Martin Wagner in America: planning and the political economy of capitalist urbanization

ABSTRACT

Martin Wagner’s contribution to planning thought and management during the Weimar Republic is widely known, but he recedes into obscurity afterwards. However, he maintained a tenacious intellectual activity in his American exile, conducting teaching-oriented research as Associate Professor of Planning at Harvard Graduate School of Design and prolonging these explorations until his passing in 1957. Working with students and other colleagues – most prominently Walter Gropius – Wagner devised comprehensive proposals for an alternative regional urbanization pattern that combined radical city-core renewal for conspicuous services and high-end residence with a massive suburbanization of middle- and working-class housing and industrial activities. This scheme exacerbated his earlier conceptions and simultaneously incorporated new inflections stemming from a critical engagement with contemporary debates in the US, which allow a better understanding of his German period and the transatlantic transfer of planning ideologies. At Harvard, Wagner reinforced the political-economic perspective of his work, following a contradictory imperative to secure the implementation of proposals by assimilating capital’s spatiality in design strategies. Taking the dynamics of profit-oriented urbanization to their logical conclusion, the American Wagner envisioned a dark albeit consistent ‘diagram’ of the potential reach of a stark capitalist approach to territorial restructuring, prefiguring major urban shifts in subsequent decades.

KEYWORDS:

• Martin Wagner
• capitalist urbanization
• political economy
• urban renewal
• suburbanization
• new towns

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Inés Zalduendo, the staff at Harvard Frances Loeb Library, and Daniel Ibañez for their help and suggestions in the research for this article. I also wish to thank the reviewers and Prof. Nancy Kwak for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago is Associate Professor at Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Town and Regional Planning Department. His academic research uses critical urban theory as a lens to reread the social history of planning under capitalism, with special attention to the dialectic of commoning and dispossession that shaped successive modes of production of space. He participates in academic projects in Spain, Germany, and the US, and has lectured in a number of European schools and institutions. In 2016 he was a Fulbright Fellow at Harvard Graduate School of Design. His work has been published in journals and books in the fields of architecture, planning and urban history, critical geography, urban studies, sociology, art, and cultural studies. Between 2010 and 2014, he was Editor-in-Chief of the Spanish journal Urban.

ORCID

Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9243-4265

Notes

1 Rowsome, “Are Big Cities,” 103.

2 Ibid., 103–4.

3 Ibid., 103.

4 The Christian Science Monitor, “Lineal Community Forecast as the ‘City of Tomorrow,’” Boston edition, April 5, 1940, 13.

5 See e.g. Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance”; Wagner, “The Future of Our Cities,” Martin Wagner Papers (MWP), Harvard Frances Loeb Library, folder 17/3, typescript lecture delivered at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, November 10, 1943; “Community Planning,” MWP folder 22, typescript lecture, n.d., 22 pp.; “Städtebau – Bankrott,” MWP folder 5, typescript lecture delivered at the Deutschen Verband für Wohnungswesen, Städtebau und Raumplanung, Frankfurt am Main, January 5, 1953, 45.

6 Diefendorf, In the Wake of War, 341, suggests that a bellicose character led Wagner to oblivion. Among the targets of his overt criticism were Le Corbusier (Wagner, “Städtebauliche Probleme der Großstadt,” 103; “Bauen für die Massen,” 272), Robert Moses (Wagner, “Intervention,” 16; “Defense Defects,” MWP folder 16, typescript, 1950), or Karl Bonatz (Diefendorf, “Berlin on the Charles,” 351). He even accused his former friend Walter Gropius of conformism and obstructionism in the use of their collective work, a clash which probably dated back to 1947, when Gropius failed to acknowledge Wagner’s part in the ideas he presented at CIAM VI in Bridgewater. See Diefendorf, “Berlin on the Charles,” 352; Gropius, “Urbanism.”

