Search

This archive report discusses the files contained in EAA Rowse's papers in the University of Edinburgh's Centre for Research Collections. Rowse was a leading figure in planning education in mid-century Britain who is nevertheless somewhat peripheral in the intellectual history of planning. The article gives a brief biographical overview and analyses the key themes present in the archive, namely Rowse's anxiety about the future and his belief in planning as the only way to avoid a potentially species-ending catastrophe. It contextualizes some of his ideas and examines his conceptualization of the 'composite mind' through a close analysis of the various notes and reports in the archive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the results of published research into China's urban planning history since 2011. A total of 1,057 articles were selected, including 198 theses, 465 journal papers, and 394 conference papers. It provides quantitative statistics and analysis of the literature, using CiteSpace to conduct a bibliometric analysis of the data. Based on quantitative analysis and supported by the literature, this paper qualitatively concludes and summarizes the research hotspots and evolution of Chinese urban planning history from five dimensions: planning practice, system construction, thought and theory, figures, and discipline. The achievements delve into the exploration of motivations and mechanisms, planning ideology, methodology, practice subjects, and preparation process based on a staged review of the historical process of practice and a summary of its characteristics, which shows a process from partial to holistic and fragmented to systematic in general terms, contributing to the formation of a complete planning history research system. A comprehensive analysis of quantitative statistics, knowledge mapping of literature, and important research content reveals the characteristics of research into the history of Chinese urban planning over the past decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historians neglect the role of planned industrial satellite towns in the wider history of single-industry communities. Starting in the early 1920s, the Humber Project on the west coast of Newfoundland was an industrial mega-project of the first order. Undertaken by a British firm wishing to tap the growing North American newsprint market, top planning and engineering contractors were hired to design a sprawling industrial network powered by a massive hydroelectric station at Deer Lake. Officials altered the plan significantly and, by early 1924, the Deer Lake development was made secondary to the paper mill at Corner Brook. Company town construction mimicked industry; Corner Brook became the main planned settlement while Deer Lake was the smaller satellite community for power plant operators. Two years later, most residents of Deer Lake were loggers living on the fringes of company control. Yet, despite their role as suppliers of essential raw material, loggers were excluded from the otherwise extensive system of company welfare. Similar entrenched and scaled dependencies shaped worker and resident experiences on the ground for years after. In the Humber Valley, company-imposed privilege and vulnerability planned uneven development within an industrial network, highlighting a more complex relationship between corporations, planners and residents than stock 'social control' or 'boosterist' interpretations allow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A series of seminars held in Brasilia in the mid-1980s institutionalized Urban Design as a discipline in Brazil. It triggered a new approach to urban interventions, in consonance with the country's re-democratization process and the critical debates fostered by the new political condition, following the end of the dictatorship. This paper explores the seminars' outcomes in order to account for the rationale of urban design in Brazil, when social milieu, cultural character and participatory processes became fundamental design tools. By examining this turning point, the paper adds to the historiography of the genesis of Urban Design in Brazil while highlighting the particularities of the local approach to the global term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

IPHS offers prizes and awards in urbanism, history, planning and the environment, mainly focusing on cities from the late nineteenth century. This year IPHS 2022 Prize and Award Winners were announced at the Awards Ceremony, which took place at the Delft Hybrid Format Conference on the 6th of July 2022. At the ceremony, IPHS Planning Perspectives Prize, IPHS Book Prizes, Anthony Sutcliffe Dissertation Award, IPHS Best Post-Graduate Planning History Paper Prize, Sir Peter Hall Award for Lifetime Achievement, East Asia Planning History (EAPH) Prize, and Koos Bosma Prize in Planning History Innovation have found their owners. This document provides information about the Prize and Award winners and their award-winning works and includes commendations based on the Judging Panel and Committee Reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is focused on the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural paradigm of 'habitat' – as the anthropological and ecological interdependency between domestic space and its environment. Since the mid-twentieth century, our built environment has faced a long totalizing, planetary urbanization process, which urges us to review the old conventional urban-architectural categories we use to describe and understand our cities and countryside. Faced with the urgency of a more inclusive understanding of our built environment, this paper sheds more light on the paradigm of Habitat as an interdisciplinary urban lexicon, as it gained momentum in post-war urban thinking and has influenced urban design ever since. The paper holds that the post-war discussion on Habitat represented a unique moment in which interdisciplinary thinking on the built environment became central. The paper shows alliances and resonances between the post-war CIAM's discourse on Habitat and other coeval sociological and philosophical studies to delineate a complex theoretical framework. Beyond the parameters and boundaries that have been considered and presumed conventionally within ordinary urban design and social science, the paper focuses on the complex interdisciplinary meanings, interpretations, and translations regarding the paradigm of post-war Habitat as a complex social and spatial