Transfers and exchanges: the role of Léon Jaussely from a transnational perspective

Léon Jaussely (1875–1932) was considered by his contemporaries as a forerunner and one of the most outstanding French planners of his time. He had a remarkable professional career in France and took part in several important international planning competitions. Jaussely’s work, in many respects, is central to better comprehend both the evolution of urban planning and planner’s exchanges at the beginning of the twentieth century. However, his significant role can only be fully understood from a transnational perspective. This paper aims, first, to analyse Jaussely’s distinctive approach to cities and urban planning. Secondly, it intends to place his ideas within the transnational debate and examine his connections with British, American, and German planning. His role as a passeur culturel in the diffusion and adaptation of planning international principles in France is then discussed, showing how this study can contribute greatly to the research on cross-national exchanges and the transnational circulation of planning models at the beginning of the twentieth century. Finally, insights on Jaussely and the French town planning movement can provide a deeper understanding about historical alternatives to modernist architecture, and therefore highlight continuities between nineteenth and twentieth century practices.     

Maurice Rotival: French planning on a world-scale (Part II)

This paper analyses the life and work of the French planner Maurice Rotival through his practical and theoretical work as well as his teachings in cities and regions in Europe, Africa and the Americas. Rotival's plans and projects reflect the influence of major events and changes of the twentieth century - two world wars and the advances in technology and research they promoted, the advent of the automobile, the subsequent urban transformations and large-scale demolitions - and influenced the development of planning in the twentieth century. Through five major steps of Rotival's international career, this article analyses the development of Rotival's pragmatic organic planning doctrine and his regional approach from his experience and training in France at the eve of the First World War, to his subsequent regional and urban planning work in Caracas, New Haven, Europe, Reims and other French cities until the 1980s. By considering Rotival's career as a part of economic globalization at a time when the colonial context was dismantled, the present article highlights the planner's role in societal transformation in collaboration with the e´lite and demonstrates the growing international exchange of planning ideas in the twentieth century.     

Maurice Rotival: French planning on a world-scale (Part I)

This paper analyses the life and work of the French planner Maurice Rotival through his practical and theoretical work as well as his teachings in cities and regions in Europe, Africa and the Americas. Rotival's plans and projects reflect the influence of major events and changes of the twentieth century - two world wars and the advances in technology and research they promoted, the advent of the automobile, the subsequent urban transformations and large-scale demolitions - and influenced the development of planning in the twentieth century. Through five major steps of Rotival's international career, this article analyses the development of Rotival's pragmatic organic planning doctrine and his regional approach from his experience and training in France at the eve of the First World War, to his subsequent regional and urban planning work in Caracas, New Haven, Europe, Reims and other French cities until the 1980s. By considering Rotival's career as a part of economic globalization at a time when the colonial context was dismantled, the present article highlights the planner's role in societal transformation in collaboration with the e´lite and demonstrates the growing international exchange of planning ideas in the twentieth century.     

Antal Palóczi and the beginnings of modern urban planning in the Kingdom of Hungary: the example of Bratislava and Novi Sad (1867–1918)

ABSTRACT

The period from 1867 to 1918 represents one of the most productive and intense eras of town building and modernization within the Kingdom of Hungary. From the beginning of modern urban planning, the leading Hungarian urban planners and theorists followed all the major themes of the era’s planning discussion. The modern urban planning principles, as well as the common urban design language (rings, avenues, city parks etc.) acted as a common platform for the town shaping in the entire country. Especially Budapest-based architect Antal Palóczi implemented very soon and with decisive success these commonly used strategies and solutions in his regulatory plans. Even these plans remained often unrealized as whole, their main ideas could be traced in the later urban planning solutions of the twentieth century despite the fact the later planners never referred to the first plans. The current study is the result of research and interpretation of newly discovered and unpublished plans and maps, which marked the beginning of modern urban planning at the beginning of the twentieth century in Pozsony, currently Bratislava and Újvidék, Novi Sad in present-day Serbia.     

The 1901 Australian Federal Capital Congress

National and international conferences were a vital force for advancing the theory and practice of modern town planning from the early twentieth century. A conference held in Melbourne, Australia, in May 1901 on the ‘Laying Out and Building of the Federal Capital’ represents one of the, if not the, first national meetings dealing with the topic of city planning in an Anglophone country. This paper explores the genesis, organization and impact of the event, with the major focus on the participants and discourse of their presentations. The paper introduces the debate about a new federal capital of Australia in the late nineteenth century before exploring the content and themes of individual contributions and the broader outcomes and significance of the event. What makes the little-examined 1901 Congress important is not so much its direct impact on the federal capital itself (Canberra, named 1913), but what light the congress papers and activities shed on the state of Australian knowledge of and assumptions about city planning as the global movement took shape.     

