In the postwar period between 1945 and 1975, architecture and urban planning were central instruments in the realization of the universalist welfare state policies known as the Nordic Model, built on the idea that welfare should be distributed to everyone. Armed with new rational planning ideas and using modern technology, architects and planners created satellite towns with mass-produced housing, modern urban infrastructure, and new institutions and social centers, transforming city and society.

The satellite towns have been criticized for being poor living environments that foster social problems, while residents say they thrive. Some critics think that this type of post-war urban development was a gigantic social mistake, and that we today fortunately know better. Others mourn a past where collective concerns and needs was the foundation for state politics and urban developments, and see the same post-war urban developments as great achievements by heroic architects. In the course, we will look at the satellite towns in a historical perspective in order to understand past and ongoing relationships between architecture, politics and society.