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A FEW STEPS TOWARDS AN OPERATIONAL NOTION OF SCARCITY: ARCHITECTURE, THE CITY AND ITS RESOURCES – SOME MOMENTS IN VIENNA’S SOCIAL HOUSING MICHAEL KLEIN I. Architecture and Heteronomy Nothing has had comparable influence on the academic debate of architecture and urbanism in the last ten years as the issue of sustainability. After the proclaimed death of modernism (Jencks 1977) and subsequent a self-imposed hermitage in a formal exegesis of the fold or alternatively, the search for the best-selling icon, architecture had somehow lost credibility. With sustainability, so the assumption, architecture has rediscovered purpose per se; with it, architecture has found a new challenge to take responsibility and contribute to our common future. But how to do? And how to think of prior attempts? A certain fear haunts the vision of tomorrow. Whether it is running out of oil, of water, or land or the need to limit emissions: the concept underlying many of the notions and ideas of sustainability is the exhaustibility of resources, of limits. True or wrong, exaggerated or with good cause, moralized or condemned -with such turn, scarcity was back on the agenda again. Again? Scarcity, this is what this text will be about, has been a major determinate in architecture and the city. There has been no major sensation about scarcity in architecture, nor has there been any theory on it. Yet at any point, the availability of resource - be it material or immaterial - for the ends aimed at, have marked the central substance architecture is made of. Such notion conceptualizes architecture basically along its means-ends relation. Any architecture has always been formed out of the resources available, in a quite literal sense. The way, in which this has been followed, is, what I would say is central to architecture as a modern project. There is something unsatisfying about sustainability, as the “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.“ as it has been defined in the Brundtland Report(World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). The far-reaching range of interpretation of such definition might give a reason for the triumph of sustainability. Yet, a slight touch of conserving the existing status quo takes over, that it is more about adapting than a fundamental change. The projects and ideas in fact sum up a variety of diverse, even contradictory approaches, concepts and aims, that have let become sustainability a somehow hollow term. Nonetheless, it shows comprehensiveness not seen for long that allows for the coaction of disciplines and fields that have grown apart, such as theory and design practice. Reconsidering the Bruntland definition again, brings the means-ends relation to 191
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the fore. Sustainable is, what in an intra-generational relationship allows for future’s ends regarding today’s limited means and around. Sustainability thus, encompasses the “project of tomorrow”, the fact of scarcity and both, their relational status. My aim here is to operationalize scarcity. I will do so by discussing it on a general level in order to open it up to an architectural debate. Looking at architecture in regard of scarcity focuses on its engagement with the surrounding and its reactions. My concern thus, will be with architecture’s modes of production as well as it will be always consider architecture to be relational. This relational status entails the connection to fields such as politics, economy or technology. Space is a social reality that shapes the social as it is shaped by the social, as Henri Lefèbvre (1991) has put it. Architecture thereby is understood as physical figure, as practice and as theory at the same time. With the new purpose in architecture, it has obtained meaning for urban issues again that a previous attention to so-to-say formalism handed over to other disciplines such as planning. The contemporary debate however, on the city reattaches a major attention to material as well as immaterial resources, their flows and their right allocation in a relational sense. This main focus reveals not only scarcity’s ontological condition for sustainability in architecture. The relationships once again, emphasize architecture’s dependency and embeddedness: Architecture is a heteronomous discipline. Social housing My intent is to examine how to critically read the prior undertakings in what today would be called sustainable as well as to show scarcity’s role on architecture and urban development. Therefore, I have chosen the field of social housing as an integral aspect of a modernist project. Over the 20th century, social housing has been an elementary component in building the European city in shape, conception and social life. For this reason, it downright epitomizes architecture’s possible embeddings and relationship to city, politics and society in the face of scarcity. Even during the prosperous years of the welfare state, social housing as a cost-intensive pillar had to economize on almost every level. Aspects brought up today in terms of sustainability, have been discussed, planned and realized during this 20th century enterprise. Levelling out social inequality, providing long-term stability and poverty reduction, the right to the city, the availability of land and the topic