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Abstract
Several scholars, including Pierre-Yves Saunier and Renaud Payre, have studied how the members of the various networks of the ‘urban internationale’ attempted to overcome professional and political cleavages throughout the twentieth century. In contrast, only a few scholars have scrutinized the ways in which international professional institutions sought to prevail over interlingual difficulties. Although various institutions restricted communication to English, French, and German, many members had only a limited command of foreign languages; additionally, amateur interpreters further impeded multilingual conversation. Resulting language difficulties worsened professional and political conflicts within the urban internationale. Charting the attempts of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP) to establish an international notation of town plans and an interlingual glossary for urban planning, this essay studies attempts of the urban internationale to facilitate communication across borders during the interwar era. Through the example of the IFHTP, this article studies how planners within this international network organized transborder expert cooperation. It focuses on the debates surrounding the creation of a notation system and a glossary, designed to facilitate communication between planners from Western industrial societies while largely excluding connections to the Colonies and other parts of the world.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes on contributor
Phillip Wagner is a research fellow at the Institute of History at Humboldt University of Berlin. He obtained his PhD with a study on the practices of expert internationalism in the era of high modernity focusing on the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning as a case study.
Notes
1. Saunier, “Sketches,” 382. Whereas the CIAM is absent in Saunier's account, recent studies have revealed the links of this institution to the IFHTP, IULA, and IHA (see Somer, City, 25–9).
2. Whyte, “1910 Conference,” 157. More generally on the strategic use of international networks for domestic reasons: Geyer and Paulmann, “Introduction” and Kohlrausch et al., “Expert Cultures.”
3. Geertse, City, 100–5.
4. Payre, “À l’école,” 124–6.
5. One exception is the common notation of urban plans that the CIAM invented to study the distribution of functional areas in European and American cities in a uniform way. This international system of communication facilitated that CIAM was able to prepare the resolutions of CIAM III that would later become the Charter of Athens. (Es et al., , Atlas; Somer, City; and Vossoughian, Neurath.)
6. Since the early twentieth century, attendants on international housing and planning conferences had to adhere to the three languages at least (“Untitled Note”).
7. Newspaper Cutting: International Town Planning Conference held in Gothenburg, undated (1923), Papers of Sir Ebenezer Howard, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Hertford, file F28/6.
8. In the 1930s, interpreters of the IULA and IFHTP included the English civil servant George M. Harris and the Belgian mayor Emile Vinck (Couperus and Ewen, “Internationale”; Scheffer, Louis S. P., Commemorative address. Golden Jubilee Conference. Arnhem, June 26 to 29, 1963, Sir Frederick Osborn Archive, Hertfordshire Archives and Local Studies, Hertford (hereafter FJO), file H 13). Only when the IULA and IFHTP moved to shared headquarters in Brussels in 1937, they hired the trilingual Paula Schäfer (the former German secretary of the IHA) to organize translation in a more professional way (Joint meeting of the Executive Committee of the IFHTP and the IHA, Paris, July 9, 1937, IFHPA, box 7).
9. Saunier, “Sketches,” 382.
10. On the development of national planning terminologies see: Albers, Entwicklung, 276–84; Calabi, “Poete.” On the importance of written discourse in planning: Kuchenbuch, Gemeinschaft; Guttenberg, Language; Boyer, Dreaming. On the diversity of urban terminology, see Topalov et al., L'Aventure.
11. Vermerk über die Teilnahme an dem Internationalen Wohnungskongress in Prag vom 24.–26. Juni 1935 [Notice on the participation at the international housing congress in Prague, June 24–26, 1935], Institut für Stadtgeschichte, Frankfurt am Main, file MA 6340.
12. On the history of the IFHTP, see Wagner, Stadtplanung; Geertse, City; and Riboldazzi, Modernità.
13. Saunier, “Borderline Work.”
14. Geertse, City, 124, 183 and Somer, City, 135–6. Before the IFHTP, only national protagonists had proposed international systems of communication. For instance, the French planner Ernest Michel Hébrard had presented an international code for the display of plans during the planning exhibition in Berlin 1910 (Somer, City, 135–6).
15. International Garden Cities and Town Planning Federation, Conference 1923, 70–71.
16. For instance, see Hudig to Chapman, December 7, 1922, Nederlands Architektuur Instituut, Rotterdam, Archief van het Nederlands Instituut voor Volkshuisvesting en Stedebouw, later Nederlands Instituut voor Ruimtijlke Ordening en Volkshuisvesting (hereafter NIVOS/NIROV), box 24, file 38, England. Hudig and Vinck turned their interest to the reform of the IFHTP after plans to revive the IULA and the Permanent Committee for International Congresses of Social Housing proved unsuccessful after 1918 (Hudig to Kampffmeyer, September 22, 1925, NIVOS/NIROV, box 66, file 118).
