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

Author: Per Gunnar Røe Year: 2015 Source type: article (Built Environment Vol. 41, No. 4, "Suburban Spaces, Suburban Cultures," Alexandrine Press, Winter 2015, pp. 538–549 — the same special issue as Living on the Edge; verified via Ingenta Connect issue index, art00008) Raw file: raw/articles/roe-2015-construction-of-a-suburb.md

Summary

Røe investigates Skjettenbyen, a planned row-house suburb of ~6,000 inhabitants on Oslo's north-eastern outskirts, built 1969–1973 as one of the largest products of the Norwegian welfare state's suburban programme. The paper reconstructs the ideology that produced it — the Danish tæt-lav (dense-low) discourse of flexible, participatory, human-scaled housing that turned against both the Le Corbusier-style high-rise satellite towns and North American sprawl — and then tests that ideology against interviews with inhabitants (including "pioneer residents" from 1972). The finding is double: the architectural ideology and its "aura" remained hidden from most inhabitants, whose attachment is a mundane pragmatism — a mature sense of place built over time through place-based social capital in micro-places — far from the progressive counter-culture the architect-residents brought with them; yet the tæt-lav practice-structure relations (interior design, car parking, the traffic-separated layout) still frame practices and a place-specific suburban culture that makes Skjettenbyen different from suburbia elsewhere in Norway. The paper is a study of "an ideologically saturated place" and of how attachments may be created within one.

