Mass Housing, Late Modernism, and the Forging of Community in New York City and East Berlin, 1965–1989
Abstract
Co-op City in New York City and Marzahn in East Berlin were constructed in the late 1960s and late 1970s, respectively. This article explores both the intentions of their planners and the experiences of their residents in these two very different societies. It challenges the standard narrative of urban modernism, which sees its demise with the growth of new urbanist critiques of the 1960s. Instead, it posits that urban modernism proved flexible enough to respond to this challenge with developments like Co-op City and Marzahn, which were simultaneously more ambitious, more defensive, and more thoughtful about the nature and meaning of urban community than their modernist predecessors in the immediate postwar period. Finally, I argue that late modernist ideas about community, in particular a kind of urban community that offered a contrast to American-style consumerism, provide a connective thread across the Iron Curtain in the later Cold War.
Repository Citation
Sammartino, Annemarie. 2016. “Mass Housing, Late Modernism and the Forging of Community in New York City and East Berlin, 1965-1989.” American Historical Review 122(2): 492-521.
Publisher
Oxford University Press
Publication Date
3-28-2016
Publication Title
American Historical Review
Department
History
Document Type
Article
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/ahr/121.2.492
Keywords
Urban history, East Germany, Postwar, New York City, Berlin, Modernism, Transnational
Language
English
Format
text
