"Writing the History of Post-war Housing Complexes and Neighborhoods. A Take on Research Strategies and Methodologies"

Between the 1950s and the 1970s urban middle classes had a central role in the process of growth andtransformation of post-war urban environments in Europe. New housing complexes and neighborhoods were built in the outskirts of the city, as a response to their residential aspirations, desires of mobility, housing cultures, and strategies of modernization, contributing to the construction of a quite homogeneous residential landscape.In the last decade, a multifaceted panorama of studies has dealt with the history of post-war middle-class housing, contributing to understand such changes and their social implications, interweaving different project scales and cultures and adopting different perspectives and methodologies.The historical investigation of housing complexes and neighborhoods has therefore become a fruitful field of exchange between scholars with difference competences and an exceptional testing ground to experiment with methods and practices of historical research, bringing to the light new fields of work for the history of post-war architecture and urbanism and new lines of methodological investigation. These include micro-historical approaches, comparative and transnational histories, revised approaches to typological studies, fieldwork-based enquiries, ethnographic observations of spatial transformations, visual studies of ordinary built environments, oral histories, experiences with public history, etc.The session aims at exploring and analyzing the most recent trends in the study of post-war housing complexes and neighborhoods built for the middle classes, paying particular attention to adiscussion of research strategies. We encourage papers that address one or more case studies, outlining the methodological choices behind the research work and their implication for an understanding of post-WWII residential landscapes. Questions discussedin the session may include:-the relation between architectural history and the social sciences; -the contamination between fieldwork techniques and archival research; -the public dimension of historical research, through initiatives of collection and conservation of memories and life experiences of the middle classes; -the evolution of research practices in housing history in relation to the emergence of new fields of investigation.