notion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Green Belt is one of the most widely known and popular regional growth management policies having been adopted around the world. Drawing upon the regional spatial imaginary and historical institutionalist literature alongside a case study of the West Midlands, this paper conceptualizes the Green Belt as an enduring, regionalizing concept in the spatial vision of planners and professional campaigners. It underscores the continuing importance of planning history and critical junctures in 'framing' the perspectives and aspirations of practicing planners regarding strategic planning. The paper charts the emergence, embedding, and adaptability of the Green Belt as an institution before exploring how strategic vision has continued to be vitally important to planners and campaigners despite the abolition of statutory strategic planning in England in 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper interrogates what has and has not changed in 100 years of professional planning in Zanzibar, Tanzania. The geographical focus is on the area of the historic core of the city known as Ng'ambo (a KiSwahili place-name meaning 'the Other Side'). The gap between formal plans for infrastructure, housing, or neighbourhood development, and their implementation, is examined in its evolution over this century. The central focus of the empirical examination resides with the most recent planning initiatives, since 2011, which present a strongly inclusive and participatory emphasis for planning on the Other Side. The key research question is this: has this new era of inclusive planning strengthened the urban poor majority's citizenship, or has it continued the long run of state planning failures for Ng'ambo's residents? This essay argues that, despite progressive ambitions, in implementation there are a number of continuities with both colonial and post-independence planning, where outside powers and elite interests have predominated. The paper is built from more than thirty years of the author's research on urban planning in Ng'ambo and engagement with the literature of urban planning studies in Africa and the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to the current debate on the interest in history shown by the early town planning literature and to extend it to Spain. It focuses on the most important theoretical works of the urban planning pioneer Ildefonso Cerdá (1815–1876): the well-known Teoría General de la Urbanización (1867), Teoría de la Construcción de Ciudades (1859) and Teoría de la viabilidad Urbana (1861). Throughout the analysis of these three major publications and their heterogeneous sources, this paper discusses the role and relevance of different planning history approaches in Cerdá's theoretical work. It highlights his ways of handling information about historical urbanism in the process of theorizing urban planning, as well as the sense he gave to history in each of his three theories and in his theoretical work as a whole. Finally, the paper outlines some comparative elements resulting from current international research. The paper concludes that though many of Cerdá's approaches to history in his theoretical work match the general trends in European early town planning literature, some originalities arise, notably its pioneering character and the method conceived for analysing the historical urban evolution of a city throughout its plan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Master plans have long been criticized by critical planners who have argued in favour of more strategic, collaborative and relational forms of spatial planning that can more adequately respond to local needs and realities, especially in the context of the global South. Rather than critiquing master planning, this paper seeks to interrogate its recent rise in urban Africa. Building on a review of international planning trajectories, the paper seeks to challenge dominant narratives in the Western literature around the rise and decline of master planning. Planning experiences from across the African continent illustrate how master planning was a limited practice under colonialism and emerged more strongly in early post-colonial years, while persisting through a quiet period of planning and proliferating in recent times. By exploring the diversity in the influences and approaches to master planning for new and existing cities in Africa over time, the paper positions master planning as the product of a complex array of transnational circuits and multiple local actors and ambitions which intersect across different scales. The study of master planning should therefore be considered as an important entry point into understanding and rethinking the contemporary politics of urban planning, implementation, and development in Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Like other countries with large ports, the Netherlands developed a policy narrative to acquire a key position in global value chains starting in the 1980s, through the spatial development of its hinterland logistics complex. The negative environmental effects of logistics, such as landscape transformation and congestion, have increasingly come to be seen as spatial policy problems. The literature on policy narratives emphasizes the importance of balanced trade-offs and learning from alternative views. In this paper, we discuss why the 'Gateway to Europe' narrative has remained in place. This paper systematically reviews spatial planning documents, advisory reports and academic papers between 1980 and 2020 to develop a chronology of logistics planning concepts pertaining to economic and technological milestones. It also maps policy influences, aiming to identify underlying causal policy theories on logistics development and its spatial-environmental effects. We determine that critical reports have been structurally ignored, challenges have been outsourced and advocacy coalitions have been unbalanced, increasing path dependency and risking a spatial-economic lock-in. Looking at the 'Gateway to Europe', we point to pitfalls in the policy narrative and the policy-learning process, enabling policymakers to avoid them in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Locally rooted industrial networks pose significant challenges to the sustainable regeneration of industrial land in China. This paper examines the process of rural industrialization in the Shunde District of the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region and its