The Social City Middle-way approaches to housing and suburban governmentality In southern Stockholm 1900-1945 Abstract This dissertation deals with the period bridging the era of extreme housing shortages in Stockholm on the eve of industrialisation and the much admired programmes of housing provision that followed after the second world war, when Stockholm district Vällingby became an example for underground railway-serviced ”new towns”. It is argued that important changes were made in the housing and town planning policy in Stockholm in this period that paved the way for the successful ensuing period. Foremost among these changes was the uniquely developed practice of municipal leaseholding with the help of site leasehold rights (Erbbaurecht). The study is informed by recent developments in Foucauldian social research, which go under the heading ’governmentality’. Developments within urban planning are understood as different solutions to the problem of urban order. To a large extent, urban and housing policies changed during the period from direct interventions into the lives of inhabitants connected to a liberal understanding of housing provision, to the building of a disciplinary city, and the conduct of ’governmental’ power, building on increased activity on behalf of the local state to provide housing and the integration and co-operation of large collectives. Municipal leaseholding was a fundamental means for the implementation of this policy. When the new policies were introduced, they were limited to the outer parts of the city and administered by special administrative bodies. This administrative and spatial separation was largely upheld throughout the period, and represented as the parallel building of a ’social’ outer city, while things in the inner ’mercantile’ city proceeded more or less as before. This separation was founded in a radical difference in land holding policy: while sites in the inner city were privatised and sold at market values, land in the outer city was mostly leasehold land, distributed according to administrative – and thus politically decided – priorities. These differences were also understood and acknowledged by the inhabitants. Thorough studies of the local press and the organisational life of the southern parts of the outer city reveals that the local identity was tightly connected with the representations connected to the different land holding systems. Inhabitants in the south-western parts of the city, which in this period was still largely built on private sites, displayed a spatial understanding built on the contradictions between centre and periphery. The inhabitants living on leaseholding sites, however, showed a clear understanding of their position as members of model communities, tightly connected to the policy of the municipal administration. The organisations on leaseholding sites also displayed a deep co-operation with the administration. As the analyses of election results show, the inhabitants also seemed to have felt a greater degree of integration with the society at large, than people living in other parts of the city. The leaseholding system in Stockholm has persisted until today and has been one of the strongest in the world, although the local neo-liberal politicians are currently disposing it off. Keywords: Stockholm, governmentality, Foucault, land holding, leaseholding, site leasehold rights, municipal administration, housing, urban history, suburban, town planning, city planning, urban order, local press, voluntary societies, gender, disciplinary, philanthropy, Enskede, Brännkyrka, Söderort. For my Mother, Olle and the memory of Sven, and of Eva STUDIER I STADS- OCH KOMMUNHISTORIA 23 Editor: Lars Nilsson, Stockholm 2001 Stads- och kommunhistoriska institutet (Institute of Urban History) Dept. of History, University of Stockholm SE-10691 Stockholm, Sweden www.urbanhistory.su.se © Mats Deland ISBN 91-88882-17-9 Cover layout: Julia Schnegg English proof-reading: Akhil Malaki Printed in Sweden Novum Grafiska Stockholm 2001 Contents Tables and graphs 5 Preface 7 Prologue 9 A Middle-Way City 10 The Liberal Housing Regime 12 Import and Export of Housing Knowledge 15 The Glorious Days of Magic Houses 19 Chapter I: Introduction 22 The Aim of this Study: To Understand the City as Social 22 The Garden City 25 The Peaceful Revolution 26 The Anti-Authoritarian Core of the Scheme 28 Owen’s Pedagogic Authoritarianism 29 Howard’s Anti-Authoritarian Communities 31 How to Adjust People 37 Governmentality 38 Bringing About Freedom 42 Social Cities 47 Method and Sources 48 Previous Research 50 An Outline of This Book 56 Chapter II: A General Overview 58 The Nordic Countries 63 Town Planning as Big Business 68 The Cottage Ideal 71 Stockholm: A City on Islands 73 The Modern City 75 The Annexations 79 The Districts of the Stockholm Outer City 81 Town-Planning Politics in Stockholm 85 The Dyad Relationship between Politicians and Engineers 86 The Peculiarities of Stockholm 90 The Struggle of the Boards 96 Conclusion 99 Chapter III: Garden Suburbs and the Disciplinary City 100 A Decisive Break 102 General Outline of