Key Claims

The dominant Western representation of suburbia — the socially and culturally homogeneous area of detached single-family dwellings — is "a mainly American construction," mythologized by media and film (Desperate Housewives, American Beauty); observers like Hayden (2003) and Knox (2008) have revealed "a great deal of variety in suburban design, form and social composition."
Suburbs worldwide are becoming less middle class and increasingly home to non-white and immigrant residents (Keil, 2013 "and this issue" — i.e., Keil's own article in the same special issue); in some cases "the urban is being suburbanized in terms of social composition and culture" (Butler, 2007).
The US and the Nordic countries built suburbs through opposite systems: the American suburb "typically planned, developed and constructed by private agents" (William Levitt the famous example), while in Europe — especially the Nordic countries — "public authorities have had a much more important role in the making of suburbs," a difference Røe traces, via Hall (2002), to the origins of modern urban planning where "the US and Europe parted company."
Skjettenbyen's basic facts: built 1969–1973; 1,050 row-house dwellings plus 600 apartment-block dwellings; organized as a cooperative with the inhabitants as shareholders; ~6,000 inhabitants today; a "quite dense" small satellite town on the north-eastern outskirts of Oslo.
It was the product of an architectural competition initiated in 1965, won by a team headed by the Danish architect and professor Nils-Ole Lund (supplemented by Hultberg, Resen & Throne-Holst, second prize), and "the first time in Norway that industrialized building was combined with user participation in such a large project" (Nilsen, 2006).
The satellite-town lineage: Oslo's master plan of 1950 for the controlled growth of Greater Oslo planned satellite towns (drabantbyer), mainly in the east, resembling Clarence Stein's neighbourhood units, organized around community facilities and connected to a radial public transport system (Lorange and Myhre, 1991).
Some 1960s/early-1970s suburbs 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 pushed architects and planners toward new solutions; Skjettenbyen's dense row-house structure is both a response to that critique and "an avoidance of the North American-style sprawl criticized by Norwegian architects and planners."
The development plan prescribed facilities in detail "in the spirit of functionalism, which also was the case for the planning of the criticized high-rise estates": a playground of at least 50 m² per 25 dwellings; a larger playground of at least 1,500 m² per 200 dwellings within 150 m of homes; a ball field of at least 6,000 m² per 600 dwellings; one child-care institution (40 children) per 250 dwellings (Dobloug et al., 1972); plus a shopping centre, basic health care and social services.
Methodologically, the paper positions itself against the iconic-and-entrepreneurial focus of recent architecture theory (Jones, 2009; Faulconbridge, 2009; Grubbauer, 2014): it studies instead "the mundane spatial forms associated with suburban developments," arguing that "to understand more deeply how architecture is produced there is a need to also reveal the personal stories about living through and with architecture" (with Lees, 2001; Llewellyn, 2003; Røe, 2014). Data: planning documents, journals, the inhabitants' handbook, and interviews (Fall 2007, conducted in respondents' dwellings, all names fictitious, including pioneer residents).
The new discourse of the late 1960s/early 1970s brought social scientists and psychologists into housing design: Ingrid Gehl's (1971) analysis specified psychological needs to be satisfied in living environments — contact, isolation, experience, activity, play, structuring, identification, aesthetics — to be considered against four environmental components (dimensions, arrangement, location, sensory stimuli).
The Danish tæt-lav (dense-low) movement was the discourse's built programme: "a kind of middle ground between high-rise estates (satellite or dormitory towns) and suburbs dominated by single-family houses"; denser than British garden cities, without the German siedlungen's blocks of flats, and — notably — lacking "the social and communal ambitions of the original Garden City concept" (Guttu, 2003; SBI 1971, 1977).
The tæt-lav formula: densities equal to blocks of flats with "the same urban-like advantages" while having "direct access to the ground"; all dwellings with private outdoor areas at ground level; the original ideal the Danish small town or village, giving the single-family dwelling "urban qualities, such as closeness, contact and common facilities" — subsequently modified because "the advantages of industrial housing production were considered to increase the physical standard of the dwellings, within reasonable prices."
Density and low-rise as professional values: "'Density' guaranteed a reasonable use of resources, and 'low-rise' buildings promised good housing qualities and a human scale" (Guttu, 2003) — "most people (especially architects and planners, I believe) would regard both 'tæt' (dense) and 'lav' (low rise) as positive attributes for most housing areas."
Skjettenbyen's plan: a hierarchical road system partly inspired by the Radburn planning principles (Birch, 1980); roads entering from two sides "with plenty of parking spaces, but the houses themselves were to be accessed by foot," the houses organized so "people could interact across the pedestrian tracks" (Lund, 1973) — the traffic separation that later ranked among inhabitants' own reasons for moving there.
The inhabitants' handbook (Dobloug et al., 1972) — with guidelines for altering dwellings (refurnishing, moving interior and exterior walls), developing private gardens (detailed plant types), and organizing outdoor areas (the caretaker, the 'service office') — "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 is "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"; the flexibility it prescribed (dwellings changeable as children grew into teenagers or left home, ensuring privacy and a 'natural' mix of generations) "can be interpreted as an act of social engineering, and a form of the much criticized architectural determinism."
Skjettenbyen as the 'turn' embodied: "a turn from the monumentality of the high-rise satellite town, to a more human scale and micro-oriented interactional spaces"; "a turn from top-down planning achieved through rigid master plans, to greater user participation and more flexible solutions." Built while Pruitt-Igoe was being demolished (1972), it "may be seen as a symbolic step towards postmodernism in planning" (via Ley's 2003 interpretation) — yet the legacy of modernism remained alive in the scientific environmental psychology and the handbook's detailed prescriptions.
The concept-formula: "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 project "may be viewed as a middle ground between modernism and postmodernism in planning," with "the ambition to avoid developing what Grubbauer (2014) calls an architecture that functions as 'a socially classifying device.'"
The planning ideology was a regime with a cultural ambition: it governed not only how the dwellings were designed and built but "how the area was to be used, as well as the establishment of a culture that the architects themselves would take part in" — 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."
The architect-inhabitants: Tore Skjeseth (interviewed 2006) recalled many architects moving in during the 1970s–80s for the child-friendly environment, cars "relegated to the outer edges," and the modernist style ("few details, flat roofs and an extraordinary window design"). Tom (70, moved 1972) sold his Stovner apartment when Skjettenbyen "emerged": "This was an exciting and radical project, and young architects liked it." For him architecture was "closely related to political ideology," the row houses "an expression of his personal identity" — and when he moved internally he remade the dwelling "in order to fit with his image of the original row house."
The taste split: the pioneer architects' aesthetics "will not necessarily please inhabitants with different cultural capital or dispositions" — the area got nicknames ("matchbox-houses, rabbit cages"); Kari (39, single parent, working-class background): "I have no illusions that this is a pretty house… I haven't chosen this because of the architecture. I don't believe anybody living here has done that." She disliked the strict regulations protecting the distinct housing design and favoured sloping roofs (flat roofs impractical in Norwegian snow and summer heat).
But the flexibility WAS valued beyond the discourse's carriers: Grete (43) on the 9 m² cubic modules ("You may build three or four of these without problems… you may grow old and need to stay at one floor"); Sarah (42): "It is quite amusing to visit people in this area, because there are no two houses that are the same"; and the traffic-separated pedestrian environment was among the reasons residents moved there or were satisfied after moving.
Unintended effects of the homogeneous design: "the houses were so homogeneous on the outside that some children had problems finding their way home" — Ann, resident since 1972: "In order to make him [her son] recognize where he was supposed to enter, we sat his snow-sleigh on the outside." Arthur: not attracted by the architecture "but quickly felt at home."
Community formed through shared problems: schools and services were delayed — Emma (66, teacher, from the start) recalled "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."
Stigma and its counters: '2013 Ghetto Skjetten' (the postal code, rhyming with Skjetten) as youth slang; drugs and fights behind the centre (Sophie, moved 1988); Sarah "determined never to move to Skjetten" because "It was a bit scary. Skjetten was scary"; Simon on community meetings, the improved reputation "partly because of a good football team," and outsiders who "still tended to react negatively." The negative outside representations "are countered by those who have chosen to live there, and they are overshadowed by positive place-based qualities."
The positive finding: attachment through strong and weak ties — place-based social capital "often associated with the interior road systems and 'micro-places' of the area" (Emma's five families on one small road who water each other's flowers and take in mail; the weak ties of "people I stop and talk with in the shop" — "one of the reasons for staying here, to be able to pop into a neighbour"). The revealed meaning is "mundane pragmatism" and "the mature sense of place that develops over time when people build social capital and 'collect' biographic memories… far from the architectural ideologies and the 'progressive' ideas of planners and architects." The area is evaluated "as part of the everyday life of its inhabitants, and not as part of a suburban counter culture."
Yet the framing persists: "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" — interior design and car parking named as the paradigm practice-structure relations.
The conclusion's sociological framing: the ideological construction and "architectural aura" were 'hidden' from most inhabitants; the design "was not an explicit part of the arguments for choosing to live there." The architect's cultural identification with the design "may be seen as an ideological and politically motivated version of what Savage et al. (2005) calls 'elective belonging'" — belonging chosen on the basis of cultural preferences or cultural capital rather than traditional community attachment. Via Dovey's (2005) interpretation of Bourdieu, differences in style preferences "lead to social distinctions between people": modernist architecture "is far from neutral, or natural." For those without the context-specific cultural capital and habitus (Bourdieu, 1984), belonging was more general and social capital mattered more; belonging attached not to the housing area as a whole ("it is too big") but to micro-places; place-making is amplified by trouble, threats (development plans, road building) or needs (a new school) that "may lead to social mobilization"; and those raised in Skjettenbyen reconstruct "social (biographical) capital."
The general claim about the discipline: "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 paper's purpose is explicitly not to adjudicate a design-experience mismatch but "to uncover the social processes and ways that people relate to such an ideologically saturated place and how attachments may be created" — illuminating "to what extent it is possible to influence suburban culture through planning."

