A Springtime Journey to the Soviet Union: Postwar Planning and Policy Mobilities through the Iron Curtain

Abstract

This article builds upon a relatively small but growing literature in geography, planning and cognate disciplines that seeks to understand the variegated geographies and histories of policy mobilities. The article uses a case study of an exchange trip between town planners in the Soviet Union and the UK between 1957 and 1958. It focuses on the experiences of the British planners in the Soviet Union and sets the tour within the wider context of a fluctuating and sometimes turbulent history of Anglo‐Soviet politics, travels and connections. In doing this, the article makes three arguments: first, there is much to be gained by bringing together the geography‐dominated policy mobilities literature with that on exchanges and visits by architects, engineers and planners. Secondly, the greater sensitivity to the histories of policy mobilities allows contemporary studies to be contextualized in the longer history of organized learning between different urban professions. Thirdly, despite the long history of policy mobilities, what differentiates the current era from previous eras is the prominent ‘knowledge intermediary’ roles now played by consultancies and think tanks. As the article will demonstrate, it was branches of government and professional bodies, rather than consultancies and think tanks, that tended to dominate such roles previously.

Post-war planning and policy tourism: the international study tours of the Town and Country Planning Association 1947–1961

“…As Cook, Ward, and Ward (2014), Harris and Moore (2013) and Jacobs (2012) have recently argued, this "research agenda" is not entirely without intellectual precedent, however. Much of it shares important features, they argue, with an established and still expanding body of work on "the trans-national flow of knowledge and expertise in the planning field" (Healey, 2010, p. 1;see, for example, Almandoz, 1999;Banerjee, 2009;Friedman, 2012;Gurran, Austin, & Whitehead, 2014;King, 1980;Lieto, 2013;Rapoport, 2014;Sanyal, 1990;Ward, 2010a;.…”

“…Here, research has examined the experiences of mobile planning consultants (Cook & Ward, 2012b;Rapoport, 2014); planners on lecture tours (Amati & Freestone, 2009); and planners who have emigrated to work in different national contexts (Gregory, 2012). This focus on the mobility of both individual actors and of associated expertise has parallels with the literature on "policy tourism" which analyses a set of activities such as conferences, fact-finding trips and walking tours where "best practices" are presented, discussed and, in some cases, experienced first-hand and up-close (Cook & Ward, 2011, 2012aCook et al, 2014;González, 2011;Wagner, 2014;Ward, 2011). Studies of policy tourism have paid close attention to the mundane and ordinary aspects of learning, with an emphasis on the planning, performativity and, to a lesser extent, the repercussions of policy tourism for the participants, hosts and places involved.…”

“…Two of the 21 international study tours were part of exchange agreements -namely those to the Soviet Union (1958) and Poland (1958) -in which Soviet and Polish delegates took part in reciprocal tours in the UK guided by members of the TCPA (see Cook et al, 2014;Ward, Cook, & Ward, 2013). Similarly, the 1947 tour of Sweden eventually resulted in a return tour of England by 43 planners from Sweden, organised by the TCPA, in summer 1949 (UK NA FJO/H).…”

“…To some degree, so too were the TCPA international study tours to Eastern Europe at the onset of the Cold War. Yet these did reflect both a small but significant interest in planning in the Soviet Union and its neighbours and a more general curiosity in the UK about life on the other side of the Iron Curtain at the time (Cook et al, 2014;Ward, 2012). In addition to these duties F.J.O.…”

“…Likewise Richard Edmonds (1958, p. 124 Other issues with the international study tours were also noted in the follow-up reports and talks. The most commonly noted difficulties faced by the delegates were language problemseven on tours such as the 1958 Soviet Union tour where they were provided with translators (Cook et al, 2014) -as well as difficulties in understanding the intricacies of the planning systems at different scales. So while F.J.O.…”