Homes for the Poor? Public Housing and the Social Construction of Space in Baghdad, 1945-1964

Abstract

Public housing in Iraq has been unduly subsumed into narratives of a declining monarchy propped up by oil wealth and international expertise at the onset of the Cold War. According to this narrative, it was a minor concern of an Iraqi government whose infrastructural investment plans contributed little to improving the national economy. A detailed analysis of the labor and expertise that flowed into Iraqi public housing between 1945 and 1958 gives rise to a different narrative, in which migrants to the city participated directly in extending and reshaping the urban fabric. According to this narrative, housing developers sought design and construction methods that would diminish laborers’ political autonomy. In practice, however, public housing construction methods empowered economically and socially marginalized city residents to direct its future growth.