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Cities of Choice: Elective Affinities and the Transformation of Western European Urbanity from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 October 2015

MORITZ FÖLLMER
MORITZ FÖLLMER*
Affiliation:
Department of History, University of Amsterdam, Spuistraat 134, 1012 VB Amsterdam, The Netherlands; University of Amsterdam; m.foellmer@uva.nl
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Abstract

This article discusses the meanings and effects of personal choice and elective affinities in Western European cities from the mid-1950s to the early 1980s. The first section shows how the notion of choosing one's surroundings and relations underpinned the development of ‘modern’ apartment buildings, suburban homes and road networks but also attracted significant criticism. The second section argues that this notion soon was not only criticised, but came under pressure by New Left activists, whose emphatically different elective affinities led them to create alternative spaces such as communal apartments and squatted houses. In so doing, they reinvigorated urban life, but also diluted their initial political project and triggered a conservative counter-reaction.

Type
Articles
Information
Contemporary European History , Volume 24 , Special Issue 4: Urban Societies in Europe , November 2015 , pp. 577 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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65 ‘Pennerparadies Kudamm-Eck: Umsatzeinbußen bei Geschäftsleuten’, Berliner Morgenpost, 18 Jan. 1981; ‘Keine Bereicherung für das Quartier: Unmut über das AJZ’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 11 Apr. 1981. In a similar vein, ‘Punkers gooien ramen in de hoofdstad in’, De Telegraaf, 1 May 1978.

66 ‘Leserbriefe’, Berliner Morgenpost, 19 Jan. 1981.

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68 ‘Trecentomila sulle sponde dei due Navigli alla scoperta di una Milano più pittoresca’, Corriere della Sera, 2 June 1980; ‘Strassen und Gassen der Zürcher Altstadt: Trittligasse – “Wohnquartier für Eingeborene”’, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 23 Apr. 1981; ‘Fahnen, Farben, Funken und Feuer: Fröhliches Sechseläuten unter wolkenschwerem Himmel’, ibid., 29 Apr. 1981; Hans Habe, ‘Rendezvous mit Berlin’, B.Z., 21 Apr. 1972.

69 ‘Vivere meglio a Milano: Un dibattito con tre voci’, Corriere della Sera, 25 May 1980.

70 There are thus far few studies that place right-wing populism in its local contexts, but see, on suburban Zurich, Zollinger, Lukas, Der Mittelstand am Rande: Christoph Blocher, das Volk und die Vorstädte (Bern: Berner Beiträge zur Soziologie, 2004)Google Scholar.

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