We invite paper proposals for a panel at the EAUH 2016 which deals with the connections between Mass Housing and Environmental Thought (M34).

Few planning projects have shaped present-day landscapes across Europe and the United States more than modernist mass housing. Long after their heyday in the mid-twentieth century, when these high-rise dwellings were thought of as optimistic solutions to the postwar housing crisis, these buildings and the infrastructures surrounding them continue to mark physical environments. Moreover, modernist mass housing programs have also impacted environmental thought or discourse — broadly defined to include ecology, medicine, public health, religion, civic participation and psychology. The aim of this panel is to encourage new work on this subject, which has been largely ignored in housing studies, and to create a space for the discovery of novel transatlantic connections between mass housing and environmental thought. How were the landscapes surrounding these complexes envisioned by their designers, used by inhabitants, and interpreted by the wider public? In what ways did environmental thought impact plans for mass housing, and vice versa?

In considering these questions, a transatlantic, comparative perspective is essential. As historian Daniel Rogers and others have demonstrated, transatlantic connections shaped housing policy throughout the twentieth century. More recently, scholars such as Rosemary Wakeman have shown parallels between housing developments between capitalist and socialist countries within Europe in the postwar era. Building upon these works, this panel invites papers that address the intersection of mass housing and environmental thought in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, the United States, or papers that employ a comparative perspective. More broadly, the panel aims to foster engagement between environmental history, history of science, and urban planning history and theory.

Potential themes might include the role of ecology in the design and planning of mass housing in communist and/or capitalist societies; ideas of landscape and the natural in mass housing programs; the intersection of housing and environmental policy; the role of the “social” in environmental planning; and the reactions of inhabitants to what was built.

Abstracts should not exceed 300 words. Please submit your abstract online via the EAUH website (https://eauh2016.net/programme/call-for-papers/).

The Call for Papers is open until October 31, 2015. Successful candidates will be notified by December 31, 2015. For more information, please visit the EAUH 2016 website.

You are also welcome to contact us before making an official proposal.

Jeanne Haffner (HaffnerJ@doaks.org)
Márkus Keller (markus.keller@metropolitanstudies.de)