Join the UCSD Department of Urban Studies and Planning for this Speaker Series, The Rise and Fall of Modernist Mass Housing. It will be held via zoom, on Friday, March 4, 10a.

In this talk Zupan will examine the problematization of post-war modernist housing estates in West Germany and Austria, and its effects on contemporary (social) housing production. While modernist housing estates were perceived as one of the great achievements of the post-war welfare state, they were increasingly portrayed as a problem from the 1960s onwards. However, the trajectories of crisis construction differed profoundly in both cases. Based on qualitative discourse analysis and expert interviews Zupan reveals that these estates became a battleground for negotiating broader socio-political questions, resulting in different politizations. Three dimensions were key in this process: emerging conceptualizations of „urbanity“, the (non-)liberalization of housing policies, and geopolitical factors. By reflecting on the specific political climate that shaped the respective problematizations of modernist mass housing, this talk seeks to open up new perspectives for the ongoing discussions about the current housing crisis and the lack of affordable housing in European cities.

SPEAKER
Dr.-Ing. Daniela Zupan
Assistant Professor of European Cities and Urban Heritage, Institute for European Urban Studies, Bauhaus-Universität Weimar

Daniela Zupan is Assistant Professor of European Cities and Urban Heritage at the Institute for European Urban Studies at Bauhaus-University Weimar, Germany. Trained in architecture and Slavic studies she obtained a PhD in urban studies from Stuttgart University. Before joining Bauhaus-University Weimar in 2019, she was a post-doctoral fellow at Higher School of Economics in Moscow, where she explored urbanism in contemporary authoritarian settings. Her research explores how political and economic drivers shape urban planning and design in European cities in the 20th and 21st centuries. Daniela is co-editing the series Interdisciplinary Housing Research at transcript. Her work has been published in scientific journals such as Antipode, Housing Studies or Geoforum.