‘Agitating people’s brains’: Noulan Cauchon and the City Scientific in Canada’s capital

Noulan Cauchon (1872–1935) was a founder of the Town Planning Institute of Canada and the Ottawa Town Planning Commission. He played a significant role in the planning of Canada’s capital city in the early twentieth century. This article traces the evolution of Cauchon’s planning ideas and their place within the Canadian planning profession, based upon his numerous public lectures, newspaper and journal articles. He was a close ally of Thomas Adams during the 1914‐26 campaign to extend town planning across Canada. Cauchon’s background as a railway engineer influenced his City Scientific approach to planning, which contrasted with the City Beautiful proposals for the capital produced for the federal government. This City Scientific approach became the dominant mode of planning in Canada after 1918. Cauchon produced a comprehensive zoning by‐law and many small‐scale planning schemes for the Ottawa area. Few of his proposals were implemented by the municipality, which deferred to the national government on most planning issues during this period. But Cauchon’s ideas influenced the early evolution of the profession in Canada and the redevelopment of the national capital after 1945.     

An early engagement with town planning: Māori and the Commission to inquire and report upon the necessity or advisability of establishing model villages on the sites of the present villages of Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa in 1926

The history of state-sanctioned planning is generally urban and commences in the early twentieth century. It is a history in which Indigenous people remain relatively invisible until the 1980s. By the 1920s, New Zealand’s Indigenous people, Māori, despite having lost much of their land, remained a visible presence in society. In Rotorua, the traditional Māori villages of Ohinemutu and Whakarewarewa were central to the tourism industry, and were sites of important economic activity for Ngati Whakaue and Tūhourangi. In 1926, Ngati Whakaue and Tūhourangi took an active part in a Commission of Inquiry into the housing in their villages, in an attempt to improve their liveability. The Commission sought to apply town planning principles to their work at a time when town planning legislation had only recently been introduced. This appears to be an early involvement of Indigenous people with town planning and an important part of New Zealand’s planning history.     

艾伯克隆比与香港战后城市规划

英国城市规划师艾伯克隆比为英国战后城市重建做了大量城市规划工作,尤以"大伦敦规划"最为著名。之后,他又被邀为香港拟备"香港初步城市规划报告"。该报告作为香港首部战略性城市规划,使英国城市规划理论与实践延续到其远东殖民地,使香港成为西方文化与技术在东方的中转站。该文横向比较艾伯克隆比的"大伦敦规划"与"香港规划报告",以追溯城市规划思想的源流与演变;纵向比较"香港规划报告"的"高密度发展与疏散、城市人口与工业布局、城市规划立法、新市镇建设"等城市发展提议与香港战后城市规划与建设的实践。通过分析该报告对香港城市规划的影响和贡献,以及探寻香港近现代城市规划理论和体制形成的因素,对进一步完善香港近代城市史学研究,并为内地城市制订战略性城市规划提供历史借鉴     

Planning doctrine as an element in planning history: the case of Cardiff

This paper sets out to illustrate the value of the notion of planning doctrine in urban planning history. Planning doctrine is a perspective within which planning issues are framed, and possibilities and solutions emerge; it includes ideas about appropriate spatial structure as well as appropriate mechanisms (public/private/and so on) for achieving change. The paper uses the idea of planning doctrine in discussing key strands in the history of planning in Cardiff, south Wales since the early twentieth century. It argues that the development of a planning doctrine provides a key to the pattern of Cardiff’s planning and connects the city’s planning to a broader national and regional context. Since the mid‐1950s a planning doctrine has clearly shaped the plans for the city. Moreover, doctrine has been nurtured, sustained and modified (but not renounced) as economic and political circumstances change because it has a valuable function in sustaining a broad socio‐political consensus in support of the main priorities and directions in the city’s planning.     

‘Oh,the planners did their best’: the planning films of John Betjeman

The development of British town planning in much of the twentieth century was situated within the modern movement and characterized by the ascendancy of a professional élite who possessed vision, rationality and the desire to bring about change for the good of society. These ‘planning wizards’ championed planning’s cause, promoted the professional basis of the discipline and were central to debates and projects about the physical restructuring of British cities. At the same time, the introduction of early television in Britain enabled the arts and factual programmes to be communicated to a wider audience. Broadcasters found such subjects as planning difficult to convey to a mass audience and various approaches and innovative programming were attempted. One artist who played a pivotal role in developing broadcasts on planning and development was the poet John Betjeman (1906–1984). Betjeman possessed a background in architecture, had been a regular performer on broadcasts on the radio and utilized the new medium of television to campaign for subjects that interested him personally: Georgian and Victorian architecture, old railway stations and the last vestiges of Edwardian Britain. As a skilful player of television and someone who was totally at ease in front of the camera, Betjeman turned many of his television broadcasts into personal statements containing passion and intense irony on those issues he perceived as threatening Britain, and against those in charge of restructuring the state. He may, therefore, be viewed as some sort of alternative planning expert. Attention is paid to two of his television series from the 1960s as brief case studies and the debate is broadened to assess implications for planning and the use of film to convey emotions about planning and places.     

