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The politics of everyday life: urban materialities, modernity and conflictual interactions on two Danish mass housing estates in the 1970s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 April 2021

Mikkel Høghøj Open the ORCID record for Mikkel Høghøj [Opens in a new window]
Mikkel Høghøj*
Affiliation:
Department of History and Classical Studies, Aarhus University, Jens Chr. Skous Vej 5,5, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark
*
*Corresponding author. Email: hismh@cas.au.dk
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Abstract

This article explores the relations between everyday life, materiality and urban modernity on two Danish mass housing estates, the Gellerup Plan and Vollsmose, in the 1970s. Specifically, the article examines a series of conflicts concerning the residents’ use and misuse of seemingly mundane material devices, including shopping trolleys, waste disposal and laundry facilities. In doing so, the article argues that the residents’ daily engagements with everyday materialities and technologies constitute a privileged, yet overlooked, point of entry into the shifting relations between modernity, materiality and agency in the Danish welfare city in the 1970s.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , August 2022 , pp. 631 - 647
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press.

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Footnotes

†

I want to thank Silke Holmqvist, Helle Nissen Gregersen, Christian Ringskou, Mikkel Thelle and Tina Langholm Larsen as well as two anonymous referees for highly valuable and constructive feedback on earlier drafts of this article.

References

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2 For an overview of the history of mass housing in post-war Denmark, see M. Høghøj, ‘Between utopia and dystopia: a socio-cultural history of modernist mass housing in Denmark, c. 1945–1985’, Aarhus University Ph.D. thesis, 2019.

3 On Britain, see Glendinning, M. and Muthesius, S., Tower Block: Modern Public Housing in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (London, 1994)Google Scholar; Gold, J.R., The Practice of Modernism: Modern Architects and Urban Transformation, 1954–1972 (London, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Greenhalgh, J., Reconstructing Modernity: Space, Power, and Governance in Mid-Twentieth Century British Cities (Manchester, 2017)Google Scholar; Gunn, S., ‘The rise and fall of British urban modernism: planning Bradford, circa 1945–1970’, Journal of British Studies, 49 (2017), 849–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Hollow, M., ‘Governmentality on the Park Hill estate: the rationality of public housing’, Urban History, 37 (2010), 117–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Wetherell, Foundations: How the Built Environment Made Twentieth-Century Britain (Princeton, 2020). On France, see Cupers, K., ‘The expertise of participation: mass housing and urban planning in post-war France’, Planning Perspectives, 26 (2011), 29–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar; K. Cupers, The Social Project: Housing Postwar France (Minneapolis, 2014). On West Germany, see F. Urban, ‘The Märkisches Viertel in West Berlin’, in M. Swenarton, T. Avermaete and D. van der Heuvel (eds.), Architecture and the Welfare State (Abingdon, 2012), 177–99. On the Low Countries, see Brouwer, P. and Verlaan, T., ‘Symbolic gestures? Planning and replanning Amsterdam's Bijlmermeer and new town Almere since 1965’, Informationen zur modernen Stadtgeschichte, 1 (2013), 48–59Google Scholar; M. Ryckewaert, Building the Economic Backbone of the Belgian Welfare State: Infrastructure, Planning and Architecture 1975–1973 (Rotterdam, 2011). On Scandinavia, see L. Falender, ‘Social housing in post-war Oslo and Edinburgh: modernizing, decentralizing, and renewing the urban housing stock, ca. 1945–1985’, University of Oslo Ph.D. thesis, 2013; Høghøj, M. and Holmqvist, S., ‘Da betonen blev belastende. Den emotionelle kamp om Gellerupplanen i 1960’erne og 1970’erne’, Temp, 16 (2018), 124–44Google Scholar; H. Mattsson and S.O. Wallenstein, Swedish Modernism: Architecture, Consumption, and the Welfare State (London, 2010); P.M. Ristilammi, Rosengård och den svarta poesin: en studie av modern annorlundahet (Stockholm, 1994). For global and transnational perspectives, see C. Klemek, The Transatlantic Collapse of Urban Renewal: Postwar Urbanism from New York to Berlin (Chicago, 2012); F. Urban, Tower and Slab: Histories of Global Mass Housing (Abingdon, 2011).

