The Construction of a Suburb: Ideology, Architecture and Everyday Culture in Skjettenbyen

PER GUNNAR RØE

Countering both sprawling suburbia and suburban high-rise estates, planners and architects in the early 1970s developed other ways of making more human friendly, denser and participatory dwelling areas outside cities. Skjettenbyen outside Oslo is such an example. This paper presents an investigation of the ideological foundation for the construction of this large estate, how architecture was produced and represented as part of such an ideology, and how this relates to suburban culture and sense of place. Architects and planners tend to have great expectations of the social implications of their plans. Skjettenbyen is no exception: its planning, and the discursive context of the epoch, created a regime not only for the design and building of the area, but also for creating a social milieu and establishing a culture that the architects themselves would be a part of. Skjettenbyen is marked by the cultural political economy of the welfare state aiming at providing the working and lower middle-class places to live and belong. However, this investigation revealed a mundane pragmatism amongst its inhabitants, far from the counter culture represented by progressive architects. The meaning of Skjettenbyen and the everyday sense of place revealed in this study is the kind that develops over time when people build social capital. However, the planning layout, architectural form and practice-structure relations coming from the progressive discourse, as for example interior design and car parking, may still frame people's practices and place specific suburban culture in ways that make it different from suburbia elsewhere. As such this analysis contributes to the nuanced discussion of how planning influences people's suburban experiences.

The dominant representation of suburbia in the West has been the socially and culturally homogenous housing area with mainly detached single-family dwellings. This socio-spatial form has been mythologized, and given a cultural content by, for instance, media and film as in the television series Desperate Housewives and the movie American Beauty. However, this is a mainly American construction. In the United States, this image of suburbia has been dominated by the detached single-family home, although observers like Hayden (2003) and Knox (2008) have revealed

a great deal of variety in suburban design, form and social composition, and have sought to name these different varieties. Besides, there is a growing awareness that suburbs worldwide are becoming less middle class and increasingly home to non-white and immigrant residents (Keil, 2013 and this issue), and even that the urban in some cases is being suburbanized in terms of social composition and culture (Butler, 2007).

Another characteristic feature of the American suburb is that it has typically been planned, developed and constructed by private agents,

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William Levitt being a famous example. In Europe, and especially the Nordic countries, public authorities have had a much more important role in the making of suburbs. This difference may be traced back to the origins of modern urban planning where, according to Hall (2002), the US and Europe parted company. While planning and house building by government was mainly to be avoided in America, European cities became a stage for the expression of planning ideology, master planning and experimentation with housing types and suburban forms. The relatively large suburban project of Skjettenbyen, outside Oslo, is based on such a grand plan. Built in the wake of the surge of social and political radicalism in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and the critique of modernist large-scale planning, inspired by Jane Jacobs's (1961) Death and life of the Great American Cities, this relatively large green-field suburban housing project was supposed to offer a more humane and properly scaled environment, while at the same time making use of rational building techniques to reduce cost.

This paper investigates the ideological foundations for the construction of Skjettenbyen, how architecture was produced and represented as part of such an ideology, and how local suburban culture and sense of place are related to this foundation. While recent theoretical developments regarding the role of architecture in a social, political and economic perspective focus on the iconic and high-rise urban development projects associated with urban entrepreneurialism (Jones, 2009; Faulconbridge, 2009; Grubbauer, 2014), in this paper I focus on the mundane spatial forms associated with suburban developments like Skjettenbyen, engaging not only critically with its specific architectural space and history, but also with the people involved in designing and inhabiting this space (see Lees, 2001; Llewellyn, 2003 and Røe, 2014). To understand more deeply how architecture is produced there is a need to also reveal the personal stories about living through and with architecture.

Skjettenbyen as Part of the Suburbanization of Oslo

The history of the suburbs is nearly as old as the city, but the first larger suburbs around Oslo were poor settlements outside the administrative city limits and beyond the range of public regulations, for example those designed to reduce the risk of fire (Kjelstadli, 1996). They were wooden houses built by the growing class of factory workers in the emerging industrial city. In the latter part of the nineteenth century, the upper classes began moving out to newly established suburbs west of Oslo, while the working classes moved eastwards. Mass suburbanization emerged first with significant increases in car ownership and use. However, the suburbanization of European cities like Oslo began later than in their US counterparts. In the Nordic countries a great deal of the suburban dwellings being built in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s were multi-family housing; that is, apartment blocks, row houses and semi-detached dwellings.

