When Aarhus became modern... A PhD project by Mikkel Høghøj

Mikkel Høghøj was granted a PhD-scholarship at Aarhus University from the February 1, 2015, with the working title “When Aarhus became modern - the question of welfare and its impact on the design and transformation of the modern Aarhus 1900-1970"

By using Aarhus (1900-1980) as the primary case, the project investigates how welfare and urban space mutually have defined each other as well as promoting a specific ‘welfare citizen’ and patterns of social behaviour. More concretely the project focuses on the production of certain forms of urban spaces or “welfare geographies” such as slum areas, social housing and single family-house areas. Here questions on welfare were interpreted through everything from governmental processes to everyday practices. Emphasis is put on the 1930’s and onwards where the urban space went through massive changes as a result of urban planning, sanitation and prefabricated constructions through which new norms of welfare materialized. By examining how welfare was practiced from an urban perspective (between macro and micro), the project seeks to provide a more nuanced picture of the history of the welfare society as more than the history of the welfare state.