4 See, e.g., L. Abrams, B. Hazley, A. Kearns and V. Wright (eds.), Glasgow: High-Rise Homes, Estates and Communities in the Post-War Period (Abingdon, 2020); P. Boudon, Lived-in Architecture: Le Corbusier's Pessac Revisited (London, 1972); E. Darling, ‘What the tenants think of Kensal House: experts’ assumptions versus inhabitants’ realities in the modern home’, Journal of Architectural Education, 53 (1984), 167–77; M. Lozanovska, Migrant Housing: Architecture, Dwelling, Migration (Abingdon, 2019); Ristilammi, Rosengård och den svarta poesin.

5 James Greenhalgh's study of the everyday use of urban space on British housing estates in the 1940s and 1950s constitutes a notable exception. See Greenhalgh, Reconstructing Modernity, 157–91.

6 The close connections between urban materiality and power structures have received increasing scholarly attention in recent years as part of the broader analytical shift towards the active role of space and materiality in the shaping of social life. Work in this field is extensive. For discussions pertaining to the field of urban history, see T. Bennett and P. Joyce (eds.), Material Powers: Cultural Studies, History and the Material Turn (Abingdon, 2010); Fennelly, K., ‘Materiality and the urban: recent theses in archaeology and material culture and their importance for the study of urban history’, Urban History, 44 (2017), 564–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar; S. Gunn, ‘The spatial turn: changing histories of space and place’, in S. Gunn and R.J. Morris (eds.), Identities in Space: Contested Terrains in the Western City since 1850 (Farnham, 2001), 1–16; T. Hulme, ‘Urban materialities: citizenship, public housing and governance in modern Britain’, in S. Gunn and T. Hulme (eds.), New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe since 1500 (Abingdon, 2020); Thelle, M., ‘Et rumligt fix for historievidenskaben?’, Temp, 9 (2014), 187–201Google Scholar.

7 See S. Höhne, ‘The birth of the urban passenger: infrastructural subjectivity and the opening of the New York City Subway’, City, 19 (2015), 313–21; P. Joyce, The Rule of Freedom. Liberalism and the Modern City (London, 2003); Koole, S., ‘How we came to mind the gap: time, tactility, and the Tube’, Twentieth Century British History, 27 (2016), 524–54Google Scholar; C. Otter, The Victorian Eye: A Political History of Light and Vision in Britain, 1800–1910 (Chicago, 2008).

8 Höhne, ‘The birth of the urban passenger’; Koole, ‘How we came to mind the gap’.

9 Koole, ‘How we came to mind the gap’, 527.

10 Taylor, V. and Trentmann, F., ‘Liquid politics: water and the politics of everyday life in the modern city’, Past & Present, 211 (2011), 203CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. For discussions of ‘material politics' as an analytical approach, see Hulme, ‘Urban materialities'; Minuchin, L., ‘Material politics: concrete imaginations and the architectural definition of urban life in Le Corbusier's Master Plan for Buenos Aires’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37 (2013), 238–58CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Since I seek to identify everyday practices, which often had a subtle and mundane character, and not how people perceived life on the estates, I have prioritized contemporary source material instead of interviews and oral history.