Daniel Burnham and Australia's Federal Capital, 1893–1912

Celebrated architect and city planner Daniel Hudson Burnham enjoyed a rise to fame in the aftermath of his widely acclaimed achievement as Director of Works for the World's Columbian Exposition, held in his adopted Chicago in 1893. Roughly in parallel with Burnham's rise, town planning movements were coalescing in Australia, and it would not be long until the Chicagoan's name was circulating in Australian professional circles. This is a pilot study broadly aimed at chronicling and interpreting Australian awareness of Daniel Burnham at the turn of the twentieth century. More specifically, it is concerned with the reception of Burnham's civic design ideals and why some believed them to be of antipodean relevance. Their Australian impact, however, is beyond the present study's scope. Reciprocally, this essay also surveys Burnham's knowledge of Australia. Special emphasis is given to Burnham within the context of the Australia's Federal Capital competition (1912), arguing that although the Chicagoan did not compete, he profoundly, albeit vicariously, impacted the capital's design.     

Kaiser,Douglas, and Kerner on Low-Income Housing Policy

Benjamin C. Marsh, a vigorous young social worker in the early years of the twentieth century, attacked the extreme congestion of poor people in the nation's largest cities. In his analysis of the causes of congestion, Marsh identified the basic dynamics of large-scale crowding and offered some of the most radical solutions of taxation, land-use, and planning proposed during his day. As an early leader against the overcrowding of land, the author of the first book devoted entirely to city planning, and the founder of the first National Conference on City Planning, Marsh's career points up the diversity of style and ideology that characterized the pioneers of the planning profession.     

William Lyon Mackenzie King,planning advocate

The article discusses the direct influence of Canada's longest-serving Prime Minister on town planning and the development of the national capital in the first half of the twentieth century. King flirted with the settlement house movement, interning Jane Addams at Hull House while a graduate student. He later included town planning and garden cities as a component of a broader programme of social reform. The article considers King's connection to four broad traditions in early North American planning: Social Planning, the Parks Movement, the City Scientific and the City Beautiful. King's greatest impact was as the political champion for the planning and development of Canada's national capital, much of which was completed in the two decades after his death.     

Sir Patrick Geddes and Barra Bazaar: competing visions,ambivalence and contradiction

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries successive British governments in Calcutta (Kolkata) became increasingly concerned with the links between the health of its inhabitants and the cleanliness of the city, particularly in the indigenous parts of town. European urban solutions, typically involving slum clearance and road building schemes, were imposed to address such problems. These colonial attitudes contrast with more ‘hybrid’ visions of health and hygiene that Sir Patrick Geddes adopted for proposals for a market area in Calcutta called Barra Bazaar, in 1919. Geddes’ ideas combined an approach that commended ‘traditional’ Indian courtyard houses, street patterns and external space, with more ‘modern’ ideas for business accommodation. In conclusion, I argue that Geddes’ often ambivalent and contradictory outlook on such competing visions of city space echoes notions of ‘hybridity,’ recently developed by Homi K. Bhabha.     

Developing and financing the ‘garden metropolis’: Urban planning and housing policy in twentieth‐century America

This article examines the evolution of garden city ideas in the United States during the twentieth century. It distinguishes between four sets of goals: environmental reform; social reform; town planning, and regional planning. Much of the literature on American garden city movements focuses on the general political failure of its advocates to achieve key social reforms and regional planning objectives. By contrast, the accomplishments in environmental reform and town planning have been far more successful. Though Ebenezer Howard's proposals did not lead to widespread adoption in their purest form, urban decentralization and sub‐urbanization have produced significant improvements in the building of higher‐quality and lower‐density housing and in providing more open space and greenery for a large segment of the population. This pattern of planning and development may be viewed as ‘the garden metropolis.’ Its relationship to garden city ideas is best symbolized by the central role of Thomas Adams, the British planner who served as a leading proponent of the garden metropolis in the United States. Many of Adams’ policy recommendations, including his strong support for mass home owership initiatives, were later implemented by the Federal Housing Administration beginning in 1934. The FHA, through its mortgage insurance programs, its property and neighborhood standards, and its Land Planning Division, was extremely influential in shaping the growth of the garden metropolis, especially during the 1940s and 50s.     

