‘You can simply say no’ : Narrating the effects and affects of Danish and Swedish housing in crisis

• Narratives about the ‘failure’ of large-scale post-World War II housing are now guiding major physical, social, and economic changes in neighborhoods all over Europe. This is true even in Denmark and Sweden, which have long been known for their welfare states and benevolent housing policies. Today, however, both countries have enacted new national anti-segregation measures that call for major physical and social changes to neighborhoods built in the postwar era, even as the opinions of local communities and residents of such neighborhoods have been only sparsely heard – if at all. By working with the method ‘witness seminars’, we – as the research collective Aktion Arkiv – foreground residents’ perspectives and their collective resistance: the effects and affects of top-down changes. While sharing their lived experiences and actions, residents say that architects and planners can ‘simply say no’ and thereby refuse to participate in these actions.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Konst -- Arkitektur (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Arts -- Architecture (hsv//eng)

Keyword

affects

community organizing

housing

resistance

Scandinavia

Urban Design

Stadsbyggnad

Arkitekturens historia och teori

History and Theory of Architecture

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)