In Oslo the master plan of 1950 for the controlled growth of Greater Oslo included the development of several satellite towns (in Norwegian termed 'drabantbyer'), mainly in the eastern parts of Oslo. Resembling Clarence Stein's neighbourhood units (Hall, 2002), these satellite towns were organized around community facilities, like public services, schools, sports arenas and shops, and were connected to a radial public transport system (Lorange and Myhre, 1991). There was a mix of housing types, from high-rise apartment blocks, to row houses and even single-family dwellings. However, some of the new suburbs, especially in the 1960s and early 1970s, were dominated by Le Corbusier-style high-rise prefabricated housing, which turned out to be heavily criticized as environments for families with children. This criticism halted further construction of these high-rise housing estates (Brattbakk and Hansen, 2004), and made architects and planners look for new solutions. The relatively dense struc-

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ture of row houses at Skjettenbyen, east and north of the first satellite towns, in one of the neighbouring municipalities of Oslo, may be seen as a response to this critique as well as an avoidance of the North American-style sprawl criticized by Norwegian architects and planners.

Skjettenbyen is a quite dense housing area, a small satellite town, on the north-eastern outskirts of Oslo. It was built between 1969 and 1973, consisting of row houses with 1,050 dwellings, and apartment blocks with 600 dwellings, organized as a cooperative with the inhabitants as shareholders. Today Skjettenbyen has around 6,000 inhabitants.

The project was a result of an architectural competition initiated in 1965, and won by a team headed by the Danish architect and Professor Nils-Ole Lund, supplemented with the architectural firm Hultberg, Resen & Throne-Holst who won the second prize. This was the first time in Norway that industrialized building was combined with user participation in such a large project (Nilsen, 2006). The project became well known in Norway, and to a lesser extent among European architects and planners.

In the development plan for Skjettenbyen, the areas for dwellings and a range of facilities were described in detail, in the spirit

Figure 1. Skjettenbyen during construction. (Source: Lund, 1973)

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of functionalism, which also was the case for the planning of the criticized high-rise estates. For every twenty-five dwellings there should be a playground for small children, of at least 50 m². For every 200th dwelling, and within a distance of 150 m from the homes, there was to be a larger playground, of at least 1,500 m². And for every 600th dwelling there was to be a ball field, of at least 6,000 m². The project included a plan for a park, with pedestrian thoroughfares, and a central playground near the school for all children in Skjettenbyen. One child-care institution, capable of looking after forty children, was to be established for every 250th dwelling (Dobloug et al., 1972). In addition a shopping centre was established, as well as basic health care and social services.

Methods

Because Skjettenbyen was considered groundbreaking, the project has been described in several articles and books, and to a lesser extent as part of academic research. Documents of importance to this study are architects' and planners' descriptions, in reports and handbooks, of the project and how it was to be organized, spatially and socially. Then there are articles in journals of architecture and planning, where Skjettenbyen is presented and discussed critically. Finally, there are books and research reports mentioning the housing project. However, except for Guttu's (2003) doctoral dissertation in architecture, there are few research publications mentioning Skjettenbyen (also with the exception of the publications from the project this article is part of [Røe 2012, 2015]). In addition, reports and guidelines produced by Danish architects and researchers belonging to the influential 'tæt-lav' (or dense and low) movement, that heavily influenced the making of Skjettenbyen (especially because of its Danish chief architect) as well as other Scandinavian projects, are part of the data material.

However, because this study aimed at investigating not just how Skjettenbyen has

been produced through the planning discourses of the late 1960s and early 1970s, but also how this suburb was constructed as a place for living, an important part of the data comes from interviews with inhabitants of Skjettenbyen. These were not selected randomly, but in order to grasp how the area, as a place for suburban living, has been constructed through different housing biographies and cultural contexts. Some of the interviews are with so-called pioneer residents, who moved in when Skjettenbyen was built, others have moved in more recently, and others again have moved out or are planning to do so. The interviews were done by two research assistants in the Fall of 2007, and were done on site, that is, in the respondents' dwellings in Skjettenbyen, all names used in this article, however, are fictitious.

