Social History of Housing and Urban Society in France

• Project/Area Number: 05610319
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for General Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Research Field: History of Europe and America
• Research Institution: Tokyo Metropolitan University
• Principal Investigator: NAKANO Takao Tokyo Metropolitan University, Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities, associate professor, 人文学部, 助教授 (90189001)
• Project Period (FY): 1993 – 1995
• Project Status: Completed (Fiscal Year 1995)
• Budget Amount: ¥1,700,000 (Direct Cost: ¥1,700,000); Fiscal Year 1995: ¥500,000 (Direct Cost: ¥500,000); Fiscal Year 1994: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000); Fiscal Year 1993: ¥600,000 (Direct Cost: ¥600,000)
• Keywords: Housing / Urban Society / Garden-City / Family / 住宅問題 / 都市問題 / 集合住宅 / HBM(廉価住宅) / HBM(廉価住宅又は低廉住宅)

Research Abstract

At the end of the 19th century, in Paris, where happened a rapid increase of the population, the housing conditions, becoming worse for the shortage of houses to let at a cheap rent, strengthened popular dissatisfactions. And the bourgeosie gave more and more support to the movement for hausing reform, which aimed to invent a collective dwelling space endowed with merits of the individual house. The block of flats called HBM (Habitation a bon marche) came into existence as a result of this movement.
These efforts for the popular housing attained, at the beginning of the 20th century, to the realization of various buildings like the HBM of the Fourdation Rothschild on Rue de Prague in Paris. In thouse HBM,they tried to organize the space, not only giving care to lighting and ventilation for the sake of health and hygiene, but also intending to make good effects on the enlightenment of inhabitants with the help of communal facilities for washing, bathing and so on.
In the HBM of Rue de Prague, the population was principaly composed of workers, artisans, employees and their family who could enjoy relatively comfortable life. These who once got a home there were apt to remain for many years and this pensistency reinforced the tendency to reduce the size of households and to enhance the importance of nuclear family. The leaders of the Foundation seemed to succesd in improving the popular housing and to achiere therefor their essential purpose. But this situation arisen especially from the increase in propstion of old residents was considered by the Foundation as a deviation from its founders' motive, namely supporting and moralizing poor families with children.
I must leave bekind as a next work the inquieries into the Parisien phenomena aft the First World War : insanitary blocks and garden-sities.