of density, the use of technology, as well as the question of how to formulate ideas of communality, of welfare spatially and architecturally – these all have been discussed in the recent debate of sustainability as they have been all over the 20th century. And even though some of these might have failed, and some have, for sure, it is worth reconsidering. As we have seen: a good cause is not enough. Amongst the European Cities providing a meaningful contribution to social housing, Vienna stands out as a particular example. Not only was it confronted with major housing shortage at the beginning of the 20th century after rapid growth over the preceding 60 years, but from then onwards, it has gradually created a system of social housing provision which is amongst the most comprehensive, with about 48% of the total housing stock. To focus on one city will furthermore allow working out the different forms and modes of scarcity. 192
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II. Scarcity Scarcity has been described as central to the field of economics, even to define it as “the science, which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative use” (Robbins 2007). My assumption here is, that Scarcity, together with prospects to Abundance and Sufficiency is one of the central driving forces for the world we live in (1). - That Scarcity is productive (2). Scarcity, as a concept, is quite evident. Given a set of goods, this insufficiency of goods, as we could describe scarcity emerges through an operation: access meaning the goods have to be taken. Since those involved know that access produces scarcity – they seek to ensure by more access. Access thus, produces, what it aims to dispose: scarcity is a paradoxical problem. Niklas Luhmann (1994) describes this as a form of unfolded self-reference. In a de-paradoxed form it is transformed into (or coded as) a system of equilibrium, of supply and demand and the possibility of scarcity keeps a certain mobility and regulates value. Finite resources can lead to scarcity, so does excessive demand. In any case it is an imbalance in the set-accessratio. In Mainstream economics, scarcity is treated as a temporary condition. Temporary, as it either can be compensated within time, through more efficient methods in production, through technological innovation or substituted by something else. In the possibility to overcome it by such means, it obtained another meaning: scarcity has been referred to as a motor of progress and gained productive impact for economy. Preconditions of Social Housing in Vienna The rapid growth of Vienna during the 19th century due to industrialization social and political changes resulted in the City’s major housing shortage. In only 50 years, the population almost tripled to about 2.1 millions in 1910. A continuous lack of dwellings stimulated massive production of habitation - the biggest, Vienna had ever undergone, and scarcity can be set at the beginning of a series of changes in architecture- on an urban scale as well as on the level of the dwelling. By late 1870 the municipality had implemented the grid as the ordering device for the city. For the very first time in the history of Vienna, a planning rationale based on uniformity, repetition and re-applicability, that followed economic thinking had become urban form –by housing the masses. Yet, at no point during these times, housing stock was able to cope the actual demand. Thus the module of the grid, the Viennese Block – dense apartment buildings in repetitive dimensions, developed into capitalizing land to its extreme, occupying often more than 85 % of a parcel, with small, dark flats. A permanent lag resulted in overcrowded flats, miserable living conditions and poor hygienic standard. Scarcity had reformulated the city through the grid as an economizing and ordering device. This condition – scarcity in housing stock - has to be seen as the starting point of social housing in Vienna. And it should remain central for the following decades. By 1923, the Social Democratic government launched a housing programme, with the decision to build 25.000 dwelling in five years. Until its violent end in 1934, the municipality of Red Vienna had built 65.000 dwelling units. Tackling housing scarcity 193
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had been a major undertaking of Red Vienna’s Programme, along with education and health- hygienic issues as to raise the general misery of the working poor in the modern city. Yet, they did so while adhering to an idea of a modern city at any time. Absolute scarcity On classic economic theory, scarcity had encroached through the writing s of R. Th. Malthus. Absolute Scarcity- this is basically the scarcity Malthus writes about, although he did not entitle it as such, is basically the scarcity of ultimate means. In An Essay on the Principle of Population(Malthus 1976), he uses it to describe a relation of the growth rate of demographic and production development with given resources that are finite. There, Malthus states finite resources and a growing population. Population develops geometrically, food growth only linear. They implicate, so to say, demand outrunning supply, and culminate in a point of crisis, basically resulting in “not enough for all”. But Malthus introduces scarcity for a political purpose. The conclusion of