Connections

Concepts: suburbanism — the wiki's cluster anchor; this source is its Nordic welfare-state register and its inhabitant-scale evidence (the "interior of suburbanism" question). taet-lav — the design discourse the paper reconstructs. user-participation — industrialized building combined with participation, and its paternalistic limit. satellite-town — the drabantby lineage of the Oslo 1950 master plan. welfare-state-housing — the cultural political economy of the welfare state. elective-belonging — Savage et al. via Røe's ideological variant. micro-places — Røe's coinage for the sub-area scale of attachment. social-capital — the mechanism of place attachment over time. architectural-determinism — the named critique of the flexible-dwelling programme. housing — multi-family Nordic suburbanization and cooperative tenure. home — attachment and belonging modes. habitus and cultural capital as the condition of architectural identification. ideology — the planning ideology as regime for design and use. machine-for-living — the Le Corbusier-style high-rise prefab estate as the criticized pole. interior-design — named (with car parking) as a practice-structure relation framing suburban culture. flexible-interior — the prescribed flexibility: movable walls, 9 m² cubes. everyday-life — mundane pragmatism as the everyday's verdict on design ideology. practiced-place — place-building over time; the snow-sleigh as territorial marker. habit — practice-structure relations framing practices. urban-sprawl — the avoidance of North American sprawl as a design motive. home-ownership-democracy — the contrasting (cooperative, non-home-ownership) Nordic tenure. planetary-suburbanization — Keil cited on the changing social composition of suburbs.

Authors: roe-per-gunnar — the author. Cited with pages in the wiki: jacobs-jane (Death and Life as the inspiration of the anti-large-scale critique), bourdieu-pierre (Distinction 1984: habitus, taste distinction), le-corbusier (the "Le Corbusier-style" high-rise estates), knox-paul (Metroburbia USA). Cited but not paged (see log): Nils-Ole Lund, Ingrid Gehl, Clarence Stein, Dolores Hayden, Roger Keil, Peter Hall, Savage/Bagnall/Longhurst, Jens Guttu, Brattbakk & Hansen, Lorange & Myhre, Kjelstadli, Ley, Butler, Nilsen, Dobloug et al. — and Kim Dovey (2005, "The silent complicity of architecture"), whose Becoming Places is the fourth source of this ingest batch.

Debates: postmodernism-vs-modernism — the paper's "middle ground between modernism and postmodernism in planning" thesis, staged in a built case.