Planning for Flexibility, Elasticity and Participation: The Construction of Skjettenbyen through a New Discourse

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, in the wake of the criticism of large-scale and spatially-rigid high-rise estates, architects and planners were looking for new ways to organize suburban housing and building. The aim was to produce small-scale building structures, through participatory planning processes, and still meet the goals of the urban and housing policy of the time. Social scientists and psychologists became relevant in the rise of this new discourse. Ingrid Gehl's influential analysis of different categories of housing areas and dwellings aimed at providing a better basis for planning and the evaluation of living environments by giving an account of some important needs of a psychological nature which should be satisfied (Gehl, 1971, p. 166). In addition to physiological and safety needs, Gehl pointed out that the following psychological needs should be satisfied in living environments: contact (to look at, listen to, speak with and do something together with other people); isolation (to withdraw from other people and external

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stimulation); experience (to see, hear and experience); activity (to be active, create and accomplish something); play (regarding motor activity and sensory perception); structuring (to be capable of orientation and to place objects in the surrounding in relation to oneself), identification (to identify oneself with something in one's environment and project oneself into it) and aesthetics (to receive stimuli which are considered beautiful by the recipient). These needs were to be considered in relation to four environmental components: dimensions (such as height, length and width); arrangement (such as benches, trees and play facilities), location in relation to other objects (such as dwellings in relation to play areas) and sensory stimuli from the environment (Gehl, 1971, pp. 167–168).

This systematic and scientific way of treating the social life of housing areas, inspired Danish architects to create the housing design called 'tæt-lav'. This was a kind of middle ground between high-rise estates (satellite or dormitory towns) and suburbs dominated by single-family houses, which were increasing numerically and spatially. The concept came to be used for a design that could include different types of housing, and because of increased density, lower the cost of infrastructure and service provision. Housing areas termed tæt-lav differed from British garden cities because of their higher densities, and from the German siedlungen because of their supposed lack of blocks of flats (Guttu, 2003, p. 279). They also lacked the social and communal ambitions of the original Garden City concept (see Hall, 2002).

The tæt-lav areas were to have the same densities as blocks of flats, achieving the same urban-like advantages, and at the same time have direct access to the ground (SBI, 1977). All dwellings should have private outdoor areas at ground level (Guttu, 2003, p. 279). The original ideal was the Danish small town or village, with individually built houses. Thereby the single-family dwelling was to be given some urban qualities, such as closeness, contact and common facilities. But there were

some problems related to such a dense and town-like building structure, including access by transport, parking, insight, noise, danger of fire, etc. (SBI, 1977).

However, this vision of a small town development, consisting of individually constructed homes was subsequently modified. The advantages of industrial housing production were considered to increase the physical standard of the dwellings, within reasonable prices, and thus the tæt-lav design principles were adjusted accordingly. But, as Gehl (1971) noted, the dwellings and their surroundings should be built so as to give the 'user' freedom to choose between the protected privacy of the dwelling and the wider community. Besides, the 'user' should be given the possibility to shape her/his own environment, and the community should be able to shape their physical context (SBI, 1971). According to Guttu, most people (especially architects and planners, I believe) would regard both 'tæt' (dense) and 'lav' (low rise) as positive attributes for most housing areas. 'Density' guaranteed a reasonable use of resources, and 'low-rise' buildings promised good housing qualities and a human scale (Guttu, 2003, p. 279).

Skjettenbyen was such a project, where the buildings and layout were described as 'socially good' by the architects, because of the affordability of the apartments, at or near ground level, and with a diverse population to be served effectively by schools, kindergartens, green areas, parking spaces and shops (Lund, 1973, p. 186). The plan for Skjettenbyen was based on a hierarchical road system, partly inspired by the Radburn planning principles (Birch, 1980). Roads enter from two sides and run through the housing area, with plenty of parking spaces, but the houses themselves were to be accessed by foot, and the houses are organized in such a way that people could interact across the pedestrian tracks (Lund, 1973, p. 187).