12 Greenhalgh, Reconstructing Modernity, 158.

13 For an overview of Danish urban planning and housing in the post-war decades, see T.R. Larsen and M.L. Larsen, I medgang og modgang – dansk byggeri og den danske velfærdsstat 1945–2007 (Copenhagen, 2007); A. Gaardmand, Plan over Land: dansk byplanlægning 1938–1992 (Nykøbing Sjælland, 2016); Høghøj, M., ‘Planning Aarhus as a welfare geography: urban modernism and the shaping of “welfare subjects” in post-war Denmark’, Planning Perspectives, 35 (2020), 1031–53CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 The holistic character of the Gellerup Plan and Vollsmose was highlighted in various promotional material and newspaper articles. On the Gellerup Plan, see Brabrand-Årslev Local Archives (BLA), Brabrand Boligforening – Gellerupparken (BBG), sales brochure entitled Gellerupparken og Toveshøj (1972); Politiken, 23 Sep. 1967; Brabrand og Omegn's Avis (BOA), 8 May 1969; BT, 14 Aug. 1970. On Vollsmose, see Odense City Archives (OCA), Højstrup Boligforening – Vollsmoseplanen (HBV), sales brochure entitled Vollsmose: Et nyt grønt bymiljø i Odense (1973); Berlingske Tidende, 1 Nov. 1964; Fyens Stiftstidende (FS), 2 Aug. 1966; FS, 12 Nov. 1967.

15 See J.T. Lauridsen, ‘Byens Rum’, in I. Gejl (ed.), Århus. Byens Historie. Bind IV-1945–1995 (Aarhus, 1998), 9–67; A. Skov, ‘Fremtidsbydelen Vollsmose – idealer og visioner for en ny bydel’, in J.N. Frandsen and J. Toftgaard (eds.), Odense i forvandling. Drømme og virkelighed (Odense, 2013), 156–83.

16 Wakeman, Practicing Utopia, 49.

17 BLA/BBG: Gellerupparken og Toveshøj, 5–8; Petersen, K.B., ‘Gellerupplanen, Brabrand’, Arkitektur, 8 (1974), 308–16Google Scholar.

18 Focusing on the Park Hill estate in Sheffield, Matthew Hollow has shown how also mass housing in post-war Britain was designed to foster specific forms of residents. See Hollow, ‘Governmentality on the Park Hill estate'.

19 For discussions of ‘modernity’ and its relevance for urban history, see S. Gunn, History and Cultural Theory (Harlow, 2006), 107–31; S. Ewen, What Is Urban History? (Cambridge, 2016), 91–114.

20 For discussions of the relationship between modernity and modernism, see M. Berman, All That Is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (London, 2010); Greenhalgh, Reconstructing Modernity, 13–17. For studies of urban modernism as a planning practice, see Gold, The Practice of Modernism; Gunn, ‘The rise and fall of British urban modernism'.

21 Gunn, History and Cultural Theory, 127–30.

22 Ibid., 130.

23 M. Foucault, ’What is Enlightenment?’, in P. Rabinow (ed.) The Foucault Reader (New York, 1984), 40.

24 Wakeman, Practicing Utopia, 4.

25 See BLA/BBG, Gellerupparken og Toveshøj, and film entitled Miljø for millioner (1972); OCA/HBV, Vollsmose – Et nyt grønt bymiljø i Odense, and film entitled Vollsmosefilmen (1973).

26 BLA/BBG, Råd og anvisninger for Brabrand Boligforening's beboere (1975).

27 Ibid., 4–5.

28 Jensen, L., ‘Stuck in the middle? Danish social housing associations between state, market and civil society’, Scandinavian Housing and Planning Research, 14 (1997), 120CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29 For the organizational history of the Danish non-profit housing sector, see Jensen, ‘Stuck in the middle?'; O. Lind and J. Møller, Folkebolig boligfolk. Politik og praksis i boligbevægelsens historie (Copenhagen, 1994). For a Nordic comparative study, see B. Bengtsson (ed.), Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historiskt ljus (Malmö, 2013).

30 For the history of Danish resident democracy, see A.V. Hansen and L.L. Langergaard, ‘Democracy and non-profit housing. The tensions of residents’ involvement in the Danish non-profit sector’, Housing Studies, 32 (2017), 1085–104; Jensen, ‘Stuck in the middle?'.

31 O. Löfgren, ‘Motion and emotion: learning to be a railway traveller’, Mobilities, 3 (2008), 331–51.

32 For the Gellerup Plan, see BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Oct. 1978, 12–13. For Vollsmose, see OCA/HBV, Granposten, Nov. 1979, 6–8.