7 There are some notable exceptions, although usually with only a secondary focus on Wagner’s design conceptions in the US. See Alofsin, The Struggle for Modernism, 139–41, 174, 180–4; Pearlman, Inventing American Modernism; and, especially, Diefendorf, In the Wake of War, 142–3, 182–6, 302, 341; “Berlin on the Charles”; “From Germany to America.” For the late Weimar period, see Scarpa, Martin Wagner e Berlino, 148–76. Wagner, Das wachsende Haus, has been recently re-edited. Homann, Kieren, and Scarpa, Martin Wagner, 158–78; and especially B. Wagner, Martin Wagner, provide general biographical perspectives.

8 Quoted in Pearlman, Inventing American Modernism, 89.

9 Letter to Gov. Ch. Herter, MWP folder 12/27, March 14, 1954.

10 Oberlander, “Advancing Interdisciplinarity,” 6.

11 Wagner, “Unwirtschaftlichkeit der Millionenstädte,” 283.

12 Mumford, The CIAM Discourse, 64.

13 Tafuri, “Sozialpolitik.”

14 Scarpa, Martin Wagner e Berlino, 151–64; Tafuri, “Sozialpolitik,” 224–30.

15 Letter to W. Wurster, quoted in Oberlander and Newbrun, Houser, 212.

16 For an in-depth analysis of this period, see Scarpa, Martin Wagner e Berlino; Tafuri, “Sozialpolitik”; and Homann, Kieren, and Scarpa, Martin Wagner.

17 Wagner, “Städtebauliche Probleme der Großstadt.”

18 Ibid., 102.

19 Ibid., 104.

20 Ibid., 106.

21 Wagner, Das wachsende Haus, 35–6; Wagner, Die neue Stadt.

22 Taut, Die Stadtkrone; Miliutin, Sotsgorod.

23 Wagner, Die neue Stadt, 3–4, 21–3.

24 Ibid., 24.

25 Mumford, The CIAM Discourse, 95, 111.

26 Domhardt, “Humanization of Urban Life.”

27 Sert, Can our Cities Survive?; Sert, Tyrwhitt, and Rogers, Heart of the City.

28 See the special issue of Planning Perspectives, vol. 29, no. 2, on the postwar exchange of planning ideas between Europe and the USA; Hein, “The Exchange of Planning Ideas.”

29 CIAM, for instance, came to a temporary standstill and the networks providing a platform for more consistent postwar exchange were developed after Wagner retired or died. See Joch, “Must Our Cities”; Wakeman, “Rethinking Postwar Planning History.”

30 Wagner, Martin Wagner, 49.

31 Wagner, “American Versus German City,” 336; and Gropius and Wagner, “Housing as a Townbuilding,” 6, mention both experiences as a reference for students. Wagner often used the Greenbelt Towns’ building costs as an example; see Wagner, New Town Economy, 10. The Frances Loeb Library holds Wagner’s personal annotated copy of Morgan’s The Small Community, another frequent reference.

32 Bauer, Modern Housing, 166, 178–80, plates 1, 25–6; Wright, Rehousing Urban America, 91–4.

33 See e.g. Walker, Urban Blight and Slums; National Resources Committee, Our Cities, 75–6; US Housing Act 1937, Sec. 10(a), 11(a).

34 The Architectural Forum, “Building’s Postwar Pattern”; Urban Land Institute, A Proposal.

35 Urban Land Institute, Decentralization.

36 Urban Land Institute, A Proposal; National Resources Planning Board, National Resources Development, 13, 66–73.

37 Urban Land Institute, Decentralization, 5.

38 Ascher, Better Cities, 4–5; National Resources Planning Board, National Resources Development, 100–8.

39 See especially Greer, Your City Tomorrow; Greer and Hansen, Urban Redevelopment and Housing; Hansen and Greer, “Toward Full Use.”