As part of the implementation of the Skjettenbyen project, a handbook was written for the inhabitants (Dobloug et al., 1972). Printing

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and distributing such a handbook, written by architects, may be seen as an expression of a decision to control not only the detailed planning of Skjettenbyen, but also how its inhabitants were to inhabit their houses and surroundings. The handbook not only presented the project, the plan and technical specifications, but gave the inhabitants guidelines for how the dwellings could be altered (refurnishing, moving of both interior and exterior walls, etc.), how private gardens should be developed (with detailed descriptions of plant types, etc.) and how the development, maintenance and use of outdoor areas should be organized (including the role of the caretaker and the 'service office').

The intention and content of this handbook can be interpreted as a product of both the modernist planning discourse (designing and making places in a top-down fashion) and the

participatory and 'bottom-up' progressive movement, inspired by the upheavals and political transformations of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The buildings were constructed to be 'flexible', giving the inhabitants the possibility to rearrange and change their dwelling environment physically, while at the same time suggesting how this was to be done in practice. A report issued in the early 1970s by a committee for flexible dwellings (Guttu, 2003) stated that the objectives were to make it possible to change the dwellings when children grew into teenagers, or when the children left home, to ensure privacy and as a result of this develop a 'natural' mix of generations within the housing area. This can be interpreted as an act of social engineering, and a form of the much criticized architectural determinism.

Skjettenbyen, as it was constructed through writings, plans and sketches, may be seen

Figure 2. Examples of different sized Skjettenbyen dwellings and their floor plans. (Source: Lund, 1973)

Plantype Nancy, ca. 87 m² plus udhus

Plantype Sally, ca. 113 m² plus udhus

Plantype Sara, ca. 125 m² plus udhus

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as a forceful representation of the 'turn' to low-rise, bottom-up housing projects. It was a turn from the monumentality of the high-rise satellite town, to a more human scale and micro-oriented interactional spaces. It was a turn from top-down planning achieved through rigid master plans, to greater user participation and more flexible solutions, so that housing areas could adjust to social and cultural changes and diversity. The project, being built while Pruitt Igoe (the enormous and high-rise social housing area outside St. Louis, USA) was demolished in 1972 (see Hall, 2002), may be seen as a symbolic step towards postmodernism in planning, resembling Ley's (2003) interpretation of how postmodernism influenced urban planning. However, the legacy of modernism was still very much alive as is evident in the use of scientific knowledge, such as the environmental psychology of Gehl (1971). It is also evident in the detailed prescriptions for the development, use and maintenance of the area in the handbook. The houses were flexible but people were told how to be flexible, in a paternalistic fashion, to maintain the overall modernist architectural style and the ambience of the project. The Skjettenbyen housing project may be viewed as a middle ground between modernism and postmodernism in planning. It had turned its back on high modern functionalism, and introduced a degree of flexibility to ensure some participation and socio-demographic diversity, with the ambition to avoid developing what Grubbauer (2014) calls an architecture that functions as 'a socially classifying device'.

The mundane architecture of Skjettenbyen was produced through the dominating political economy of mass housing that led to the modification of the original ideas of the tæt-lav movement. At the same time the discursive upsurge in the planning and architectural milieu in the late 1960s and early 1970s transformed the typically modernist architectural design and top-down planning of the time, in an ambition to create greater socio-spatial flexibility. In addition, it is

clear from the writing, documents and the handbook that the ambition was to create a new suburban culture, in contrast to what was already seen as the failed culture of high-rise estates and the increasingly criticized culture of middle-class suburbia. The question asked here is: do these ideas and discourses mean anything to the inhabitants of Skjettenbyen? Does the architecture of Skjettenbyen help frame and fertilize the development of a suburban counter culture?

