Cross-Border Country Planning Dialogue in Interwar Europe

Abstract

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 (...

Repurposing the Green Belt in the 21st Century

“…This led to subsequent legislation to establish NationalParks (1949) and the Countryside and Right to Roam Act(2000).22. IFHTP 1935; Pepler 1935; Riboldazzi, 2010; cited inGeertse, 2015. 23.…”