This Chapter 105 The Eclipse of Direct Interventions 109 The Enforcement of Morals 111 The Rent Collectors 114 The Disciplinary Housing Discourse 117 The Individualistic Themes Austerity 118 Cosiness 119 The Collectivistic Themes Dispersion 120 Separation 121 The Influence of Nature 122 The Eclipse of the Disciplinary City 124 The Social Housing Policy from intervention to Solidarity 126 Structure and Change of the Disciplinary Housing Discourse 131 (Co-authur: Paul Fuehrer, Dept. of Sociology, University of Stockholm) The Stockholm Housing Discourse 133 The Factor Analysis 1907-08 136 The Second Factor Analysis, 1925, 1927 141 The Participants of the Discussion 144 An assessment of the Housing Discourse 147 The Disciplinary City 148 Category Housing 150 Class Mixing 152 The Slow Expansion of the Social Sphere 156 The Mixing of Rationalities 159 The Magic Houses – Disciplinary Spatiality at a Bargain 160 Economising the Social City 165 The Spatial Dimensions 168 The Greenbelt 172 The Modernisation of the Disciplinary Discourse 176 The Influence of the Population Issue 178 The Modernisation of Disciplinary Spatiality and Direct interventions 179 Epiloque- Quality and Quantity Housing 183 Concluding Discussion 187 Chapter IV: Municipal Leaseholding as an Instrument for the Control of Urban Order 189 Social and Other Spaces Lefebvre and Abstract Spaces 190 Foucault and the Heterotopias 194 The Complexities of Landholding 195 Outline of the Chapter 198 The Creation of the Site Leasehold Rights Act 199 Erbbauracht and Its Parallels 202 The Act and its Local Implementation 205 The Administrative Division 213 The Social City Becomes Established 214 Repeated Conflicts over the Economic and the Social 218 Site Leasehold Rights And Socialism 224 The Abandonment of the Administrative Divide 226 The Meaning of the Division 229 SLR and the Creation of a Social Place 234 The Control of the Market 235 The Administration of Lives 239 Against the SLR 242 The Reactions from the Homeowners 247 Conclusions 249 Chapter V: Local Papers and the Politics of Space 252 The Need to Read 253 Zones of Stability 255 The Swedish Press 256 The Perpheral Press 261 The Press Situation in Brännkyrka 262 The Politics of Space 264 The Stabilisation of the Local News Market 269 A Mature Press Structure 270 The Content of the Papers 273 The East Against the West 279 Enskede for the Enskeders! 284 The Papers and the Societies 288 The Tramway Troubles 291 Summary and Discussion 296 Chapter VI: Governmental Rule through Voluntary Societies 298 Organisations as instruments of Governmentality 299 Voluntary Societies in Urban Sociology 301 Voluntary Societies in Swedish History 303 The Voluntary Organisations in Early Twentieth Century Brännkyrka 305 Governing as a Matter of Friction 306 The Gravel Theft 307 A Stubborn Organisation 312 The Break-up of Unity 314 The Adjustment of the Associative Life 317 Incorporation into the Social 318 The Steps of Organisational Integration 320 Regional Organising 322 Approaching the Economic Domain 323 How Much Integration? 324 The Ambiguity of Close Bonds 327 Looking Backward 331 Tending Society 333 The Resistance to Alcohol 335 The Struggle against the Market 337 Moral Control 338 The Danger Without 344 Keeping a Nice Front 350 A Democracy with Large Idle Resources The Accessibility of Public Spaces 354 The Gendered Public Sphere 356 Epilogue: Remembering the Wild Years 359 Summary and Conclusion 361 Chapter VII: The Individual Level 363 Social Cohesion and Radicalism 364 Election Statistics 367 A Rough View on the Socioeconomic Circumstances 368 Electoral Participation 375 The Creation of Social Forms 391 The Problematic Youth 395 The Open Spaces 399 The Question of Interior Space 404 The Extra Kitchens 408 The Extra Kitchens in Context 410 An Offer they could not Resist 413 Who were the Opponents? 419 To Reach Above the Social – The Luxury Additions Issue 424 Summary and Short Discussion 428 Chapter VIII: Conclusion 430 The Heritage 434 Appendix 1 440 Appendix 2 444 Appendix 3 448 Acronyms and Abbreviations 451 References 451 Studies in Urban History INDEX OF TABLES, FIGURES, AND MAPS. Tables: II:1 Districts in western Brännkyrka 83 II:2 Districts in eastern Brännkyrka/Enskede 84 III:1 Explanation power of different subdiscourses 1907-08 139 III:2 Explanation power of different subdiscourses 1925, 1927 144 III:3 Average rents in the Scandinavian capitals 1930-32 185 III:4 Annual rents for apartments with certain arrangements 186 IV:1 Spatial practices 197 VII:1: Applicants in the extra kitchen issue from 1928-29, distributed after social status. 420 Figures: I:1 Domains of Power within Liberal Society 45 III:1 Factor analysis of the Stockholm Housing Discourse 1907-08 138 III:2 Factor analysis of the Stockholm Housing Discourse 1925, 1927 143 V:1 City of Stockholm share of circulation of eight newspapers 1932 259 V:2 Aggregated circulation of the Stockholm newspapers 1900-1940 260 Time durability of local papers in Brännkyrka and Enskede 1928-1948 273 VI: Number of members attending meetings at the Stureby Real Estate Owners’ Society, between 1932 and 1945.