Reading Socio-Spatial Interplay - Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i ...

R E A D I N G S O C I O - S P A T I A L I N T E R P L A Y P A R T 2delay in the development of common facilities and service-infrastructure, anddepressed and dissatisfied housewives as “the malady of the new towns”.Jon Guttu’s 317 analysis of the shift in density and scale in the satellite townsof Oslo from the 1950s to the 1960s can be summarized as related to threefactors: During the 1950s the initial plans for creating intimate socialneighbourhoods and communitarian functions related to thedistrict centres were abandoned as unrealistic – both sociallyand economically. But the Norwegian critique of theneighbourhood-scheme was not based on empirical surveys,user group inquiries, or systematic evaluations: Thearchitectural response to the critique was therefore to be moreinfluenced by technological developments, internationalmodernist ideals, and the persistent issue of housing shortage: In the 1950s the social and sanitary problems of the traditionalurban blocks were conceived as related to high exploitation. Thesocial critique of the satellite towns was though, amongst otherissues, related to too low densities (of people and activities) inthe new satellite towns. The new areas were criticized for lackof activities and service facilities, aesthetical variation andurban character. The international modernist discoursepropagandized for a dramatic increase of exploitation in satellitetowns, both in order to limit urban sprawl and to achieve richersocial environments. New production methods enabled large scale industrializedhousing production, rapid development in transport andmobility, and new patterns of centralization within the retailsector encouraged evolution of new architectural solutions forthe satellite towns.The (spatial) hierarchical neighbourhood-scheme was kept unchanged in thefollowing years of development of satellite towns, although the ambitions ofcommunity-building by way of common facilities were abandoned. But incontrast to the spatial system that formed the basis of the typologicallycompound “neigbourhoods” or “hamlets” at Lambertseter, the second level ofthe neigbourhood-scheme now was transformed into typologicallyhomogenous areas: usually as repetitions of identical buildings. Theaesthetical (and supposedly also social) variation was now to be taken care ofby different building typologies in different areas of the housing district:317 Ibid.173