Description
Book SynopsisTrade Review"A tour de force on the French suburbs and the utopian imaginaries that made them into the twentieth century's largest social experiment. The Social Project is a must-read for anyone interested in the ‘other Paris’ of the suburban periphery and a brilliant contribution to the urban and architectural history of the French suburbs and to understanding the social ambitions of architecture."—Rosemary Wakeman, Fordham University
"The Social Project does important work in uncovering and making available the complex projects, motives, dreams, and politics that made possible the vast expansion of urbanism in postwar France. It reminds us with force and insight that today’s despair and gloominess about such projects was not always the case nor were the current dreary outcomes inevitable."—Paul Rabinow, University of California, Berkeley
"A thorough history of the development of post-World War II mass housing in France."—The Culture Machine
Table of ContentsContents
AbbreviationsAcknowledgments
Introduction: Building the Banlieue
1950s: Projects in the Making1. Streamlining Production2. A Bureaucratic Epistemology
1960s: Architecture Meets Social Science3. Animation to the Rescue4. The Expertise of Participation5. Programming the Villes Nouvelles
1970s: Consuming Contradictions6. Megastructures in Denial7. The Ultimate Projects
Conclusion: Where Is the Social Project?
NotesIndex
