Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Document Notes
There’s a bigger thing at play here.. a theme I’m seeing around relative morality and the savior-desires of one class to help a lower class overcome what the elites perceive as their flaws (when in actuality, those flaws are just stereotypes they’ve imposed on them). Fixing them in their own image, and away from their skewed and stereotypical image in the first place. Everything is being seen thru a lens of privilege, arrogance and faulty moralistic views. followup
Highlights
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Neighborhoods like Transvaalbuurt were built specifically “for the new man, the class-conscious laborer — someone who not only deserved their new living space, but also knew how to put it to good use.” The slightly arrogant undertone of these passages
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Amsterdam School’s greatest flaw: its concern with reforming the working class in its own, bourgeois image.
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the city government appointed quasi-commissarial overseers tasked with “teaching them how to live” outside the slums — a process that turned out just as patronizing as it sounds on paper.
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“Nothing can be clean or beautiful enough for our workers,” the aforementioned overseer trumpeted, “having been forced to suffer so much.”
✏️ The holier than thou intent of uplifting the savages… followed by (next highlight) 🔗 View Highlight
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that beauty and cleanliness, Hendriks and van Velzen retort, was “nonetheless imposed” onto the worker without their input, and often at the expense of their practical, material needs. Intricate designs and decorations drove up construction and renovation costs, took up space that could have been used for bigger kitchens and windows, and, in the case of Het Schip, insufficient noise cancellation and fire safety measures — all of which gave rise to a palpable atmosphere of alienation
✏️ As always, even with “noble” intent of helping people, if you don’t involve the people you’re helping.. you just end up hurting them. Reminds me of whatever that article was that mentioned Australia trying to help prostitutes with new policies, without actually consulting the prostitutes about what they wanted. 🔗 View Highlight
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“socialist patriarchs who saw it as their sworn duty to provide the entire population with roofs and walls. Only in theory did they recognize the right that this population had to homes of its own taste and choosing… . The bricks had been assembled into the strangest shapes and patterns — not at the request of the tenants, but in service of the aesthetic whole. Our homes weren’t really ours, we were merely allowed to live inside them.”
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Politically, its social housing helped further the socialist cause, with neighborhoods like Transvaalbuurt — nicknamed Het Rode Dorp (“The Red Village”) — becoming hotbeds of socialist activity. Jewish workers rapidly abandoned the liberal and religious musings of de Hond in favor of this other big-C Cause. They formed labor unions, art clubs, and homeowner’s associations, subscribed to and distributed socialist newspapers like Het Volk
✏️ The positive side is still valid.. people got housing, and socialism was fomented quite strongly. 🔗 View Highlight
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the Amsterdam School’s work often failed to meet workers’ material needs, with elaborate construction plans leading to higher rental prices