The history of housing can also be told as the (cultural) history of a city—from its agricultural settlement by the Celts to the social housing of the present. Within this dual history, political and economic developments as well as social norms came to be reflected in forms of housing that, at the end of the twentieth century, increasingly drew critique. Under the influence of international developments, this has led to the diversity characterizing society and housing construction today.

In this book, Wolfgang Förster—initiator of the International Building Exhibition Vienna—New Social Housing—explores how the sociocultural history of a city can be told through the development of housing.