Housing Spaces, Dwelling Places: An Alternative Framework for Social Housing

Abstract

The prevailing notion that frames the configuration of social housing is community. Architects and urban planners implement programmes that prescribe means and features intended to engender community within social housing estates. This thesis argues against community-in-housing, asserting that the framing of social housing as a solution to community by architects and urban planners is dogmatic because it imposes design and planning-based solutions without considering the influence of residents on the processes and outcomes within estates. This thesis also posits a narrative of place and space as a new framework for conceiving of social housing. This framework, drawing from Heidegger and de Certeau, queries the relationship between residents and the estates they reside in. It applies this framework to study the processes in two estates — Kirchsteigfeld, Potsdam and Westhaven Park, Chicago. It then concludes by suggesting that the fields architecture and urban planning should not conceived as architecture and urban planning cannot ‘solve’ social housing as they claim.