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.