relationships to current regeneration practices from a historical perspective. Drawing on assemblage thinking, the paper traces the four stages of Shunde’s industrial networks assembly process and depicts the ongoing regeneration activities, delving into how heterogeneous entities come together and (re)assemble unique networks attached to the locality over time. The findings show that the assembly and regeneration of industrial networks are subject to diverse interactions between multiple translocal assemblages and Shunde as a place-assemblage. These interactions are conditioned by the distributed agency that emerges from the components of the place-assemblage. Local agency’s enactment of sustainable futures requires a comprehensive understanding of the historical development of local industrial networks and the socio-spatial relationships between heterogeneous entities within or across assemblages to inform and precede interventions such as sustainable regeneration policies and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last decade, architectural history has responded to the climate crisis by strongly integrating environmental topics into its research agenda. The change has been so dramatic that it can be referred to as a paradigm shift within the discipline. The article reviews research tendencies in the environmental history of architecture by discussing the papers presented at a conference organized in Reykjavik in 2023 and several recent publications. The introduction of environmental perspectives in architectural history appears to call into question consolidated ways of understanding its relationship with planning history. Cities are no longer seen as an essential field of analysis to achieve meaningful generalizations in architectural research; many recent works privilege, on the contrary, the investigation of the flows and movements linking individual buildings to processes taking place at a global or planetary level. The paper discusses the question from three interrelated perspectives (the scales of observation, the articulation of temporalities, and the public role of historians). It argues that the environmental turn affecting many fields of the humanities open the way for rethinking patterns of cross-disciplinary collaboration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sydney's Waterloo estate is one of Australia's largest and most concentrated areas of public housing. There has been an almost two-decade-long effort to renew the estate, with successive governments persistently making the case that the demolition and mixed-tenure redevelopment must happen. In the process, the quality of the housing on the estate has been denigrated and misrepresented. This paper combines a detailed examination of the architectural qualities of the Waterloo estate with a critical analysis of historical and contemporary policy settings and political decisions driving the redevelopment project. It identifies the phases of development at Waterloo since the first buildings were constructed in 1948, describing the key characteristics of the dwellings that were part of each phase and situating them within in the wider story of public housing in NSW. It then evaluates the qualities identified in the buildings on the estate against the government's own guidelines for new apartment development. This evaluation reveals the extent to which the state government has avoided a good-faith assessment of the architectural quality of the estate. The paper concludes by reviewing planning and policy objectives and highlighting that tenant interests and housing quality have been obscured through the stigmatzation of the estate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This document is a collection of papers that explore the concept of Olympic urbanism, which refers to the close relationship between city planning and the Olympic Games. The papers discuss various cities that have hosted the Olympics and cover topics such as the impact of the Games on urban form and planning culture, the sustainability and legacy of the Games, and the role of security in Olympic city planning. The papers emphasize the need for historical awareness when analyzing the Olympic experience of a city and highlight the complex and unpredictable nature of urban planning for the Games. [Extracted from the article]

Chosen three times as the host city for the Summer Olympic Games (1940, 1964 and 2020), Tokyo's city layout is historically linked to the Olympics. Including the bid project for the 1960 and the 2016 Games, Tokyo has presented five Olympic projects, each time with five different urban visions which enlighten the nature of the past and present political Japanese regimes. The recurrence of the Olympic Games in the planning and growth of Tokyo leads to the idea of a major influence of the Olympics both on the physical evolution of the urban structure but also on that, immaterial, of its planning culture – or, in other words, on the representations, imaginary and practices of the institutional stakeholders of Tokyo's urban fabric. The aim of the paper is therefore double. First, it analyses each urban vision of the Games of 1940, 1964 and 2020. Secondly, it analyses the influence of each Olympic project on greater Tokyo's urban planning and regional development, as well as the influence of each Olympiad on the following ones. Doing that, the paper discusses the formalization of a planning culture through organizing the Olympics on the long run in Tokyo. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the urban consequences of failing to host Olympic Games. Using the example of Paris and its unsuccessful bids to hosts the Olympic Games of 1992, 2008 and 2012, the paper analyses the pre- and post-bid status of key projected 'Olympic' sites within the context of urban plans and aspirations of the city of Paris. The French capital attracts special attention because of the rapid succession of submissions that proved to be outbid by those presented to the IOC by the cities of Barcelona (1992), Beijing (2008) and London (2012). The paper will briefly outline the reasons for failing to attract the Games but will devote most of its space for an analysis of the siting of the planned Olympic Villages, which often form the most lasting of legacies of Olympic Games in host cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the emergence of the concept of sustainable development, the Olympic Games have become a vehicle to demonstrate and promote the principles and practices of