his “scientific” thesis is following: Misery and poverty is a natural law- it is the poor masses that grow fast. Any attempt to fight poverty, would only let increase their number even faster- and thus create even more squalor. So, the best thing to do is – to do nothing. Scarcity, by Malthus, is seen as both, the origin of poverty and the effective instrument against it. What Malthus claims for, is in fact to set things scarce, or what one could name to scarcify. Not more for the poor it says, as Malthus used it as an argument against state support for the impoverished masses. It might be one reason why economics have been called the dismal science. Comparable to Malthus’ explanation has been the arguing against social housing in order to counter the shortcomings and the misery at Vienna’s turn of the century, as brought up by conservatives against the socialist housing programme. In such argument, the reasons for squalor are shifted from a created by circumstances related to market and practices by landlords over to natural law and the population itself. Yet, the history of Vienna’s dwellings provides us with further situations, where scarcity has been instrumentalized as to follow political intent, even beyond Malthus. Most dehumanizing, such restructuring of the existing housing stock has been followed as policy of the City during the Nazis. Since economic scarcity precluded following the megalomaniac housing-programme the party-municipality had announced, yet the population still faced housing shortage, systematic expulsion had been taken as a measure of urban planning. Genocide was considered to be the appropriate means for planning to fight the housing shortage. In November 1941, Hitler let know that it was not about “realisation of new city quarters”, but rather “clearing the existing conditions”: “To begin with, (…) all Jews are to deport as soon as possible, followed by the Czech and other of alien race, who hinder uniform political orientation and opinion making of the Viennese Population. If, through such provision, you bring down the population (…) to 1.5 to 1.4 millions, housing shortage was resolved in the best, the easiest and the fastest way. “(see Csendes & Opll 2006). Scarcity, which had been the central reason for the building program of Red Vienna, was now fought by racial politics of expulsion. Clearing, in this sense means 194
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building against scarcity. Beyond the aspects of resource, set and access, scarcity is involved in a broader social context, as soon as it is attempted to overcome, or instrumentalized as to follow particular social or political intent. Coming back to Malthus’ example of scarcity, it has been heavily criticized in its aftermath by people from all camps such as Ricardo and Marx. The controversy incited by Malthus has in fact not ended. The Malthusian argument arises again and again, be it to argue against the idea of the commons or, since the seventies most notably in the debate on sustainability and limits. The problem with Malthusianism is not absolute scarcity per se. It is the immutability, the claimed universality of scarcity and its problematic deductions and conclusions with a claim for what we could call scarcification. It is true that some resources are limited on earth. But that alone does not make them scarce. As they are related to human production, resources always have social and cultural connex. The operation needed as to get things scarce is to take: access. Scarcity, to follow is an imbalance in the set-acces-ratio. There is no natural law in scarcity, but a social relation- it is relational. The availability, access and allocation of resources changes within time, space and culture. Scarcity emerges locally and temporally. For it is related to a certain context, which might be different, Scarcity is contingent and changing within its context. So is the conception of scarcity, which over time is changing as well. Need - the operation driving access, varies according to a set of practices. What is defined as scarce is structured according to discourse. Any Scarcity we state is, in its relation to all that always constructed. Even if there was real scarcity, we can only deal with it socially. But this does not make it less important. Our way of understanding the real world out there is constructed and not natural. There will be no chance to overcome that, yet there is a certain need for awareness of it. Even without ultimate finiteness, scarcity emerges: In the relationship between ends and means, which have alternative uses. This second form, economists call it relative scarcity emerges in the possibility to choose. Scarcity here does not correspond to a not enough for all, an insufficiency but rather a scarcity emerging through an alter-use of something. The alternative use turns necessary for relative scarcity, this choice between two mutually exclusive. In economic theory these alternatives are referred to as opportunity costs. Reconstruction The municipality of Vienna decided to continue social housing after WWII. War has left marks on Vienna – 86.875 dwellings were destroyed and uninhabitable, some 35.000 people were homeless, further 30.000 escapees had returned and 6.000 flats had to be provided to the Allied liberators. In an Enquete for the Reconstruction of the City of Vienna, in 1945, expert committees deliberated upon the penury and scarcity of housing. Yet: “Reconstruction means making it better”, as Theodor Körner - mayor at that time - put it, already describes the endeavour to modernize Vienna. Again: the Position taken was decidedly in opposition to the historic city and in favour of Red Vienna’s legacy. Another decision to be taken was how to follow such plan – where and how to build social housing. The first question was basically a result of the will to a new, 195