40 Greer and Hansen, Urban Redevelopment and Housing, 1; Greer, The Problem, 63–7.

41 Letter of John Gaus to Joseph Hudnut, quoted in Vallye, “Design and the Politics,” 188.

42 Vallye, ibid., 174; Alofsin, The Struggle for Modernism, 172.

43 Greer and Hansen, Urban Redevelopment and Housing, 19.

44 Gropius and Wagner, “Epilogue.”

45 Alofsin, The Struggle for Modernism, 172, 174; Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 75; Wagner, Townlets and Towns, 1.

46 Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, 57.

47 For example, the concepts of ‘Stadtschaft’/‘township’, ‘Nachbarschaft’/‘neighborship’ or ‘Nahrungsraum’/‘space of nourishment’.

48 Wagner, The Balance Sheet, 15.

49 Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 52–3.

50 The most obvious example is perhaps R. G. Tugwell’s vision for the Greenbelt Towns programme as a two-tier model of inner city de-densification and suburban resettlement.

51 See Wagner, New Town Economy; “Städtebau im Kostenspiegel”; “Die Vermögensbilanz der Stadt”; and, especially, Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 55–66.

52 Gropius et al., Housing Problem 1941, 5.

53 Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 61–2; “Unwirtschaftlichkeit der Millionenstädte,” 284.

54 Wagner, New Town Economy, 37–8; Gropius and Wagner, Housing as a Townbuilding, 8–9.

55 Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance,” 12; Wagner, “Bauen für die Massen.”

56 Gropius and Wagner, Housing as a Townbuilding, 12–3; Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, 64.

57 Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 48.

58 Wagner’s letter to Gov. Ch. Herter, MWP folder 12/27, March 14, 1954.

59 Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, 64.

60 Wagner, “Der Neubau der City,” 130.

61 Wagner, Townlets and Towns, 67; Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 82.

62 Gropius and Wagner, Housing as a Townbuilding, 21; Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance,” 30–1. Wagner used a similar notion in 1934 (Wagner, Die neue Stadt, 18–24). Gropius and Wagner also referred to ‘garden-cities embedded in regional city-gardens’ and to ‘country-cities in city-countries’ (Gropius et al., Housing Problem, 11; Gropius and Wagner, “Epilogue,” 102; “A Program,” 75). Wagner subsequently elaborated a more complex concept of ‘an organic group of garden-cities (Gartenstädten) in city-landscapes (Stadt-Landschaften), ie. in units where town-scapes (Stadtschaften), forest-scapes (Waldschaften) and country-scapes (Feldschaften) penetrate and mingle with each other’ (Wagner, Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 19).

63 Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance,” 13.

64 Gropius and Wagner, “Epilogue,” 101.

65 Gropius and Wagner, Housing as a Townbuilding, 16.

66 Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance,” 23. The frequent use of a political-economic repertoire, from the classical economists to Marx, is another evidence of Wagner’s principal authorship in the texts signed with Gropius, who rarely resorts to such jargon in his solo writings.

67 Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 86.

68 Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance,” 17. Small variations in population size are introduced in other contributions e.g. see Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 79. The parallels with Perry’s neighbourhood unit concept are numerous, but also the differences, especially in relation to the presence of economic activities.

69 Gropius et al., Housing Problem, 10; Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 30; Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 50–1, 175.

70 Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 80; Wagner, “Die Stadtschaft,” 192; Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 24.

71 Wagner, Townlets and Towns, 73–4; “Die Stadtschaft,” 193; Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 36–7, 39. It would be interesting to conduct a more detailed analysis of the parallels with the structure of the British New Towns, launched immediately after the 1946 studio.

72 Wagner, Townlets and Towns, 73–4.

73 See e.g. Gropius et al., Housing Problem, 8–9.

74 Initially justified as a way to camouflage settlements in case of air raids, in line with contemporary landscape experiments. Dümpelmann, Flights of Imagination, 172–83, describes how aircraft warfare and aviation more generally eased the penetration of strategic landscape design principles in urban interventions. For Wagner and Gropius, ‘towns … [would] have to be shaped also in respect to the bird’s eye view’ in the context of a proliferation of air transport; Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, appendix 12.