sustainability. The aim of this paper is to explain and evaluate how the application of sustainable development in the context of the Summer Olympic Games has evolved. Two processes have been influential in this change: first, the institutional expectations of the International Olympic Committee have encouraged greater responsibility towards the creation of legacies by potential host cities through the IOC Charter, the Olympic Agenda 2020, and the Olympic Agenda 2020+5; and second, the context and inventiveness of host cities has created new perspectives on sustainability to secure the event and raise its global profile. This paper will focus on the sustainability benchmarks established in London 2012 and evaluate whether these have been continued or extended in the subsequent editions of the Summer Games in Rio de Janeiro (2016), Tokyo (2021) and Paris (2024). The changing discourses reveal the tensions between the IOC's agendas for the event, the motivations of the host cities and the realities of delivery in changing socio-economic and political circumstances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the form, function and impact of previous Olympic security arrangements and their intersection with planning practice. Drawing from prior and ongoing empirical research investigating the security practices at summer Olympic Games, the paper argues that wider shifts towards 'total' security models comprising continually reproduced security motifs can be observed that are increasingly standardized, mobile, globalized and planned-in. For most Olympic organizers, preparations now necessarily include attempts to equate spectacle with safety and to 'design-out' terrorism by relying on highly militarized tactics and expensive and detailed contingency planning. Such securitizing practices have intensified in form and scale since 9/11, with such intensification set to continue at the XXXIII Olympiad in Paris, where a vast security infrastructure is being embedded into the large-scale and long-term master-plans for the central city. This represents a high point in spatial planning practice through embracing principles of security-by-design where Games-time security infrastructure, whilst providing effective protection, becomes a less visible but permanent, physical legacy that can also contribute to local programmes of regeneration, climate resilience and crime prevention. The paper concludes by reflecting upon what the continual evolution of security infrastructure means for the balancing of planned-in security and spectacle at future Olympiads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The IPHS 2018 Prize and Award Winners were declared at the Awards Ceremony which took place at the Yokohama Conference on 18 July 2018. This year, IPHS Planning Perspectives Prize, IPHS Book Prizes, Anthony Sutcliffe Dissertation Award, IPHS Best Post-Graduate Planning History Paper Prize, and Sir Peter Hall Award For Life Time Achievement have found their owners. East Asia Planning History (EAPH) Prize and Koos Bosma Prize in Plannıng History Innovation were not given since the jury has not found any submission worthy of the prize. Information is given including commendations based on the Judging Panel Reports. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a context where European integration is put into question, under the weight of external (migration, safety issues, economic) and centrifugal forces (Brexit, growing Euroscepticism), European spatial planning has been somewhat sidelined in the debates on the European Union’s goals, cohesion and future. This special issue aims to contribute to a deeper understanding of these dynamics by revisiting the history of European spatial planning - from its origins, gradual institutionalization to its current rolling back - by exploring it both at the European and the national level, stressing its difficulties and idiosyncrasies. The conceptual framework of historical institutionalism is used across the papers in an attempt to shed more light on this processes, through the analysis of critical junctures and path dependency of planning and cohesion agendas, transnational networks as well as changes to the national institutions and planning systems. This tightly woven collection of papers touches upon not only the underlying arguments for European cohesion, but also the questions about the future of European spatial planning as an ‘EU microcosm’ in light of current discussions concerning democratic credentials and legitimacy of the EU project as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report provides an overview of the 16th biennial conference of the Australasian Urban History/Planning History Group, held for the first time in conjunction with the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand, as the latter's 39th annual conference, in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand, 25–27 November 2022. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first reviews how England's middle-class Puritans developed various anxieties regarding their socioeconomic security in the emerging capitalist economy of early modern England. It then investigates three local land practices developed by Puritan colonists in New England to better secure their status in the New World, as revealed in a survey of town proceedings from Watertown, Massachusetts, from 1634 through 1773. These were restricting access to landownership, 'warning out' poor outsiders beyond town bounds, and managing land use. These practices enabled the middle-class, small-scale property owners who dominated local government in colonial Watertown to preserve the utility of land assets for future generations, manage the tax burden they associated with poor relief, and prevent conflicts arising among users of private and shared property. In doing so they maintained their households' status in keeping with their notions of material and spiritual well-being. The paper aligns these practices with later local land practices, including restrictive covenants and zoning, that middle-class communities have used to manage the particular pressures they face in the development of capitalist economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a call for papers for the International Planning History Society (IPHS) section of "Planning Perspectives" which showcases the latest research in planning history as well original topics to news items on research in progress, reports on recent symposia, conferences, workshops, and exhibitions.

