In her dissertation project, Carla Aßmann researches large social housing settlements of the 1960s from the perspective of comparison and the history of emotions. Standardized mass housing projects were perceived at the time of their planning not only as a solution for the ever pressing need for housing. The new and comfortable state-supported housing for “broad sections of the population” indeed became the epitome of expectations of social progress and equalization. Shortly before the first residents were to move in, however, its image took a dramatic turn for the worse and its poor reputation persists to the present day. Using the example of two settlements, Berlin’s Märkisches Viertel and Le Mirail in Toulouse, the research project focuses on the expectations raised beforehand by planners and architects, administration and residents, and the collision with reality that was to follow. The study asks the question of whether and how the experience of disappointment, as a common factor, structured the renegotiation processes of the actors. Of further interest are the subsequent assessments of those in charge and the question of how great an effect unmet expectations had on later projects.