Houses of paper and brown cardboard: Neville Chamberlain and the establishment of the Building Research Station at Garston in 1925

Neville Chamberlain’s significance in the history of twentieth‐century planning is well known. One key episode, however, has been overlooked: his role in the 1925 expansion and transfer to permanent premises of the Building Research Station (BRS), later known as the Building Research Establishment (BRE). The BRS had been established originally in 1921 but with temporary staff in temporary premises. In its post‐1925 form, the BRS was to have a world‐wide impact, both as a model for similar organizations in other countries and in the development of building science as a discipline. The paper shows how the espousal of new methods of construction formed a key part of the new approach to housing developed by Chamberlain as part of the ‘New Conservatism’ in 1924; how the promotion of new methods was inserted by Chamberlain into the 1924 Housing Act (Wheatley Act) introduced by the minority Labour government in 1924; and how, following the Conservatives’ return to power in November 1924, the BRS was transformed into something much larger in order to deliver ‘the Chamberlain programme’ of research for municipal housing. As such, the paper suggests that state‐funded building research formed the talisman of the social‐democratic confluence over state housing that emerged for the first time in Britain in the mid‐1920s.     

Bruno Zevi,the continental European emissary of Geoffrey Scott’s theories

In the late nineteenth century, Bernard Berenson revived the analytical methodologies employed in art history by proposing new methods of pictorial analysis, such as space-composition and life-enhancement. In the twentieth century, his pupil Geoffrey Scott transferred these new methodologies from their original context, Renaissance painting, to architecture. Though Scott was a recognised critic within English aesthetic circles, he was largely ignored in Continental European academic communities. The influence of his book The Architecture of Humanism (1914) was limited to the Anglo-American world before the 1940s. This essay depicts the key role that the Italian architect Bruno Zevi played after the Second World War, by becoming the primary architectural historian to introduce and diffuse Scott’s forgotten masterpiece in many non-English-speaking countries. Zevi defended a critical methodology based on spatial, empirical, and sensory analysis of architectural works, an attitude that is observed in his theoretical corpus written immediately after his return from the United States. This paper proposes an examination of Zevi’s reception of Scott’s theories and the debates that it propagated, and aims to contribute to the understanding of the methodological approach followed in the years after the Second World War on both sides of the Atlantic.     

Rethinking Participation,Rethinking Planning

If planning is more than ‘what planners do’, what does this mean for efforts to make planning more inclusive and representative? This article examines the connection between efforts to democratise the practice of planning and efforts to democratise its definition. Drawing on insurgent historiography, I argue that public participation was not introduced in the twentieth century, it was reimagined. Just as mainstream planning histories have been challenged as efforts to claim and legitimate certain roles for the professional planner, celebratory narratives of participation as a post-1960s phenomenon can similarly be understood as an effort to contain and control the work of planning. Instead of a bounded, professional and state-led process to which participatory practices can (and should) be added, this article puts forth an account of planning as a contingent and continuing process extending well beyond the profession.     

形式、传统与建筑--从<建筑的复杂性与矛盾性>看文丘里的建筑观

文丘里是后现代主义建筑的代表人物之一 ,通过对他有关建筑创作的主要观点以及典型作品实例的介绍分析 ,阐明了文丘里对建筑历史与传统所持的态度以及他在建筑形式处理上的新思路和新手法 ,并从中揭示出了他的建筑创作观 .     

Mastering the urbanization process. The urban questions of engineer August Mennes in the Antwerp agglomeration

Processes of urban expansion at the turn of the twentieth century have generally been described in terms of ‘regional planning’. However, in the Belgian context, and in Antwerp more specifically, the concept of the ‘agglomeration’ was put to the fore rather than the ‘region’, and ‘urbanization’ was a more common practice than ‘planning’. This paper shows how a ‘programme of urbanization’ centred on pertinent ‘urban questions’ shaped the contours of the Antwerp Agglomeration. In adopting this perspective of ‘programmatic urbanization’, the paper seeks to place the development of Antwerp extra muros within a different lineage, outside of the quest for comprehensive planning. Recomposing an eclectic catalogue of five pertinent ‘urban questions’, this paper investigates how and to which extent the Study Committee for the development of the Antwerp Agglomeration and its prominent engineer August Mennes, tried to master the urbanization process as it unfolded. Urbanization, then, is framed as a collective practice that generates positive agglomeration effects and surplus values that could not have been produced by individual actors. As such, the paper expands the understanding of urbanization from a random process of capital accumulation to a project that includes the building of social and cultural capital.