This paper analyses the writing of Black activists, planners, and critics to reconcile two opposing perceptions of the Model Cities Program: an initiative known for its elevation of Black elected officials and a program that used the guise of citizen participation to stifle more radical forms of dissent. In 1966, Model Cities emerged in part from the call for a domestic Marshall Plan for Black Americans. Yet as the program began making incremental changes to the country's neighbourhoods from 1967 to the early 1970s, participants and critics instead began to see Model Cities' relationship to Black Americans as a new form of colonialism. To determine how this shift occurred, this paper analyses this critical commentary against the archival evidence of Model Cities implementation in the cities in which it appeared. Situating these authors' arguments within the parallel emergence of Black studies and participatory planning as well as within larger Cold War diplomatic history, planning history, and African American intellectual history reveals how visions of revolution turned into a program of representation. Meanwhile, the plans these figures produced as part of Model Cities point to what a revolutionary program might yet be. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of homeownership in the working-class peripheries of post-war Europe has received little attention in planning history. The main reason is probably that public housing built at the time of massive operations of constructing Modernist housing estates in Western and Eastern Blocs adopted tenancy as the predominant form of tenure in almost all cases. In the context of widespread growth of urban homeownership during the second half of the twentieth century in European countries, this paper addresses the singularities of ownership in Francoist Spain. In this case, the main peculiarity is that the working classes that flocked to inhabit the new outskirts were the main protagonists of the intense process of the spread in homeownership. First, the article discusses the ideological roots of the spread of homeownership in Spain as a singular phenomenon. Second, the spectacular growth of homeownership in the peripheral working-class districts of Barcelona and in the municipalities of its metropolitan area is analysed. Then, the paper considers the relationships observed between ownership in the new peripheries and the development of powerful urban movements. A final epilogue places such movements in the Western European context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the meaning of authenticity in making places with heritage values through the case of the Algerian medinas. Because of their particular and exclusive histories in the Maghreb, these historical settlements founded in the Islamic period have sometimes undergone radical transformations that have undermined their universal heritage eligibility. The latter is based on the criterion of authenticity. This is currently being questioned because of its rigidity, which has ensued from transformations in ideological field related to notions of culture and identity. Additionally, universal heritage eligibility has been shaped by the emergence of intangible heritage. This article is between a 'Viewpoint' type of paper and an empirically grounded research paper. The results of such an approach highlight the contradictions related to the authorities' choices concerning the heritage of the Algerian medina. A process made according to a vision that was impregnated by a constructed authenticity. The latter was based on the primacy of the original Islamic model according to issues of decolonization and autochthony. The article calls into question the normative reading of heritage as a set of essences favouring a social construction of systems of representation that claim truth, identity and history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Until recently there has been little critical consideration of the privatization of urban planning expertise. In this paper we draw on archival research in England to present an historical analysis of the role of private sector planners over the post-war period. In so doing, the paper provides one of the first considerations of changing historical perceptions of the roles of private sector professionals in the delivery of public planning, assessing the claims through which markets in urban planning expertise have been both problematized and justified over time. Tracing the reorganization of planning expertise allows us to view public and private sector roles not as fixed and immutable categories but instead as historically contingent outcomes of struggles over how the contested public interest purposes of planning have been defined and realized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article announces the winners of the book prizes and prizes for best articles, papers, and other academic contributions in the field of planning history announced by the International Planning History Society (IPHS) including Matthew Gandy for the book "The Fabric of Space: Water, Modernity, and the Urban Imagination", Kenny Cupers for the book "The Social Project: Housing Postwar France", and Professor Donatella Calabi was honored with the Koos Bosma prize in planning history innovation.

This is the first of a pair of articles in which we argue that what we term the 'centre-idea' was fundamental to British modernist architecture and planning thought from the mid-1940s onwards. We locate this idea's roots in the pre-1939 British voluntary sector, specifically the activities of the Peckham Experiment and the Pioneer Health Centre which housed it. We evidence its long-term influence on post-1945 architecture and planning in the invitation to the Experiment's co-creator George Scott Williamson to speak at CIAM's eighth Congress in 1951. The paper begins with a discussion of the Experiment, an architectural and urban setting which was understood to effect new forms of human relationships and subjectivity suited to a democratic, post-imperial modernity. We then consider other environments to show how this 'centre-idea' was widespread in progressive circles by the late 1930s. The paper concludes by discussing the community centre as an emerging building type increasingly supported by the state. This coming together of the British state, modernist architecture and progressive voluntarist thinking by the outbreak of war in 1939, would mean that the 'centre-idea' had a significant impact on reconstruction debates and post-war planning; the subject of our forthcoming companion article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Managed retreat is increasingly advocated as a means to promote resilience and adaptation to climate change. However, there are various uncertainties and challenges associated with the impacts of displacement and attachments to place. In this context, it is useful to study past examples of relocation to understand how these challenges have been addressed. This paper draws on a case study relocation scheme which took place in Ireland following major flooding in 1954. This represented a radical and comprehensive approach to relocation which sought to address the root causes of vulnerability. The analysis shows that this comprehensive approach was made possible through a connection between managed retreat and land reform. The scheme also faced opposition linked to attachments to place and property. This led