Session details
Organizer(s)
Christoph Bernhardt (IRS Erkner) and Marjaana Niemi (University of Tampere)
Keywords
Social Disparities, Western Liberal and Socialist Cities, Policies for Social Cohesion
Abstract
Socio-spatial disparities have been a major point of interest in the early days of modern urban history research. Segregation of workers, upper classes, ethnic or religious minorities in different quarters of cities was regarded as a key indicator of social injustice and a trigger of class struggles in liberal capitalist societies. In the context of the recent revival of capitalist (neo-) liberalism scholarly interest in the research on the potential role of cultural segregation as a trigger of right-wing populist movements has been has been stimulated. At the same time cultural history has developed new approaches which revise older ideas on the negative effects of socio-spatial segregation and highlight the function of “arrival quarters” and socially homogenous quarters for the integration of immigrants. Moreover we see that problems of socio-spatial disparities in Western welfare regimes and formerly socialist cities have developed specific patterns which havn´t been widely researched up to now.
The section wants to explore this field of research with a focus on two key questions on urban social disparities in the 20th century:
- Phenomena of socio-spatial disparities in welfare and socialist cities have not yet been widely discussed, nor have comparative perspectives on western liberal and eastern socialist cities been developed
- New approaches which explore the communicative and cultural dimensions of socio-spatial disparities and critically reflect and re-evaluate older narratives have to be developed.
Key Questions to be discussed:
- Which patterns of social disparities do we observe in urban societies of the late 20th/early 21st century?
- What are the main triggers of social disparities in liberal, Western welfare and socialist regimes?
- Which political strategies against social polarisation do we observe?
- Which specific social disparities did welfare and socialist urban regimes generate, which patterns of socio-cultural exclusion?
We want to encourage scholars in the fields of urban history, urban anthropology and urban sociology to send in proposals which should have focus on historical perspectives.
Papers
Arrival Quarters in Post-War Urbanisation: Comparing „Transit Zones“ in Welfare Capitalist and Socialist Cities: Oslo, Stockholm and Riga, 1950s-1980
Author(s)
Hakan Forsell (Univ. Stockholm)
Keywords
Transit Zones, Arrival Quarters, Urban Comparison
Abstract
Many cities in northern Europe were urbanized mainly after World War II. The intense migration during the 1950s and 1960s that took place at the same time as the foundation of the welfare society and of advanced industrial cities created a special tension in both planning and politics, spatially and socially. The classic Chicago school used as an analytical category "the transit zone", the arrival quarters, where newcomers stayed their first time in the city – before moving elsewhere, or staying put, adding to the cultural layers of diversity and mutation. What these "arrival quarters" were and how they changed, or did in fact not change, under the pressure of planning policy, and social political decisions, are the subject of the present paper.
The study compares the ”transit zones” in three northern European capitals during the post-war period: Oslo, where the central 'arrival quarters' were left without major intervention in terms of planning, which reflected the piecemeal planning that characterized the city during the post-war era. Stockholm's arrival quarters during the 1950s and 1960s were equally central, just behind the Central Station, and integrated with journalist and newspaper quaters, the environment was engaged in a kind of high-mobility intellectual exchange. The neighborhood disappeared completely during the downtown renewal and instead the transit zones for migrants spread in disparate locations in the city. Riga saw a massive immigration of a skilled Russian labor workforce and engineers after Latvia had been incorporated into the Soviet Union after World War II. These migrants can to some extent be described as a combination of labor immigrants and colonizers. However, there were distinct "arrival quarters" in Riga, both purposefully planned and spontaneous, which left longlasting traces in the city's recent history and social-economic design.
