‘Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing’ by Frorian Urban
This book explains the history of mass housing in 7 cities.
It describes how in Chicago, “racial segregation…was at the root of [the] construction management and perception” of cheaply built mass housing .
In Paris, the mass housing blocks built around the city outskirts in the 50’s were already by the early 60’s being compared to civil barracks, rabbit cages, and termite cities and described as “ a factory for hooligans”.
Similarly, Berlin modernist mass hosing went from being considerer “the breeding ground of a just society, [to] generators of crime and deviancy” by the late 60’s.
Brasilia was founded on modernist principles in the 50’s, in a largely uninhabited plateau in the centre of Brazil as a capital, political centre and model city. The workers who built the city accommodated themselves into informal shanty towns which are now inseparable from the planned city.
“Mumbai challenges many preconceived ideas about mass housing”. Developers often make deals with slum dwellers, demolishing and replacing their informal settlements with a combination of luxury high-rises to sell and basic bock housing to accommodate them for free.
In Moscow a third of housing is mass-produced post-war blocks. They are home not “of the marginalised, but socially mixed environments. And unlike in many other countries, they are far from being considered obsolete”
Similarly “in Shanghai mass housing is ubiquitous” people have little attachment to older low-rise housing, and the housing debate revolves less around architecture and more around ownership.
References: See pages 21, 49, 66, 92, 101, 141, 145
