Metropolitics

Photographing the Slums of 1900s Berlin

Danièle Voldman & translated by Oliver Waine — 2018-09-14T05:00:00Z

At the turn of the 20th century, the dramatically poor conditions of urban working-class housing was a cause of major concern in many cities, and would lead to the first social-housing experiments. Photography, then a booming new technology, was one of the means used to document this problem and raise awareness of conditions, as this book on working-class housing in Berlin illustrates.
Taking as their starting point a collection of photographs taken during the first 20 years of the 20th

- Reviews / housing, urban history, social housing, slum, Berlin, Germany, history, affordable housing, photography, working classes, blue-collar workers, manual workers, workers

The “Dozois Plan”: lessons learned from urban-renewal policies and the history of urban planning in Montreal

Frédéric Mercure-Jolette & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-10-23T05:00:00Z

Urban-renewal policies justify their actions by decrying neighbourhoods earmarked for demolition. Frédéric Mercure-Jolette seeks to demonstrate this via the little-studied example of the massive operations affecting downtown Montreal in the 1960s. His article also highlights the inextricable links between urban renewal and the paradoxical institutionalization of professional urban planning.
The Projet de rénovation d'une zone d'habitat défectueux et de construction d'habitation à loyer

- Essays / housing, urban planning, housing projects, urban policy, urban renewal, Montreal, slum, profession, development, Canada, salubrity, public action

“Cités de transit”: the urban treatment of poverty during decolonisation

Muriel Cohen & Cédric David & translated by Oliver Waine — 2012-03-28T04:55:00Z

At a time of profound housing crisis in the 1950s, cités de transit were adopted as a means of rehousing Algerian families from cleared bidonvilles. The background of this measure – at the crossroads between colonial legacy, a long history of education through housing, and the Algerian War – explains the enduring stigma associated with it.
---- Series: How the Algerian War shaped French cities “Social rehabilitation projects”, “short-term housing”, “rehousing estates”, “virtual prisons”,

- Essays / bidonville, housing, cités de transit, Algerian War, shanty town, slum, transition estates