Competing scales in transnational networks: the impossible travel of Patrick Geddes' Cities Exhibition to America, 1911–1913

Chabard, Pierre

doi:10.1017/s0963926809006257

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Second, in the first half of the 20th century, planning was not a rigidly defined profession, nor was there a strict separation between urban and country planning. Following the observations of Chabard (2009) about the advance of city planning in the United States, we can distinguish between two competing approaches to planning in the IFHTP: planning as a kind of civic action for reform and planning as an emerging autonomous profession. The latter gained importance during the Belgium Reconstruction Campaign and eventually ousted the former in the early 1920s.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-Border Country Planning Dialogue in Interwar Europe

Geertse¹

2015

Sage Open

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The past years witnessed many publications on the roles of transnational expert networks in defining new professional fields and lobbying for social reform in the first half of the 20th century. The modern spatial planning profession, still in a stage of formation then, featured prominently in this transnational infrastructure. Pierre Yves Saunier has dubbed this international sphere the "Urban Internationale." The participating planners devoted themselves to town and country planning. Rural historians so far have not discovered the potential of the transnational planning societies in the Urban Internationale as a source to study transnational country planning dialogue. Urban historians who have discovered these societies usually focus on urban planning models and neglect the planning of the countryside. This article uses the international congresses of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP) to analyze transnational country planning dialogue in interwar Europe. This London-based association sustained one of the largest transnational platforms for transnational planning dialogue between the wars. Keywords history, humanities, comparative history, modern period, political history, politics and humanities, political science, social sciences 2 SAGE Open and country as a continuum. As such, spatial planning of the countryside was an integral part of the discourse in the Urban Internationale (Geertse, 2012). Urban historians with an interest in urban planning have long discovered the transnational planning associations in the Urban Internationale. However, rural historians with an interest in rural planning so far have largely ignored these platforms. Perhaps they have been more concerned with the modernization of agriculture than the developments in spatial planning, but especially with regard to the settlement policies that were part of ruralization and internal colonization programs across Europe between the wars, the spatial planning discourse in the Urban Internationale might provide valuable leads. For example, international planners met at London in 1935 to discuss the planning of the countryside under the auspices of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP, 1935).This article uses the international congresses of the aforementioned IFHTP to analyze transnational country planning dialogue in interwar Europe.1 This London-based association sustained one of the largest transnational platforms for planning dialogue between the wars. Which planners engaged in transnational planning dialogue and what was their conception of "the rural" and country planning? How did they define the relation between town and country (planning)? This article starts with a brief history of the IFHTP in the period to provide a rough sketch of the context of the planning dialogue in this international organization. IFHTPThe recent academic interest in transnational expert networks has sparked substantial interest in the IFHTP. In the past, planning history literature used to (...

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Cross-Border Country Planning Dialogue in Interwar Europe

Geertse¹

2015

Sage Open

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“…Following the observations of Pierre Chabard about the advance of city planning in the United States, we can distinct two competing approaches to town planning in the IFHTP: urban reform as a kind of civic action and town planning as an emerging autonomous profession. 40 The latter gained importance during the Belgium Reconstruction Campaign as planning professionals and government administrators became the principal target group and eventually ousted the former in the early 1920s. In this process of institutionalization and professionalization two distinct strands of transnational networking can be isolated.…”

Section: The Rationale Of Transnational Planning Dialoguementioning

confidence: 99%

The International Garden City Campaign

Geertse

2015

Journal of Urban History

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This article analyzes the garden city campaign of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP). Available literature suggests the agenda of the IFHTP was dictated by the British garden city militants who had established the IFHTP in 1913. Although the garden city concept dominated the agenda, its treatment was not static. The agenda evolved in the course of time from town planning on “garden city lines” to true independent garden cities, then from a national garden cities program to satellite towns, and finally merged into the broader concept of regional decentralization. This article demonstrates that the agenda of the IFHTP cannot be adequately framed in terms of exclusive agency of its British initiators. The agenda of the IFHTP, as a transnational network organization, was substantially influenced by the structure and substance of its membership and the wider transnational network society, Saunier’s Urban Internationale, to which it belonged.

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