to compromises and a failure to fully address the effects of flooding on livelihoods but contributed to resilience through ensuring that family and community ties remained intact. The paper's distinctive contributions are its analysis of the requirements of transformative approaches to adaptation and relocation, its identification of challenges associated with place and property even in the context of such transformative approaches, and its adding of historical depth to contemporary debates on climate adaptation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is well acknowledged that most African cities are inheritors of colonial systems of administration, legislation, policy and plans. In most of them, this inheritance has not changed, even though it is several decades after gaining independence. As a result, many scholars have tended to overemphasize the influence of the colonizers, precluding an analysis of the ability of indigenous populations to resist, reimagine and remake colonial visions of urban life. Invariably, customary tenure and traditional authority have been treated with some ambivalence in the literature on land in Africa and are often seen respectively as unregulated capital or associated with colonial repression holding back the ability of poor people to prosper. Based on archival and desktop research, this paper examines the ways in which indigenous expressions of urban life have both subverted and been subverted by the British colonial project in Eswatini since the colonial period. The paper argues that while many of the categories and divisions of (settler) colonial rule are still visible in Eswatini, the Swazis have engaged neo-customary practices through kukhonta system centred on the role of the chiefs to reimagine and remake urban life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Open Society appeared as a concept in planning discourse at the Congrès International d'Architecture Moderne (CIAM XI). It attempted to create urban conditions which would allow society to prosper. Despite its good theoretical intentions, the project did not always translate well into practice. We observe that historic approaches and tools have tended to be neglected in urban regeneration projects and discussions, yet we think that they can bring valuable urban transformations. This paper therefore considers the extent to which historic planning tools and theories can be useful for assessing built projects to provide fresh approaches for urban renovation. This paper will reappraise the concept of the Open Society empirically by analysing, critiquing, and imagining its relevance in twenty-first-century planning projects and discourse. This research uses a mostly qualitative approach through critical cartographies as a main medium and to draw conclusions that highlight the power relations in the Dutch neighbourhood of 't Hool (Eindhoven) as well as the local conditions and materials that can enable them to plan for a more resilient future. We aim to bridge the gap between theory and practice through a methodology that allows for a broader and deeper understanding of place, history, potentials, and urgencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the long history of planned water and landscape management in China, focusing on the Tai Lake Basin located in the southern part of the Yangtze River Delta. To position this polder landscape within the broad spectrum of water heritage in China, the paper examines the historical perceptions and symbolism of water and its decisive role in shaping Chinese outlooks on empire, urban settlements and landscapes. It then delineates the evolution of polder landscapes in the Tai Lake Basin, which has been recurrently transformed since the fifth century BCE through to their contemporary condition. Despite changing material forms, the polder landscapes in the region evidence continuous endeavour to manage water for both productive (food) and preventive (flood) purposes. The latter part of the paper considers to what extent these polder landscapes might now be considered as a 'continuing landscape' – an organically evolved cultural landscape reflecting the changing needs of society, economy, government as well as flood prevention. Today, with few features that are materially historical, their continued existence has been threatened by urbanization, land consolidation and agricultural modernization. The paper advocates historically informed landscape planning to safeguard these dynamic and adaptive agricultural landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, the existing historical building stock gained more value. Monument protection was gradually introduced in the urban planning process as were its methods and instruments. Approaches for an urban development based on the existing building stock were made in both former german countries, GDR (German Democratic Republic) and FGR (Federal Republic of Germany), even if the extent was different. Especially with the regeneration of the historical old towns in the GDR beginning in late 1989, early 1990, the preservation of urban architectural heritage formally became an integrated part of urban development strategies in united Germany. The adaption and development of instruments to protect and develop historical city centres is part of the research project 'Stadtwende', funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Surveys based on the results of qualitative expert interviews and archive research show that the 'turn' (Wende) in 1989 had an impact on the development of a planning practice that took the existing building stock into account. With regard to recent trends the paper shows the historical genesis of the preservation of urban heritage in urban planning and asks to what extent it could support a resource-saving urban development today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The explosion of youth revolts in the long 1970s, including the emergence of environmental activism in western Europe, coincided with the democratization of printing technologies, and led to radical transformation in the production and distribution of knowledge. Publishing became cheap and easy due to the appearance of portable versions of formerly costly and heavy printing machinery and a myriad of self-published zines with an environmentalist tone flourished, disseminating a firm rejection to the post-war consensus of consumerism and growth, denouncing the overarching planning organizations, policies, and strategies. Besides criticism, they also present ways of thinking, living, cooperating, and building that follow different rules and values than consumer capitalism. This contribution identifies a gap in European planning history related to the agency of 1970s' environmental activism and explores the potential of environmentalist zines as sources to sustain historical inquiry and help to fill that gap. It proposes conceptualizing zines as 'minor' sources, arguing that the Deleuzian-Guattarian category is a useful concept for reframing previously marginalized voices in planning history. Through the analysis of seven transnationally published zines, the paper demonstrates their validity as sources that document contributions of voices that have been neglected so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Planning Perspectives has published a substantial body of papers on a wide range of aspects of post-catastrophe replanning and rebuilding, with a particular focus on