The Construction of Skjettenbyen as Lived Space

The architect Tore Skjeseth had lived in Skjettenbyen since 1972 and in an interview conducted in 2006, he said that many architects moved there during the 1970s and 1980s. The motivation was to live in a child-friendly housing environment, where cars were to be relegated to the outer edges of the area. He also emphasized the significance of the modernist style of the architecture, with few details, flat roofs and an extraordinary window design (Nilsen, 2006). Progressive architects and planners also moved to other newly built satellite towns in the greater Oslo area. However, the ground-breaking project at Skjetten was especially popular, according to Skjeseth. The ideology which characterized Skjettenbyen as a planned housing area was in line with an emerging planning discourse amongst newly educated and radical architects and planners in the early 1970s. This was the case for Tom, a 70 year old architect who moved to Skjettenbyen in 1972:

When we moved here, it was a municipality governed by the labour party… But except from that, it was primarily Skjettenbyen as project that was fascinating. After we had lived in an apartment block in Oslo, we had bought a row house and were to move into Stovner [a larger and partly high-rise satellite town nearer Oslo], but then this emerged. So we sold [the apartment at Stovner] before we moved in, and came here. Another architect I know also moved here. We were two families which moved here. They still

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live here as well… This was an exciting and radical project, and young architects liked it.

Tom thinks architects should live in the type of houses they design. For him, architecture was closely related to political ideology, and he had been designing social housing. The row houses in Skjettenbyen fitted his political view: they were an expression of his personal identity. Therefore, when he moved internally (in Skjettenbyen), he remade the dwelling in order to fit with his image of the original row house.

The aesthetics of Skjettenbyen which these pioneer architects praised will not necessarily please inhabitants with different cultural capital or dispositions. For some of those we interviewed, the architecture was interpreted mainly as functional. The aesthetics of functionalism are valued by modernist architects, designers and others with similar composition of cultural capital, or professional background, while others disliked the box-like design and flat roofs. And Skjettenbyen got nicknames because of this design, as mentioned by some of the respondents: matchbox-houses, rabbit cages, etc. Kari, a thirty-nine year old single parent, with a working-class background, living with two children, expresses this view:

I have no illusions that this is a pretty house. The flat roofs and such things. I cannot imagine what those people [the architects who designed Skjettenbyen] were thinking. It hasn't got a pretty exterior at all. It looks like bird cages. It isn't very practical in Norway with flat roofs [because of snowfall]. And not only because of that, but the heat in the summer… It gets very hot. And for us, we have bedrooms upstairs, it is boiling. So I hope the next they are going to do is to build proper roofs, because … simply because it isn't pretty at all… I haven't chosen this because of the architecture. I don't believe anybody living here has done that.

Kari disliked the strict regulations to protect the distinct housing design, of which the architect Tom approved. When some new garages were built with sloping roofs, she disagreed with those who said that this was not in harmony with the housing design. Kari

would also like to have sloping roofs on other houses.

The discrepancy between the original design and the normative ideas behind it, on the one hand, and ordinary peoples' taste in architecture on the other hand, does not come as a surprise. However, with respect to other design aspects, the discrepancies were not as marked. The physical layout of the houses, and the flexibility praised by contemporary architects, was to a greater extent valued also by those who moved into the row houses. Grete, a forty-three year old woman, who had lived in the Skjetten-area her whole life, emphasized the flexible design:

It is a good thing here that variation is possible. There are almost no similar dwellings any more. You may build 9 m² at a time. These cubes are 9 m². You may build three or four of these without problems. It is possible to have a bathroom in each storey, because you may grow old and need to stay at one floor.

Sarah, a forty-two year old single parent with two sons, was even more enthusiastic. She commented on all the possibilities and variations the cubic modular system gave:

The smaller versions [the houses that have not been expanded] are lacking the cube we have in our dining room, and they do not have the cube where we have our TV. So they have their living room in the middle. It is quite amusing to visit people in this area, because there are no two houses that are the same. If they are similar on the first floor [on the ground level], none of them are alike on the second floor.

The plan for the outdoor areas was also praised. Respondents with children stated that the traffic separation and pedestrian environment were some of the reasons they moved to Skjettenbyen, or they were very satisfied with how this worked out when they moved there. However, the houses were so homogeneous on the outside that some children had problems finding their way home, as Ann, who had lived there since 1972, explained: 'In order to make him [her son] recognize where he was supposed to enter, we sat his snow-sleigh on the outside'.