Socio-spatial Disparities and Ethnic Boundary-making in Mixed Albanian-Slavic Cities of Socialist Yugoslavia
Author(s)
Pieter Troch (Univ. Ghent)
Keywords
Ethnic Clustering, Socialist Urbanisation, Urban Peripheries
Abstract
The Albanian settlement area in the former Yugoslavia (in the first place Kosovo and the north-western part of North Macedonia) is characterised by sharp and protracted ethnopolitical polarisation. This paper explores some of the historical roots for this phenomenon through a study of ethnic clustering in urban environments under conditions of socialist urbanisation after World War II. The paper first presents the particular patterns of socio-spatial differentiation arising against the background of socialist urbanisation in Kosovo and Macedonia, taking into account the poorly urbanised character of the area until the 1950s and accelerated urbanisation-through-industrialisation afterwards. The paper identifies the following features: the monopolistic role of enterprises; the colonial attitude of socialist urban planners with regard to the post-Ottoman urban centres; the informal growth of urban peripheries as a result of massive rural-to-urban migration, and the relative underdevelopment of cities in the area. The second part of the paper links socio-spatial disparities in the urban environment to dynamic patterns of ethnic stratification caused by socialist Yugoslav accelerated development and Albanian national emancipation policies. It argues that the overlap of dynamic patterns of ethnic stratification and rising socio-spatial disparities in the urban environment explain the salience of ethnicity for social vision and division.
From Equalization to Gentrification. Ambivalences of urban renewal policies in Post-WWII Germany
Author(s)
Malgorzata Popiolek-Roßkamp (IRS Erkner)
Keywords
Urban Renewal, Gentrification, Modernization
Abstract
Providing equal living conditions for everyone was a crucial political pledge in East and West Germany after World War Two and an important element of the cold war competition of political systems. Initially the housing policies in both countries concentrated on new housing estates and rebuilding the demolished development. From the 1960s onwards the focus moved to the late 19th century tenements with poor living conditions on one side, but affordable rents on the other side. After the experiences with large scale demolition (Kahlschlagsanierung) in West Germany, the main challenge in both countries, was how to keep the renovation costs low in order to prove their viability versus demolition and reconstruction as well as how to let the tenants remain in their neighborhood. The questions of finances and maintainance of the social structure strongly influence the modernization projects in Germany until today. The aim of this paper is to discuss concepts and social effects of modernization projects for 19th century buildings in terms of social inclusion and social exclusion and to critically reflect some strategies in dealing with its unintended effects. Analizing the history of urban renewal programs is regarded here as a useful approach to investigate the varying perceptions of socio-spatial disparities and changing equalization policies.
The Advocacy Planning and the Civil Rights Movement in the United States: The Architects' Renewal Committee and the Democratization of Urban Planning
Author(s)
Marianna Charitonidou (ETH Zürich)
Keywords
Advocacy Planning, Civil Rights Movement, Democratization of Urban Planning
Abstract
This paper takes as its point of departure advocacy planning approaches’ consideration that urban renewal is incompatible with any kind of socially effective urban planning. It focuses on analysing the Architects' Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH), the first organization solely devoted to advocacy planning in the United States, and places particular emphasis on the critiques of urban renewal strategies in the late 1960s in the North-Eastern American context, and on the emergence of groups that aimed to struggle for the civil rights of African Americans. It closely examines how the Architects' Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) provided technical and design advice to communities who could otherwise not afford it, aspiring to democratize urban planning. It pays special attention to the analysis of ARCH’s program entitled “Architecture in the Neighborhoods” (1970), which aimed to recruit local black youth to become architects. In parallel, the paper compares the strategies of the Architects' Renewal Committee in Harlem (ARCH) with those of other groups struggling over the rights of minorities and the democratization of urban planning, such as The Architects’ Resistance (TAR), and National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS). The Architects’ Resistance (TAR) was a group formed in 1968 by architecture students from Columbia GSAPP, MIT Department of Architecture, and Yale School of Architecture and was “concerned about the social responsibility of architects and the framework within which architecture is practiced.” The National Organization of Minority Architecture Students (NOMAS) played a major role in the struggle over civil rights for African Americans in the United States. It was founded by a group of African-American architects in Detroit, Michigan in 1971 during the AIA National Convention and aimed to defend the rights of minority design professionals. The paper presents how the above-mentioned groups aimed to reshape urban planning models in order to respond to the call for a more democratic society. It sheds light on how they reinvented the relationship between architecture and democracy.