the catastrophe of the Second World War. This brief overview identifies these papers, assesses their contribution to this still-developing field, and suggests an agenda for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Monthly Bulletin of Tropical Housing & Planning was founded by Constantinos A. Doxiadis and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt in October 1955. Originally meant to collect professionally useful information on the so-called 'developing countries', the publication soon changed its name and scope, becoming an internationally distributed, widely read and highly influential journal dedicated to the science of Ekistics and human settlements. Using previously unpublished archival material, the paper investigates the origin and early years of Ekistics: The Problems and Science of Human Settlements highlighting the strategic role of the journal for Doxiadis's global agenda. Second, it is used as a case study to follow the evolution of the discourse on housing, building and planning during the UN Development decades and until the organization in 1976 of UN Habitat, the first international conference entirely dedicated to human settlements. Finally, by focusing on the journal and its meaning, this paper also explores the role that experts and international cooperation missions have played in the spread of modernity and on Doxiadis's legacy in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the early days of the United Nations, the main form of aid in the field of housing took the shape of technical assistance. Although the pool of specialists was almost coincident with those from colonial networks, the ambitions and limitations of international, non-governmental and neutral cooperation implied a reconceptualisation of the world division inherited from the colonial period and its replacement by a new paradigm of 'development'. This manifested itself right from the start in the redefinition of the modus operandi of the expert and in the production of a particular form of knowledge that challenged the previous expertise, influencing narratives on the built environment around the world. This paper examines the 1954 United Nations Housing Mission to the Gold Coast and its outcomes, along with the formative example of the previous 1950 mission to prepare the UN Expanded Programme of Technical Assistance. The case study provides an insight into the relationship between the idealization of international cooperation and that of the expert in the field of housing. At the same time, the emphasis on research and education, and the subsequent foundation of a new school, offers a starting point for a critical analysis of its counterpart, the 'inpert'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Medan is a port city in Sumatra, Dutch East Indies, developed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A special case among colonial cities, it featured a large number of Chinese migrants – a third party in addition to the colonizer and the colonized – who played a key role in its urbanization process. Highlighting a trichotomous power framework formed by the Dutch colonizer, the indigenous people and the Chinese diaspora, this paper argues that the Chinese diaspora, with the arrival of commercial elites, obtained opportunities to shape the backbone of the city through skilfully transforming their economic power into political and spatial power. Chinese economic activities such as property investment and co-development not only led to unconventional Chinese quarters but shaped the zoning and axiality of the whole city. The Chinese diaspora also shaped Medan’s streetscape and architecture through individual building design, which, in turn, strengthened their economic power by the careful manipulation of architectural elements from various sources to suit different purposes. The planning history of Medan represents an alternative trajectory to colonial urbanization often led by Europeans, highlighting an ambiguous and shifting power relation among three parties in a transforming colonial society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Often seen as the ushers of modernization in Saudi Arabia, the U.S. company California-Arabian Standard Oil Company (CASOC), which became Arabian American Oil Company (Aramco) in 1944 used a well-crafted public relations programme to present itself as a ‘partner’ in Saudi Arabia. Through archival and published material, this paper uses three lenses (environment; minds and bodies; homes) to unpack the different policies implemented by CASOC/Aramco towards its Saudi hosts and employees. First, the active greening of the Saudi desert extended a form of environmental determinism in which the making of a productive landscape at the hands of U.S. experts would create a hospitable environment. This productive landscape would supposedly influence and shape the Saudi man. Secondly, the Saudi man’s mind and body were targeted through training programmes which aimed to shape the Saudi employee into an ideal worker. Lastly, the modern Saudi house, funded by Aramco, was crafted as the ultimate symbol of development and progress. Establishing the Home Ownership Program (HOP) in 1951, Aramco sought to use housing as a tool for development in the same manner that it did with the environment. Thus, using these lenses, the narrative below unravels Aramco’s carefully curated but fraught narrative of ‘partnership’. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Workers' villages are social housing districts built during the early period of New China for accommodating state-owned factory employees and their families. By borrowing the Soviet collective housing model, workers' villages triggered significant socialist transformations architecturally and socially – shaping a new collective lifestyle. This article discusses the formation approach and manifestation of collective life in workers' villages focusing on one case: Tiexi Workers' Village in Shenyang City during the 1950s–1970s period. The evidence illustrates that through collectivization of living space and coordinating administration structure, a collective life represented by intense organized activities and personal interactions was indeed shaped in this pilot housing project. This paper sheds light on the collectiveness of the spatial pattern on the one hand, and the role it played in moulding everyday life under the socialist political/ideological circumstances of early New China on the other. This article concludes emphasizing the practical significance of this collective living model, which is more than just a historical proof of the past socio-spatiality but is also an important heritage beneficial to contemporary housing and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The range of global concepts of cultural heritage conservation has provided inspiration for China's cultural heritage conservation. China's approach to cultural heritage conservation has evolved from a focus on cultural relics conservation within urban planning to the formulation of specialized and multiple conservation planning. Furthermore, China is actively seeking ways to combine conservation planning and urban planning in order to achieve integrated conservation goals. However, the current practice indicates that 'multiple-planning integration' still needs to be improved to ensure the integrity of cultural heritage. This paper examines the influence of international organizations on