Related source notes: Living on the Edge (Cochrane, Colenutt & Field 2015) — same special issue and batch; the growth-machine England against Røe's welfare-state Norway. Putting Architecture in its Social Place (Jones 2009) — cited by Røe as the iconic-focused cultural political economy his mundane counter-case answers. 'House Beautiful' (Madigan & Munro 1996) — habitus and constrained consumption at the household scale. Home: Territory and Identity (Wise 2000) — markers and territorialization (the snow-sleigh register).

Direct Quotes

"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… However, this is a mainly American construction." (p. 538)

"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)." (p. 538)

"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." (p. 539)

"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." (p. 539)

"To understand more deeply how architecture is produced there is a need to also reveal the personal stories about living through and with architecture." (p. 539)

"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)." (p. 540)

"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." (p. 540)

"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." (p. 540)

"This was the first time in Norway that industrialized building was combined with user participation in such a large project (Nilsen, 2006)." (p. 540)

"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." (p. 541)

"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)." (p. 542)

"They also lacked the social and communal ambitions of the original Garden City concept (see Hall, 2002)." (p. 542)

"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." (p. 542)

"'Density' guaranteed a reasonable use of resources, and 'low-rise' buildings promised good housing qualities and a human scale (Guttu, 2003, p. 279)." (p. 542)

"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)." (p. 542)

"Printing 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." (p. 543)

"This can be interpreted as an act of social engineering, and a form of the much criticized architectural determinism." (p. 543)

"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." (p. 544)

"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." (p. 544)

"The Skjettenbyen housing project may be viewed as a middle ground between modernism and postmodernism in planning." (p. 544)

"This was an exciting and radical project, and young architects liked it." — Tom, architect resident since 1972 (p. 545)

"I have no illusions that this is a pretty house. The flat roofs and such things… It looks like bird cages… I haven't chosen this because of the architecture. I don't believe anybody living here has done that." — Kari (p. 545)

"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." — Sarah (p. 546)

"In order to make him [her son] recognize where he was supposed to enter, we sat his snow-sleigh on the outside." — Ann (p. 546)

"The problems were common for all, and we could talk about them and moan. And that created a feeling of community." — Emma (p. 546)

"'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." (p. 546)

"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… So we have become friends even if in the beginning we were just neighbours." — Emma (p. 547)

"However, this is one of the reasons for staying here, to be able to pop into a neighbour." — Emma (p. 547)

"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." (p. 547)

"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." (p. 547)

"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." (p. 547)

"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… 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." (p. 547)

"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." (p. 548)

"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." (p. 548)

"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." (p. 548)

Open Questions

The unanalyzed practice-structure relations: interior design and car parking are named as the tæt-lav discourse's framing instruments, but the paper analyzes neither in detail. What would a full account of parking layout (the Radburn-type traffic separation) or of the handbook's refurnishing rules as practice-structure relations look like — and would it strengthen or qualify the "framing without determining" thesis?
The gendered asymmetry of the interviews: most named non-architect interviewees are women (Kari, Grete, Sarah, Ann, Emma, Sophie), several single parents; is there a gendered dimension to suburban attachment and to the critique of the flat-roofed, regulation-protected design that Røe does not thematize?
Does "the ideologically saturated place" travel? Skjettenbyen's ideology was carried by architect-residents and a welfare-state regime. In the private-developer growth machine of Cochrane, Colenutt & Field's English (sub)urban region, what plays the role of the architects' progressive counter-culture — and would the mundane-pragmatism finding replicate?
Tenure and attachment: Skjettenbyen is a cooperative (inhabitants as shareholders), the opposite pole of England's home-owning democracy. Does the cooperative tenure condition the social-capital form of belonging, or is tenure irrelevant to micro-place attachment?
Ingrid Gehl (1971): the paper's environmental-psychological source is Ingrid Gehl's Bo-miljø (SBI-rapport 71) — distinct from, and preceding, Jan Gehl's better-known public-space work. How does her needs-list (contact, isolation, experience, activity, play, structuring, identification, aesthetics) relate to the design-methods tradition, and why has her version of evidence-based dwelling design disappeared from the canon?
The stigma mechanism: '2013 Ghetto Skjetten' works by rhyme and postal code. How do linguistic stigmas of this kind interact with architectural reputation (the flat roofs, the "rabbit cages"), and can a football team (Simon's explanation) really counter them?
The counterfactual estate: Brattbakk and Hansen's finding (cited p. 540) that the criticized Norwegian high-rise estates remain "well-kept residential areas still stigmatised" suggests the tæt-lav turn may have inherited an unjustified moral geography. Would the same interviews conducted in a 1960s high-rise drabantby produce the same mundane pragmatism?