ABSTRACT
This chapter develops the notion of the residential environment as a political arena, exposing the space of the everyday as a battlefield where both national and personal struggles take place. It considers the notion of the everyday, shortly discusses the nature of housing, and examines the formal strategies—the planning policies and the architectural practices—used in state-constructed everyday. The role of housing as a first-rate national instrument has been evident in nation-state building projects, playing an important role in strengthening the relationship between a community, sometimes utterly imagined and a territory. Gilo marks not only a physical border, but also a socio-cultural one, in which the everyday becomes a setting for conflicting realities of contested identities. The chapter concludes with the contradictions inherent in Gilo and its lived experience, in order to begin considering the socio-cultural implications of state-constructed everyday.