the formation and development of China's multiple conservation planning. It also explores how heritage discourse has impacted the multiple-planning integration through a case study. International exchanges have a twofold impact: they improve the conceptual and technical development of China's cultural heritage conservation planning, and they guide its transition from cultural relics to historic city conservation. The primary effect of heritage discourse is that the demolition-and-reconstruction-oriented discourse has compromised the practice's integrity through multiple-planning integration. In the context of the localization of cultural heritage protection, it analyses the process and problems of the localization of cultural heritage conservation planning in China to draw wider attention to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This scholarly investigation provides a critical analysis of the developmental trajectory of the central linear axis in the context of South Korean new towns. The study traces the genealogy of this urban planning model, examining its conceptual origins in the 1960s, maturation through the Mok-dong New Town project in the 1980s, and subsequent iterations in first- and second-generation new towns. Employing a diachronic methodology, the research elucidates the changing dimensions, compositions, and functionalities across these phases, with a particular emphasis on how the model has been localized to suit socio-temporal and site-specific conditions. This adaptation process has yielded variations such as the 'service axis' and the 'community corridor,' each contributing to the heterogeneous landscape of South Korean urban planning. Within this evolutionary trajectory of urban design concepts, this paper highlights the pivotal roles of institutional environment, planners, and other stakeholders such as land developers and local municipalities. As the first scholarly work to formally define and contextualize the 'community corridor' concept, this study makes a significant contribution to academic discourse. It provides valuable insights into the mechanisms through which imported urban planning methodologies undergo transformation and localization in different cultural and temporal contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The city plan of Kuching is not influenced by systematic planning principles, but rather, it is deeply embedded within colonial infrastructural logistics to meet the demands of global trade services and social structures. The postcolonial city is a palimpsest of hierarchical and territorial imprints from former colonial governance. Much of urban growth is concentrated around nodes, prioritized for resource collection and distribution. Therefore, this paper delineates how the current state and city governance recalibrate inherited infrastructures of economic development from the past, resulting in fragmented hybrid spaces of ethnic enclaves and economically marginalized groups in this northwest city of Borneo. We narrate how the Brooke dynasty, British administration and the Malaysian state have each developed and reappropriated logistics infrastructure based on their own agenda, leaving an indelible mark on the urban fabric and society of Kuching today. These findings are based on content analysis of city plans, visual surveys, government media, and secondary sources. We aim to open up new ways of understanding how multi-layered infrastructure and spaces produced by successive waves of different political strategies resulted in uneven development around the postcolonial city, and why some centres are given preference over others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines Tianqiao, the largest commercial and entertainment centre, which underwent a significant transformation into the most popular public space in Republican Beijing. Spatial informality has often been overlooked in planning history, due to its deviation from traditional disciplinary norms, tools, and materials, yet it can offer valuable insights into Chinese urban public spaces and their social values. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including government documents, newspapers, social surveys, and personal records, this paper elucidates how everyday life and popular culture emerged as effective strategies for the poor population to exert their political power and passively resist the state's incomplete urban regularization efforts. This exemplifies a distinct type of Chinese public space that acts as a mediator between the state and society, particularly from a bottom-up perspective of urban modernization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1960s, the first Tehran Master Plan (TMP) was envisioned by a constellation of local and foreign experts. The TMP, which has been extensively studied, is usually credited to big-name planner and architect Victor Gruen. Scholars have neglected the contributions of local professionals in shaping the plan. Many depict the TMP as the product of Cold War geopolitics and a scheme directly exported to Tehran to facilitate top-down modernization promoted by the pro-American Shah. This popular narrative flattens the complexity of transnational urbanism and obscures the transformative role performed by locals therein. Through archival studies and conducting interviews with local planners involved in the TMP, this paper aims to discover the complex nexus between national and international actors and unravel how Iranian planners collaborated with foreign counterparts to negotiate Tehran's urban problems and project the future of the city. This paper argues that Gruen served as a figurehead to validate the formation of the first planning document for Tehran by young local planners who had their own planning agenda. The conclusion argues that the transnationalism of planning practices in Iran grew out of an attempt to institutionalize a modern planning regime compatible with global standards while nurturing local experts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a conference report on the fourteenth biannual Australasian Urban History/Planning History (AUHPH) conference held between 31 January and 2 February 2018 at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA) was formed in 1923 to promote urban development based on the English Garden City ideal linked to the regionalism of Patrick Geddes. But Lewis Mumford, the RPAA's principal spokesperson, incorporated his version of Geddes' ideas in the RPAA's agenda. Arguably the RPAA/Mumford's vision of garden cities as a remedy for the problems of the sprawling metropolis incorrectly became identified with Geddes. This essay presents a more nuanced perspective by examining the RPAA and efforts to relaunch it, starting in the late 1930s, through the lens of Jaqueline Tyrwhitt, who was largely responsible for the revival of interest in Geddes's ideas after World War Two. The paper traces the development of Tyrwhitt's ideas as she introduces Geddes in his own words to a new generation, thus dispelling previous misconceptions, and formed an influential synthesis of Geddes' bioregionalism and modernist urbanism that framed debates on post-war reconstruction. She put forward the urban constellation – a further development of Geddes' concept of the conurbation – explicitly as an alternative to the relaunched RPAA's call for decentralization, now as strategy for civil defense. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]