33 For the Gellerup Centre, see ‘Gellerupplanen – En Ny by i Brabrand’, Arkitekten, 72 (1970), 100–11; Petersen, ‘Gellerupplanen, Brabrand’. For the Vollsmose Centre, see OCA/HBV, ‘Arbejdsnotat af 1. juni 1965 vedrørende udkast til programmering af center’ (1965); OCA/HBV, Forslag til Dispositionsplan for Odenseområdet (1969), 26–9.

34 For the architectural history of shopping malls in post-war urban Europe, see J. Gosseye and T. Avermaete (eds.), Shopping Towns Europe: Commercial Collectivity and the Architecture of the Shopping Centre 1945–1975 (London, 2017); H. Mattsson, ‘Where the motorways meet: architecture and corporatism in Sweden 1968’, in Swenarton, Avermaete and Van der Heuvel (eds.), Architecture and the Welfare State, 155–77; Wetherell, Foundations.

35 For studies of the ‘citizen-consumer’, see Gosseye and Avermaete (eds.), Shopping Towns Europe; A. Kefford, ‘Housing the citizen-consumer in post-war Britain: the Parker Morris Report, affluence and the even briefer life of social democracy’, Twentieth Century British History, 29 (2018), 225–58; Mattsson, ‘Where the motorways meet'.

36 Helena Mattsson, ‘Designing the reasonable consumer. Standardisation and personalisation in Swedish functionalism’, in Mattsson and Wallenstein, Swedish Modernism, 74–90; Mattsson, ‘Where the motorways meet'. See also J. Mack, ‘Hello, consumer! Skärholmen Centre from the Million Programme to the mall’, in Gosseye and Avermaete (eds.), Shopping Towns Europe, 122–38.

37 See BLA/BBG, Gellerupparken og Toveshøj; OCA/HBV, Vollsmose – Et nyt grønt bymiljø i Odense.

38 BLA/BBG, plan entitled Giellerupplanen (1963), 3.

39 FS, 11 Nov. 1967. Author's translation. In similar terms, Brabrand Housing Association emphasized how the Gellerup Centre rested on brand new principles that would turn the practice of shopping into a ‘human-friendly’ activity. See BLA/BBG, Gellerupparken og Toveshøj, 11.

40 For the global history of the shopping trolley, see C. Grandclément, ‘Wheeling one's groceries around the store: the invention of the shopping cart, 1936–1953’, in W. Belasco and R. Horowitz (eds.), Food Chains: From Farmyard to Shopping Cart (Philadelphia, 2011), 233–52; A. Warnes, How the Shopping Cart Explains Global Consumerism (Berkeley, 2019).

41 For studies of cultural transfers from the US to Denmark in the post-war decades, see S. Bjerrum Fossat, Den Lille Pige Med Iskagen: Marshallplan, Produktivitet Og Amerikanisering (Odense, 2015); D.G. Simonsen and I. Vyff (eds.), Amerika og det gode liv: materiel kultur i Skandinavien i 1950’erne og 1960’erne (Odense, 2011). For the cultural history of consumerism in Denmark, see K.H. Andersen, K. Jensen and M. Thelle (eds.), Forbrugets kulturhistorie: butik, by og forbrugere efter 1660 (Aarhus, 2017); N. Olsen, The Sovereign Consumer: A New Intellectual History of Neoliberalism, Consumption and Public Life (London, 2018).

42 BLA/BBG, film entitled Miljø for millioner, 1972.

43 For complaints about the use of shopping trolleys in the Gellerup Plan, see BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Feb. 1973, 8; Jun. 1974, 9; Sep. 1975, 3; Mar. 1976, 12; Dec. 1976, 15; Mar. 1977, 5; Jun. 1976, 12; Dec. 1977, 9; Apr. 1978, 7; Jul. 1978, 8; Jan. 1979, 5. For Vollsmose, see OCA/HBV, Granposten, Jan. 1976, 17; Mar. 1977, 15; Apr. 1977, 17; Jan. 1978, 10–11, May 1978, 17; Jul 1978, 11; Sep. 1978, 18. OCA/HBV, Birkebladet, Jan. 1977, 5; Jan. 1978, 11; Feb. 1978, 13; May 1978, 13–14; Jul. 1978, 18; Aug. 1978, 2.