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modern and the refusal of the historic city: “The Großstadt has to be decongested, according to the Erkenntnisse of modern city planning”, wrote planning council Novy in 1946. Großstadt, here, after years of Blood and Soil, reads as a clear concession to urbanity, Erkenntnis to science. This will to modern Großstadt is profoundly affected by a strong belief in “plannability”: For the question how design- and thus the allocation of resource - should be laid out, for the manifold social, urban, technical and economical, purposes, the research centre for dwelling and building was installed. In search of the “ideal” design variations were evaluated, measured according to sun exposure, ventilation, practicability, circulation, costs. “Quality of plan” was to replace the “architectural ethos”. The ideal of an optimized productthe plan- is basically the idea of efficiency- the most efficient exhaust as to minimize relative scarcity. In spite of the ideal habitat at hand, many projects built at that time contrast the vision of a decongested, green city. The high demand in housing and the scarcity of land owned made the city act against its project – densification instead of decongestion. An early example of constructing the new, modern city outside the historic fabric despite of material scarcity, is the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung with the overall layout developed by Franz Schuster. Here, scarcity found a straight way into technological innovation: in lack of other construction material, the VibroblockSystem allowed to proceed debris and cement into bricks. Regarding design, it takes up the legacy of the garden city with a notion of self-supply. Scarcity was the reason brought up for another big invention during the years of reconstruction, the Schnellbauprogramm (quick-building-program). As resources and finances in the post-war City were limited, yet the demand of ever more dwellings seemed unsatisfiable, the municipality’s planning department introduced so-called Duplex-flats– two flatlet adjoining each other, able to be merged into one “family-friendly”, big flat, as soon as “economic prosperity” and “family situation” would permit. Scarcity here was conceived as conquerable and temporary, even certain to be overcome. This Schnellbauprogramm should allow for a large number of accommodations. Yet, in conjunction with the general housing programme it was designed to provide a basis for future according to the strategic planning of reproduction in a twofold sense: on the one hand the dwelling as the means of social reproduction for labour and secondly the reproduction of the family through which the former should be anchored. Housing, and this issue was kept throughout the years of prosperity, had become a means of family planning and with it, even society. Or as the mayor Franz Jonas put it (in a glance to Winston Churchill): “First it is the people forming houses, then it is the houses forming the people.” III Scarcity as a motor of growth Scarcity has been already referred to as a catalyst for technical improvement. Technological innovation such as the Vibroblock-System would have been hardly imaginable in circumstances of abundant construction material, the duplex-flats, the change to the Gründerzeit-block at the second half of the 19th century without severe shortage on housing stock. Yet scarcity can be taken as productive even beyond the ad-hoc reactions to it, involved in economic long-term developments 196
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development. Facing the paradox of scarcity, (that it emerges out of access that aims to dispose what it creates), as an operation relates to such productivity: for those involved, as participants of an economic system, it differentiates between either have on the one side and have not on the other. Since all involved know about the fact of more access resulting in more scarcity, they are involved observers letting value develop according to supply and demand. Those that have not are equally involved (at least for most economic systems) - for reasons of the social stability of a system- as those that potentially can have. Regarding the developments on the Vienna’s housing market, despite of a decreasing population from WWI on, the demand for dwellings had continuously raised. And it can be considered to be one major stimulant as to go for large-scale housing structures in the 1960ies. Apart from number, area has grown as well. A change in society - households becoming successively smaller while increasing by number gives one reason. Yet from the years of prosperity in the 1950ies on and with raising incomes and welfare, demand for floor area and size of flats raised as well: up to today’s use of 48 square metres per capita compared to 22 metres in 1961 (Statistik Austria 2001) Within the difference of have and have not the aspect of desire and imitation comes to light. For a capitalist society this entails the aspiration for progress and growth: Scarcity becomes a basic requirement, progress always means overcoming scarcity to a possible conceivable future without, “projecting the culturally supplied expectations onto the socially offered opportunities”(Bauman 1976) – admittedly for the emergence of new ones. What is perceived as scarce, is above all relational: to social status and to the compared reality out there - a comparative scarcity (Balla 2005) - best exemplified by Marx and Engels in Wage Labour and Capital: “A house may be large or small; as long as the neighbouring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. (Marx & Engels 2000) IV Scarcity and the Political: a will to Autonomy If progress- understood as the development of means, as to fulfil changing ends – is accompanied by the development of wants produced by the difference of have and have not, scarcity obtains value for a political project. As Zygmunt Bauman put it, “Capitalism […] stands and falls by the continual recreation of scarcity”(Bauman 1976). This recreation of scarcity keeps the political will for the other awake. If the capitalist economic process reproduces scarcity artificially as well the will to overcome, then, scarcity’s production of desire and want also raises the prospect for other, new ways of living. In this respect, it raises the spectre of another different society beyond as well. (Panayotakis 2003). Unequal social order, or here: unequal accessibility are kept up by artificial scarcity and competitive practices. The idea, Scarcity raises of a common future beyond itself, is promptly replied by the answer scarcity establishes regarding social structure. Scarcity, in this regard is both universalizing and particularizing. Yet - Despite all endeavours of fragmentation, scarcity still raises the spectre of another society. It points beyond societies actual limits and serves as the transcendentory aspect of capitalism that opens up spaces for the political. 197
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It is an political undertaking due to its antagonistic being as it necessarily positions a new social structure against the existing. Moreover it acknowledges this antagonism as constituent (Mouffe 2005). Two moments of politics in space Two of such examples that evolve within scarcity and developed as a spatial political project in housing formed at the beginning of the 20th century: the Siedlerbewegung and succeeding, Red Vienna, that introduced communal social housing as such. Both projects evolved out of – or actually against - the acute shortages during WWI. The former grew out of people squatting land at the outskirts, in parks and forests, first for growing vegetables and livestock breeding, by and by for dwelling in shantytowns, they had their sheds extended to. As conditions did not better after the war, these wild settlements organized into cooperatives and probably the City’s biggest self-organized movement concerned housing, the Viennese cooperative garden city movement. Opposed to conservative developments of the garden city in the rest of European, the cooperative idea in Vienna was basically borne by workers and a group of intellectuals and architects. Even if the majority of this avant-garde positioned close to the ideas of socialism, it was their common share of the progressive, modern thought and a pragmatic approach to make do with limited means that got them active on behalf of the garden city movement. In its early moments, the movement assembled positions of various political orientations from culturally conservative petit bourgeoisie to socialism and anarchism. Through its processes of (self-)institutionalization through cooperatives and associations, it was incorporated into Social Democracy soon, where it was strongly subsidized. It allowed, though to become a more and more efficient way for ever more people to create an alternative to the poor conditions in the dense cityblocks. With this turn and a gradually settling economy, dwellings were arranged in bigger connected structures making up autonomous forms. Their design, still was affected by the scarce situation, yet on a architectonically formulated level, informed by elemental functionality, as Loos’ proposal for the Haus mit einer Wand points out. Attached to one-another, Loos simply left out one wall, so that each house has solely one structural wall. Over the years, the structures became denser with dwelling coming to the fore of the initial concurrence of housing and food production, as to shelter more people. Finally, the municipality decided to move over to building denser and urban structures – the Gemeindehöfe Red Vienna is known for. If the Viennese garden city movement is the reformulation of economy out from below, Red Vienna’s attempt was to reformulate society through reformism and social democracy and the party. They did so by following a particularly spatial and urban practice through social housing. This had been made possible by two strategies: (1) First, the introduction of socially graded taxes on luxury, land and rents and the government’s decision to fix indivual rents. This made private speculation on land highly unattractive and entailed the municipality as sole buyer of then connectable lots. By doing so, they annulled the mechanism of the market, and on a long term base - scarcifying interest and letting prices fall, which allowed to acquire land within the city, at low 198