75 Gropius and Wagner, Housing as a Townbuilding, 45; see also Gropius et al., Housing Problem, 13; Wagner, “Die Stadtschaft,” 195.

76 Gropius and Wagner, “A Program”; Wagner, “Das sanitare Grün.”

77 Wagner, Townlets and Towns, 84.

78 Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 80, 82.

79 Wagner, “Die Stadtschaft,” 194.

80 Gropius and Wagner, Housing as a Townbuilding, 27–8.

81 Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 79.

82 Wagner, “American Versus German City,” 334; Die neue Stadt, 16, 19, 23.

83 Wagner, Townlets and Towns, 72; “American Versus German City,” 335.

84 Gropius and Wagner, “Epilogue.” Gropius participates only in one of the seminars focused on city centre renovation; see Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center.

85 Wagner, The Boston Contest; Diefendorf, “The Boston Contest: Introduction,” xv–xvi; Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, appendix 12.

86 Wagner, Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 82.

87 Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance,” 27–8; Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 86–91; Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 54. Compulsory amortization was increasingly seen by American judges as a legal precondition of contemporary zoning ordinances in order to deal with non-conforming land uses. Wagner had advocated this kind of approach already in Germany; see Wagner, “Städtebauliche Probleme der Großstadt,” 104.

88 Wagner, “Städtebauliche Probleme der Großstadt”; see also Scarpa, Martin Wagner e Berlino, 108.

89 Wagner, “Die Sanierung.”

90 Wagner, “Sterbende Städte?” 56.

91 Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 68, 208–9.

92 Wagner, “Unwirtschaftlichkeit der Millionenstädte,” 283.

93 Letter to W. Wurster, quoted in Oberlander, Houser, 212.

94 Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 217–9, 221.

95 Wagner, “Der Neubau der City,” 130, 136.

96 Wagner, Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 93.

97 Wagner, New Town Economy, 39–40.

98 Wagner and Gropius, “Cities’ Renaissance,” 31; The New Boston Center, 34–6; Wagner, City Rehabilitation, 181–2.

99 Wagner, “Vernunft-Perspektiven im Städtebau,” 143; “Bauen für die Massen,” 272.

100 Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, 35.

101 Wagner, The Balance Sheet, 14.

102 Wagner, New Town Economy, 33.

103 Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, 14–18.

104 Ibid., appendix; Wagner, The Boston Contest; Diefendorf, “Introduction: The Boston Contest,” xv.

105 Wagner and Gropius, The New Boston Center, 16–18.

106 Wagner, “Der Neubau der City.”

107 Ibid., 136.

108 Ibid., 129.

109 E.g. see Gropius and Wagner, “A Program,” 27–8.

110 Wagner, “Der Neubau der City,” 136; Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau, 62–4, 85–6, 96–7, 167–8.

111 Wagner, Townlets and Towns, 20.

112 Scarpa, Martin Wagner e Berlino, 11, 17, 19, 58.

113 See Wagner, “Die Vermögensbilanz der Stadt”; “Städtebau im Kostenspiegel”; “Vernunft-Perspektiven im Städtebau”; Wirtschaftlicher Städtebau; “Bauen für die Massen”; “Unwirtschaftlichkeit der Millionenstädte.”

114 See e.g. letters to managers of General Motors and the Republic Steel Co., MWP folder 7; letters to Massachusetts Governor Ch. Herter, the Commissioner of the Department of Commerce and the Boston Citizens Council’s Director, MWP folder 12; entry for the 1953 General Motors Highway Contest, MWP folder 24.

115 McHarg, A Quest for Life, 213.

116 Wagner, “Städtebauliche Probleme der Großstadt,” 104.

117 For a history of urban renewal in these enclaves, see O’Connor, Building a New Boston, 124–42.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this article was supported by a Fulbright Scholarship and the Spanish Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte [CAS15/00035].