighbourhood: Ekbatan in
pictures, The Guardian (August 18,
2014), online: http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/
gallery/2014/aug/18/tehran-iranneighbourhoods-ekbatan (accessed
08/04/2014).
[p. 115]
Public Housing Schemes,
Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Photo Sascha Delz, 2012.
[p. 111]
Minha Casa, Minha Vida, Brazil
Photo Manu Dias/SECOM,
online: http://thecityfixbrasil.com/
2014/10/12/o-desafio-deintegrar-o-minha-casa-minhavida-as-cidades (accessed
08/05/2015).
[p. 112]
Waldsiedlung Zehlendorf
Onkel Toms Htte, Berlin, Germany
Akademie der Knste, Berlin,
Arthur-Kster-Sammlung,
Ks-164, photo: Arthur Kster,
VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2015.
[p. 113]
Kangbashi New Area, Ordos City,
Inner Mongolia, China
Photo Adam James Smith
and Song Ting.
117
Contributors
118
119
Wohnungsfrage Team:
Concept and Program: Jesko Fezer,
Nikolaus Hirsch, Wilfried Kuehn, Hila Peleg
Project Leader: Annette Bhagwati, Zdravka Bajovic
Research and Publications: Christian Hiller
Research and Project Coordination Exhibition:
Zdravka Bajovic
Project Coordination Exhibition: Jessica Pez
Project Coordination Academy: Stefan Aue
Assistant to the Project Leader: Dunja Sallan
Project Assistance: Franziska Janetzky,
Ben Mohai, Alexandra Nehmer
Production Management: Thomas Burkhard
Intern: Deborah Avanzato
Wohnungsfrage takes place as part of the
HKW project 100 Years of Now.
hkw.de/now
Haus der Kulturen der Welt is a division of
Kulturveranstaltungen des Bundes in Berlin GmbH (KBB).
Director: Bernd Scherer
General Manager: Charlotte Sieben
Chair of the Advisory Board:
Staatsministerin Prof. Monika Grtters MdB
Haus der Kulturen der Welt is funded by
Credits:
Justin McGuirk, Honeywell, I'm Home! The Internet of
Things and the New Domestic Landscape. First published
in: Architecture as Intangible Infrastructure (guest-edited by
Nikolaus Hirsch), e-flux journal #64 (4/2015)
Rana Dasgupta, extract from CAPITAL: THE ERUPTION OF
DEHLI by Rana Dasgupta. Copyright Rana Dasgupta 2014.
Used by permission of Canongate Books, Edinburgh (UK);
Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group,
a division of Penguin Random House LLC; and The Wylie
Agency (UK) Limited.
2015 the editors, authors, artists,
Haus der Kulturen der Welt, and Spector Books
Printed in Germany
First edition
ISBN 978-3-959050-48-7
120
This volume appears in the series Wohnungsfrage, which explores the possibilities of social
and self-determined housing. The series presents
new commentaries on re-publications of seminal
historical works, topical case studies from across
the world, and publications by urban political
initiatives, architects, and artists participating in
the exhibition project Wohnungsfrage.
Volumes:
Martin Wagner, Das wachsende Haus; Hannes
Meyer, Co-op Interieur; Friedrich Engels,
Zur Wohnungsfrage; Kollektiv fr sozialistisches
Bauen, Proletarische Bauausstellung; International
Case Studies; Amie Siegel, Love Letters;
Kotti & Co + Estudio Teddy Cruz + Forman;
Stille Strae 10 + Assemble; Kolabs + Atelier
Bow-Wow; Dogma + Realism Working Group;
Wohnungsfrage Ausstellungsfhrer / Exhibition
Guide
The publication series is part of the exhibition
project Wohnungsfrage (October 23 to
December 14, 2015), conceived by Jesko Fezer,
Nikolaus Hirsch, Wilfried Kuehn, and Hila Peleg
for Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin.
www.hkw.de/wohnungsfrage
Essays
Atlas
3
David J. Madden
Spatial Projects: The Politics of Neighborhood
in New York City
59
Reinhold Martin
Preface: The Neoliberal Housing System
13
Mariana Fix
The Real Estate Circuit and (the Right to)
the City: Notes on the Housing Question in Brazil
23
AbdouMaliq Simone
Housing Systems as Environments of Practice
and Information
31
Sandi Hilal
Roofless
61
Anne Kockelkorn
Introduction: A Sample Atlas
65
1. Beginnings, 196881
79
2. Postmodernist Revisions, 198189
91
3. New States and Networks, 19892004
105
4. Global Transactions, 200215
39
Andrew Herscher
Blight, Spatial Racism, and the Demolition
of the Housing Question in Detroit
47
Justin McGuirk
Honeywell, Im Home! The Internet of Things
and the New Domestic Landscape
53
Rana Dasgupta
Landscape
Printed in Germany
First edition
ISBN 978-3-959050-48-7
Spector Books