44 OCA/HBV, Birkebladet, Jan. 1977, 5.

45 BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Sep. 1975, 3; Mar. 1976, 12; Jun. 1977, 12; Dec. 1977, 9; Apr. 1978, 7; Jul 1978, 8. OCA/HBV, Birkebladet, May 1978, 13–14; Jul. 1978, 18; Aug. 1978, 2.

46 BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Jul. 1978, 8.

47 OCA/HBV, Birkebladet, May 1978, 13–14.

48 Ibid., Aug. 1978, 2. Author's translation.

49 BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Jan. 1979, 5.

50 Ibid.

51 Certeau, M. de, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley, 2011)Google Scholar.

52 James Greenhalgh has identified similar dynamics in the use of community centres on British housing estates. See Greenhalgh, Reconstructing Modernity, 160–9.

53 ‘Brabrand Boligforening Har Startet Gjellerupplanen – Byggeri Til 10.000 Mennesker’, Boligen, 1967; Bentsen, T., ‘Skraldesugeanlæg’, Byggeindustrien, 5 (1971), 309–12Google Scholar.

54 See F. B. Olesen, ‘Gjellerupplanen 1’, Byggeindustrien, 20 (1969), 911–16; Bentsen, ‘Skraldesugeanlæg'.

55 BLA/BBG, Gellerupparken og Toveshøj, 11. Author's translation.

56 Borgmann, A., Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life: A Philosophical Inquiry (Chicago, 1984), 40–8Google Scholar. For a discussion of the relations between ‘devices' and governmentality, see Otter, C., ‘Making liberal objects: British techno-social relations 1800–1900’, Cultural Studies, 21 (2007), 570–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

57 See Scott, J.C., Seeing like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (London, 1999), 85–190Google Scholar; Pinder, D., Visions of the City: Utopianism, Power and Politics in Twentieth Century Urbanism (Edinburgh, 2005), 57–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58 C. Bech-Danielsen, Moderne arkitektur – hva’ er meningen? (Aarhus, 2004), 85–123.

59 BOA, 8 May 1979.

60 BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, May 1971, 14; Mar. 1972, 5; Jun. 1974, 8; Feb. 1975, 8.

61 Ibid., Mar. 1972, 5

62 BLA/BBG, Råd og anvisninger, 16.

63 BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Mar. 1971, 10; Jan. 1973, 2; Jun 1976, 26; Nov. 1976, 10.

64 Ibid., Jun. 1976, 26.

65 BLA/BBG, Råd og anvisninger, 19.

66 BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Oct. 1977, 6–8; Jul. 1978, 6; Sep. 1978, 9.

67 BLA/BBG, Giellerupplanen, 7–11; BLA/BBG, Gellerupparken og Toveshøj, 13–30; OCA/HBV, Vollsmose – Et nyt grønt bymiljø i Odense, 10–16.

68 BLA/BBG, Gellerupparken og Toveshøj, 13–30; OCA/HBV, Vollsmose – Et nyt grønt bymiljø i Odense, 10–16.

69 OCA/HBV, Granposten, Feb. 1976, 17; Jun. 1979, 19; Jul. 1979, 6; Aug. 1979, 15–16.

70 Ibid., Jun. 1979, 19.

71 Ibid., Jul. 1979, 6; Aug 1979, 15–16.

72 Sante, L., Low Life: Lures and Snares of Old New York (New York, 1992), 40–1Google Scholar.

73 Humphrey, C., ‘Violence and urban architecture: events at the ensemble of the Odessa Steps in 1904–1905’, in Pulland, W. and Baillie, B. (eds.), Locating Urban Conflicts: Ethnicity, Nationalism and the Everyday (London, 2013), 37–57CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

74 Löfgren, ‘Motion and emotion’, 349.

75 BLA/BBG, Skræppebladet, Nov. 1976, 10.