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Arthur, Ann's husband, said that they were not attracted by the architecture when they moved here (as is often the case with progressive or modernist architecture), but quickly felt at home. He also described the prospectus given to them when they moved in:

We got a prospectus [probably the handbook, produced by Dobloug et al. (1972)] when we moved in, envisaging how it was going to be in some years. And it has become like that, with trees and gardens, and everything. What we saw then [when it was being built] was heaps of clay and some fields… It is going to be a long, long time [they thought]. But it happened very fast.

However, as with other large projects, the building of schools and public and commercial services was delayed. Emma, a sixty-six year old teacher who had been living there from the start, described her frustration:

I remember, we were very frustrated, because they [the planners] didn't realize that there would be so many children here… And I remembered there were a lot of meetings. That also threw people together; 'we have to get a shop, we have to get a real school'… The problems were common for all, and we could talk about them and moan. And that created a feeling of community.

But when everything came into its place, Skjettenbyen was described as functional, or 'socially good', as the chief architect, Lund (1973), had described it. This was a modest daily life, far from the burgeoning shopping centres, or as Sarah said: 'We have the shops we need, I nearly said to survive, within five minutes walking'. But the respondents also pointed out that they frequently visited the larger shopping centres in the area. 'It's not possible to do the Christmas shopping in Skjettenbyen', Kari said.

The people who moved to Skjettenbyen were described by informants as either plain, unsnobbish and working class, or idealistic and positive about the vision of this as a social experiment. But the area has had some social problems. '2013 Ghetto Skjetten' (2013 is the postal code for the area, and in Norwegian it rhymes with Skjetten), is a

slang expression for Skjettenbyen used by youngsters, and mentioned by some of the respondents. Like many ordinary high-rise satellite towns, Skjettenbyen has had its share of 'youth problems', as forty-two year old Sophie, who moved to Skjettenbyen in 1988, pointed out:

There were some drugs and unrest and such things. There's not so much of that now. And there were a lot of fights and a lot of drug addicts hanging out behind the centre… I remember that we talked about it, that I was happy there isn't any more behind the centre, because we have kids.

She located the problem to the area around the centre, the gas station and the social housing areas. The drug problem stigmatized Skjettenbyen, as Sarah, who grew up in a single-family housing area north of Skjetten, explained:

And I was determined never to move to Skjetten… This was because of the rumour Skjetten had then, when I grew up. There were only mobs here… When I grew up Skjettenbyen was built, and there was a lot of unrest here. There were many council flats, and quite a lot of drugs. It was a bit scary. Skjetten was scary.

Simon, a sixty-nine year old, who had lived there since 1974, told how the kids would come home with syringes they had found in the area. Community meetings were arranged to deal with the problems but, according to Peter and others, this has changed. The people hanging out behind the shopping centre are gone. There still are problems here, but they are not as visible as they used to be. Skjettenbyen has a better reputation, partly because of a good football team, he thought. But when he told 'outsiders' where he was living, they still tended to react negatively. However, the representations that give Skjettenbyen a negative stigma from the outside are countered by those who have chosen to live there, and they are overshadowed by positive place-based qualities. In addition, those who have been living there for several years explained why they were attached to the place: through the friends and strong and weak ties they had developed while living at Skjettenbyen. These

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relations, and the formation of local place-based social capital, were often associated with the interior road systems and 'micro-places' of the area, as Emma pointed out:

Like in this small road, I think it is five families who have been living here all the time. We are about the same age, and we have become very close, and we help each other… You may go away for a holiday, and somebody will go into your dwelling and water your flowers, and take in the mail. We also have several things in common. We know each other's kids, and grandchildren, and we can help each other. So we have become friends even if in the beginning we were just neighbours.

She also emphasizes the role of weak ties:

And I have many [people] that I know… That is people I stop and talk with in the shop, without being together in other situations. However, this is one of the reasons for staying here, to be able to pop into a neighbour.