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costs. (2) And Second, even underlying this, the formulation of a program to re-build the city from within. Broken down to means-ends-relation, Social Democracy had little chance to accomplish to better housing situation fundamentally. Yet, in its attempt to practice Austro-Marxism, Red Vienna shows strong commitment to pragmatism and reformism. Reformulating the own incapacity as strength, it took up strategic spatial thinking: instead of the erection of a new workers’ city aside the existing, Red Vienna pursued what can be described as an insular urbanism: to position new buildings on unbuilt land within the existing city fabric. This opened up the possibility to intervene on what through action became territory: It gave opportunity to act on a physical level: To provide shelter for those in need (1), on an architectonic level to represent working class in and to re-shape the image of the city (2), on the level of rent markets, again on a long term base, affecting the markets locally and regionally through an “oversupply” of affordable dwelling (3) and on the political landscape, by countering socio-spatial segregation through redistributing working class over the city and with it change actively election-votes (4). This project, meant the creation of a totality over the territory, on which the spatial strategy of punctual action was pursued. This is basically Red Vienna’s spatial strategy or even more: a theory on the city that implied how to act. The action taken to confront the misery resulting from the process of scarcification during promoterism, in Red Vienna was to create oversupply. To build and keep prices down. On the level of markets, it worked and allowed to provide a roof overhead. This practice has been kept: the perpetuation of social housing, had remained a central means to regulate rents. For today’s situation it is about to think about alternatives. Regarding architecture, there is no question about the necessity of goods. But the concept of growth has beguiled us of thinking about allocating things differently. And In all the restless, perpetually unfulfilled desires, the aspect of the ends that we aim for has been lost out of sight. For today’s debate on the allocation of goods, no matter whether it is about finances or material resources, it is necessary, to keep in mind scarcity’s underlying characteristics of being relational, discursive and contingent. It is relational as it is related to defined ends encountered by human access, so to society, its modes of (re)production and consumption. So is it to have and have not. Stating scarcity does not mean that this scarcity is natural or universal. At any point it is contingent. We might then consider whether the dialectical opposite of material scarcity at any moment is really material abundance. Understanding Scarcity as the “social perception of limits/restrictions” (Luhmann 1994), that is structured relational, discursively and that is contingent, we point (unlike Luhmann) at its very political meaning. Scarcity, then, is not only about economics, but, before all, it relates to society’s idea of the valuable. Regarding scarcity as giving information about the relationship between resource, means and ends must not stop at looking at the availability of resources- but rather it is necessary to attach society’s idea of the valuable to the aspect of ends. This side- the ends - must not be left out of consideration in the debate on sustainability and the allocation of goods. Therefore, it is necessary to find new politics, of what is considered to become scarce, how it is created and how it relates to both sides: the 199
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aspect of resource and means and their access on the one side and that of what it aims for on the other – a new ecology of scarcities. Balla, B., 2005. Knappheit als Ursprung sozialen Handelns, Krämer, Hamburg. Bauman, Z., 1976. Socialism: The Active Utopia, Taylor & Francis. Csendes, P. & Opll, F., 2006. Wien: Geschichte einer Stadt, Böhlau. Jencks, C., 1977. The Language of Post-Modern Architecture, Revised Enlarged Edition Revised. Enlarged., Rizzoli. Lefèbvre, H., 1991. The production of space, Wiley-Blackwell. Luhmann, N., 1994. Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft 6th ed., Suhrkamp Verlag. Malthus, T.K., 1976. An Essay on the Principle of Population and a Summary view of the principle of Population A. Flew, ed., Penguin Books. Marx, K. & Engels, F., 2000. Lohnarbeit und Kapital. In Werke, 43 Bde., Bd.6, November 1848 bis Juli 1849. Dietz, Berlin. Mouffe, C., 2005. On the Political New edition., Routledge. Panayotakis, C., 2003. Capitalism’s “Dialectic of Scarcity” and the Emancipatory Project. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 14(1), p.88. Robbins, L., 2007. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science 3rd ed., The Mises Institute. World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987. Our common future, Oxford : New York: Oxford University Press.
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