Redesigning the American Dream: Gender,Housing,and Family Life / Edition 2

by Dolores Hayden

Overview

Winner of the National Endowment for the Arts Award for Excellence in Design Research, the Paul Davidoff Award for an Outstanding Book in Urban Planning, the Vesta Award for Feminist Scholarship in the Arts, and an ALA Notable Book Award: a provocative critique of how American housing patterns impact private and public life.
Americans still build millions of dream houses in neighborhoods that sustain Victorian stereotypes of the home as 'woman's place' and the city as 'man's world.' Urban historian and architect Dolores Hayden tallies the personal and social costs of an American 'architecture of gender' for the two-earner family, the single-parent family, and single people. Many societies have struggled with the architectural and urban consequences of women's paid employment: Hayden traces three models of home in historical perspective—the haven strategy in the United States, the industrial strategy in the former USSR, and the neighborhood strategy in European social democracies—to document alternative ways to reconstruct neighborhoods.
Updated and still utterly relevant today as the New Urbanist architects have taken up Hayden's critique of suburban space, this award-winning book is essential reading for architects, planners, public officials, and activists interested in women's social and economic equality.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393730944
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/01/2002
Edition description:	REV
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Dolores Hayden, professor of architecture and American studies at Yale, writes about the politics of design.

Table of Contents

	Preface to the 2002 Edition
	Acknowledgments
Part I.	The Evolution of American Housing	17
1.	Housing and American Life	19
2.	From Ideal City to Dream House	33
	The City on a Hill	34
	Each Farmer on His Own Farm	35
	The American Woman's Home	36
	"The City of the Faithfulest Friends"	40
	Evolution of the Public Landscape	42
	The Homelike World	44
	"Good Homes Make Contented Workers"	48
	Selling Mrs. Consumer	50
	"I'll Buy That Dream"	52
3.	Awakening from the Dream	57
	Outgrowing Our Prescriptive Architecture	58
	Creating the Critique	60
	Architects and Urban Planners	61
	Environmentalists	63
	Feminists	68
	Renters and Owners	73
	Sticker Shock	75
Part II.	Rethinking Private Life	79
4.	Nurturing: Home, Mom, and Apple Pie	81
	Three Models of Home	85
	The Haven Strategy	87
	The Industrial Strategy	88
	The Neighborhood Strategy	91
	Modifying Beecher's Haven Strategy	95
	Miniaturized Technology and Household Engineering	95
	Commercial Services	97
	Employer Benefits and State Services	99
	Swedish Parent Insurance	100
	Male Participation	101
	Modifying Bebel's Industrial Strategy	103
	The House for the New Way of Life	103
	Soviet Motherhood	104
	Housewives' Factories in Cuba and China	105
	Modifying Peirce's Neighborhood Strategy	108
	Service Houses, Collective Houses, and Cooperative Quadrangles	110
	Apartment Hotels	114
	Cash or Community?	114
	Family Allowances and Wages for Housework	115
	Trade-A-Maid	117
	Niche	117
	Complexity	118
5.	Economics: Getting and Spending	121
	Paid and Unpaid Work	122
	GNP as Measurement	125
	Economic Equity for Women	127
	Transportation: Women's Journeys versus Men's	128
	Housing Construction and Jobs	131
	Sweat Equity for Tenants	132
	Jobs on Site in Housing for Single Parents	134
	The Women's Development Corporation	137
	Counting with Women in Mind	138
6.	Architecture: Roof, Fire, and Center	141
	Three Models of Home Translated into Built Form	143
	The Haven Strategy: The Single-Family House as Primitive Sacred Hut	145
	Eclectic Styles	147
	Electrification	148
	Manufactured Housing	152
	High-Priced, High-Tech, and High-Culture Huts	153
	Telecommuting from the Haven	155
	The Industrial Strategy: Mass Housing as Machine	156
	Panopticons, Parallellograms, and Phalanxes	157
	Social Housing	157
	Support Structures	162
	Social Engineering	164
	Dynamite	167
	The Neighborhood Strategy: The Cloister and the Village	170
	The Academical Village	171
	Quadrangles in the Garden Cities	172
	Courtyards and Greens	174
	Cohousing	177
	Transitional Housing	181
	New Densities for the Twenty-first Century	182
	Campaigns for Affordable Housing	185
	The Charter of the New Urbanism	185
	European Charter for Women in the City	187
	Construction or Reconstruction?	188
Part III.	Rethinking Public Life	191
7.	Reconstructing Domestic Space	193
	The Builders' Approach--Greenfield Construction	195
	Alternative Approaches of Infill and Reconstruction	197
	Accessory Apartments in Single-Family Neighborhoods	199
	The Constituency for Accessory Apartments	201
	Reorganizing the Dream Houses	204
	Relandscaping the Dream Neighborhoods	206
	Homeownership in Limited-Equity Cooperatives	211
	Public Housing: Making It More Like Home	213
	Housing on Congregate Models for the Elderly, Singles, and Families	216
	An Inn for the Elderly in New England	216
	Congregate Housing Designed for Privacy and Community	217
	Rehabilitation for Singles and Small Households	220
	Implementing Change in the Built Environment: Taking the Long View	222
8.	Domesticating Urban Space	225
	The Freedom of the City for Women	227
	Public Space for Parents	230
	Greenlights and Safehouses	231
	Rape Prevention, Public Transportation, and Women's Safety	232
	Advertisements, Pronography, and Public Space	233
9.	Beyond the Architecture of Gender	239
	Reuniting Home and Work, Suburb and City	240
	Urbanism: Making Economic, Social, and Architectural Ideas Work Together	242
	The City of Women's Equality	242
	Notes	247
	Selected Bibliography	269
	Index	279

Editorial Reviews

Essential reading for architects, planners, and public officials...just as relevant today as it was nearly 20 years ago.

Ellen Louer - ArchNewsNow.com