17. The question how visual representations such as maps, charts, and diagrams helped to construct the metropolis as an object of urban planning is only secondary in the context of this paper (see Söderström, “Paper Cities” and Eisinger, “Stadt”).
18. Somer, City, 128–9.
19. International Garden Cities and Town Planning Federation, Conference 1923, 71–2.
20. Minutes of the Annual Meeting, Gothenburg, August 8, 1923, International Federation for Housing and Planning archive (hereafter IFHPA), The Hague, box 7. I use box numbers that existed during my last visit at the IFHPA in July 2012. Since then, the archive is in a process of relocation to Letchworth.
21. See the speeches by IFHTP president Ebenezer Howard and League of Nations official Robert Cecil in International Garden Cities and Town Planning Association, Conference 1922.
22. Langen, Begründung and Nolen, Asheville.
23. Saunier, “Crosser” and Hoffacker, Entstehung, 43.
24. Pepler, “Report of Notation Committee appointed by the Congress held at Gothenburg in 1923,” June 20, 1924, Cornell University Library, Ithaca, Nolen papers (hereafter Nolen papers), box 70, file 3; Civic Survey Notation. Proposed International Code, undated (1924), NIVOS/NIROV, box 136, file 499.
25. Special Report No. 1, undated (1924), Columbia University, Department of Drawings and Archives, New York, Edith Elmer Wood papers (hereafter Wood papers), box 50, file 12.
26. Minutes of a Meeting of the Executive Committee, Paris, September 26, 1925, IFHPA, box 7.
27. Pepler, “Conference.”
28. IFHTP, Congress 1929, vol. 3, 86.
29. IFHTP, Congress 1928, vol. 3, 159.
30. Bodenschatz and Post, Städtebau.
31. Vinck to Elmer Wood, October 2, 1928, Wood papers, box 50, file 14.
32. Somer, City, 138–39.
33. International Garden Cities and Town Planning Federation, Conference 1923, 71.
34. Pepler, George L., International Notation for Civic Surveys and Town Plans. Report of Committee, July 9, 1926, Nolen papers, box 70, file 3.
35. Sakai, “Translation.”
36. Crawford et al., “Denationalizing.”
37. Pepler, George L., International Notation for Civic Surveys and Town Plans. Report of Committee, July 9, 1926, Nolen papers, box 70, file 3.
38. For instance, Schlomann, Dictionary.
39. The ILO did not produce any results before the League of Nations took over the field of housing in 1928 (Saunier, “Borderline Work”).
40. Report on Sub-Committee on International Notation, undated (September 1926), Minutes of a meeting of the Executive Committee of the IFHTP, Brussels, November 27, 1926, Reports of the Secretariat to the Council, undated (1927), Minutes of a meeting of the Executive Committee, Rome, September 11, 1929, all in IFHPA, box 7.
41. IFHTP, Glossary. Due to the civil war, Spanish members did not participate in the glossary committee. The first conference in a Spanish-speaking country only took place in Mexico in 1938.
42. Report to the Council by the Special Committee on Organization, June 19, 1929, Nolen papers, box 6, file 19.
43. Report on International Glossary, May 19, 1930 and Report on International Glossary, undated (1930); Report on International Glossary Sub-Committee, September 4, 1930, both in IFHPA, box 7; Chapman to Nolen, August 24, 1933, Nolen papers, box 5, file 6; IFHTP, Glossary, 4–7.
44. Chapman to Nolen, August 24, 1933, Nolen papers, box 5, file 6.
45. IFHTP, Glossary, 72, 19.
46. Ibid., 24, 29.
47. Report on International Glossary, undated (1930), IFHPA, box 7.
48. On strategic internationalism, see Geyer and Paulmann, “Introduction.”
49. Clarke, Hope, 174–81; Hardy, Garden Cities, 189–94.
50. Chambers, Theodore. “Broadcast, July 16, 1935,” FJO, file F 3.
51. Bodenschatz et al., Städtebau, 398–403.
52. “Les congrès,” 206 and Steenhuis, “Paris 1934,” 233.
53. Diefendorf, “Planning,” 201.
54. In 1951, the IFHTP published a second issue of its wordbook (IFHTP, Glossary 1951).
55. Henderson, Housing, 222–5.
56. Harris and Giles, “Message.”
57. Bardet, Glossaire; Woodford, Terminology; and, for instance, Logie, Population.