The mundane pragmatism revealed in these interviews, in addition to the mature sense of place that develops over time when people build social capital and 'collect' biographic memories, is far from the architectural ideologies and the 'progressive' ideas of planners and architects. Except for the architects interviewed, the housing area is evaluated, criticized and praised for its design, layout and outdoor spaces, as part of the everyday life of its inhabitants, and not as part of a suburban counter culture. However, the planning layout, architectural form and practice-structure relations that came as a product of the tæt-lav discourse may still frame people's practices and the place-specific suburban culture in ways that make Skjettenbyen different from mainstream suburbia elsewhere in Norway.

Concluding Discussion

The ideological construction and the architectural aura or symbolism of Skjettenbyen seems to have been 'hidden' from most inhabitants in Skjettenbyen, except for those who are familiar and comfortable with the architectural discourse, as architects or plan-

planners with an interest in this housing design. The design, or the idea behind it, was not an explicit part of the arguments for choosing to live there. Except for the architect interviewed, who had lived there since it was built, the housing design did not match the respondent's housing aspirations, or give them a sense of attachment. The cultural belonging, or belonging based on cultural identification, was only expressed by the architect, who believed in the advantages of the tæt-lav housing design. This may be seen as an ideological and politically motivated version of what Savage et al. (2005) calls 'elective belonging', a belonging which is chosen on the basis of cultural preferences or cultural capital, rather than traditional community attachment. In this case it is the architecture, the plan, and the political idea behind it, which the architect identifies with and thereby creates a sense of belonging. According to Dovey's (2005) interpretation of Bourdieu's view on art, the difference in preferences for particular architectural styles, leads to social distinctions between people, or divisions between those who do and do not appreciate certain styles. It may seem strange to use this distinction about something like modernist architecture, but it is far from neutral, or natural, and the distinctions between modernists and, for example, neo-traditionalists are very marked in architectural critique and discourse.

However, this ideological attachment may also be based on a wish to be associated with a place with certain socio-demographic or socio-economic characteristics. This was mentioned as a reason to live in Skjettenbyen, compared to the more 'snobbish areas' in the western parts of Oslo. This was an argument for choosing Skjettenbyen as a place to live and to raise children.

For others, without the context-specific cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu, 1984), in part coming from architectural and planning education of the late 1960s and early 1970s, the sense of place-based belonging was more general, and social capital seemed to be

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of greater importance. People feel attached to a place through their social activities, which are established and develop over time. Some of the respondents in Skjettenbyen expressed the view that this belonging was not associated with the housing area as a whole (it is too big), but to what we might choose to call 'micro-places', or groups of neighbours sharing a common interest or cultural disposition, or living close to each other. This process of place-making may be amplified if there is 'trouble' in the neighbourhood, or if there are threats (like development plans and road building) or needs (for a new school, perhaps) which may lead to social mobilization. For others, those who have been raised in Skjettenbyen, such social (biographical) capital may be reconstructed from the time they lived there.

Architects and planners tend to have great expectations on behalf of the future population of an area they are planning or building, and to imagine the creation of certain cultures. The planning ideology of Skjettenbyen represents a regime not only for how the dwellings and their environments were to be designed and built, but also for how the area was to be used, as well as the establishment of a culture that the architects themselves would take part in. In this sense Skjettenbyen embodied the cultural political economy of the welfare state, aiming to provide the working and lower middle classes with suitable places to live a suburban existence.

However, the reception of this plan for everyday life in Skjettenbyen differed amongst the people interviewed in this study. Some praised it, or parts of it, while others rejected it. The purpose of this paper is not to decide if there is a mismatch between how the architects and planners envisaged the experience of Skjettenbyen, and how people living there actually experience and feel attached to the area. Rather it seeks to uncover the social processes and ways that people relate to such an ideologically saturated place and how attachments may be created.

This discussion is important and may be taken further because it illuminates the role of design and planning in shaping people's practices and feelings towards a place, and it may help us understand to what extent it is possible to influence suburban culture through planning. It focuses on the relation between material space, on the one hand, and social and cultural fields and spaces, on the other. We may also gain new knowledge of how a housing area functions differently over time and for different types of people, and then how it may be modified to accommodate new groups.

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