IFHP, 1925-1968: Inter-national Comparisons

The IFHP was largely concerned with the planning of cities, as the records of its world congresses generally bear out. This is unsurprising given that the city is prima facie the most appropriate scale for many planning projects, although the value of regional , national and even international planning was

increasingly accepted among its membership. Regional planning was

frequently a congress theme, for instance at the 1931 congress in Berlin where the second of the two congress themes is titled: “The traffic problem in

relation to town and regional planning”, the “lack of national planning” was bemoaned by British delegates at the 1935 congress in London and

international planning was proposed by Bédévin of Brussels at the 1937 congress in Paris (IFHP, 1931; 1935; 1937). The urban scale does not and did not exist in isolation and the inconvenience of the differing national situations of cities was inescapable. As has been argued in the previous chapter, cities in some countries (in that instance, England and Wales) were largely constrained by the national system in which they were situated. For this reason, advocating that cities in Great Britain (for example) imitate those in Germany would

accomplish little – they were constrained by their national system. Instead differing national systems were themselves frequently compared with each other.

Therefore, although as part of the urban internationale identified by Pierre-Yves Saunier (2001), the IFHP was predicated on the notion that the urban was an international, even universal condition, national differences were

acknowledged to be significant in determining the outcomes of particular cities. In the following extracts I identify examples of this tension,

demonstrating the significance sometimes accorded to the national context of cities at the expense of their individual characteristics.

The significance of the national context of cities is acknowledged from the beginning of the IFHP archive in 1925; remember that Ford stated that the congress was “designed in principle, therefore, for each city, region and country to teach and to learn from other cities, regions and countries at the congress” (IFHP, 1925: 10). This suggests that national and urban policies would both be considered during discussions, yet the actual conduct of the congress was often different, as national differences came to dominate proceedings. Good practice in particular cities could be attributed to their location within progressive nation-states and therefore dismissed. Meanwhile, struggling cities could excuse their disappointing performance with respect to the unenlightened nation-states in which they were situated.

At the 1929 world congress, three delegates contribute to a discussion of theme one, "Financing working class and middle class housing, with special reference to methods of attracting new capital” (IFHP, 1929). They are Signora Crova, nominally representing the host city of Rome; Leo Kaufmann, nominally representing Tel-Aviv and Eiler Sand, nominally representing Copenhagen. Yet their contributions are couched in entirely national terms. Crova laments the great difficulty inherent in housing Italy’s large families (as opposed to

Rome’s); Kaufmann reports that the Palestinian housing shortage is less severe (instead of that in Tel-Aviv specifically), but that finances remain tight; and Sand provides the encouragement that the stabilisation of rents in Denmark (rather than Copenhagen) has helped to attract capital for further

housebuilding.

It is Denmark rather than Copenhagen which is being advanced as an example of a potential solution and the delegates were reluctant to claim that rent stabilisation ought to be pursued as a general aim, in spite of the evidence that it had been successful there. Rather, it was acknowledged that the problem of financing housing was a difficult one, faced by all countries, and that no universally-applicable solution could be offered. The substitution of national systems in place of individual cities does not therefore necessarily imply a parallel substitution of model national systems in place of model cities, though the example of the Lex Adickes indicates that this could possibly occur. Rather, comparison of different national systems rarely led to a conviction that one was superior and should be imitated elsewhere. Instead, as here, the

improbability of devising universal solutions was emphasised.

One factor obstructing the exchange of models of national planning systems was the reluctance to offend an international audience by trumpeting the success of one’s own country. At times this variously meant that comparisons were played down or avoided altogether, or that disclaimers about the non-comparability of cities in different jurisdictions were laboured to effectively preclude the possibility that one’s own policy might be compatible with another country’s system. All three mechanisms for defusing potentially undiplomatic scenes are employed in the following quotation, from a report from Carl Feiss, of the United States’ Housing and Home Finance Agency to the 1954 world congress in Edinburgh:

“Before embarking on any specific discussion, however, of the methods used in the United States for solving our own problems connected with slums, blight and inadequate housing and town planning, it would be wise to say something about the major differences in the concepts in government in planning, differences in method, between the United States and many other nations. It would be impossible in this brief paper to detail all of these differences country by country, I think it is important, though, that there be a clear and general understanding of the local planning procedures employed in the United States, not

(Heaven forbid) in order to claim that such methods are any better than those to be found in other countries, but in order to highlight the distinctions…” (IFHP, 1954: 3)

This rhetoric contrasts with the activities of twenty-first century policy

boosterists in two ways. Firstly, they have no such inhibitions about promoting their own city before an audience comprised of representatives of other cities (McCann, 2013). Secondly, far from downplaying comparisons between cities as Feiss does, they attempt to disguise the apparent incompatibility of the cities they promote, emphasising their commensurability instead even if this involves constructing what may be quite spurious myths of commensurability (McCann, 2011a). This is a significant change in the style of argumentation, a change which may be connected to the rise of presentations rather than submissions at IFHP congresses, which in turn may arise from extra-institutional factors discussed in the conclusion to this chapter.

Sometimes the different culture or psyche of different nationalities came to the fore, with cultural differences being considered to constitute the chief barriers to policy circulation. In the previous example from the 1954 congress in Edinburgh, Feiss (IFHP, 1954) goes on to note the distinctive US feature of the local financial impasse, whereby local authorities have insufficient funds but consider petitioning the federal government for help to be un-American. Feiss implies that European municipalities would lack such reservations. Similarly, another American delegate Lawrence Purdy argues at the 1928 Paris congress that in spite of what might seem to be positive results from European housing policies designed to tackle the housing problem among the very poor, “the US has no one very poor by European standards, and American people will not accept using public money for housing” (IFHP, 1928: 68). Purdy disagrees with the description of contemporary circumstances – both that there are poor people and that they are overcrowded – but adds that even if that description is correct, its European solution of public involvement in housing is not

appropriate in the United States because of the attitude of the public. Cultural differences, whether real or imagined, severely hinder the capacity for

borrowing from any foreign models, whether model cities or model national systems, and such exceptionalism is not confined to the minds of American delegates.

For example, British delegates at the 1935 congress in London (IFHP, 1935) are offended by the approach to housing “undesirables” taken by the city

government of Amsterdam under the directorship of Arie Keppler, as an affront to British principles of liberty. Even a British delegate who is supportive of Keppler’s approach (F W Cook, representing Dudley) acknowledges that the cultural attitudes of compatriots render it an unsuitable example for imitation in Britain. That the conflict is played down by the rapporteur (the Dutch chief inspector of housing. van der Kaa), who considers the cause to have been an error in translation (with his clarification that Kepler’s use of the term

“undesirables” was probably intended to refer only to those who had proved themselves incapable of peaceful co-existence with neighbours in new housing developments), is indicative of another major barrier to international

mobilisation of models: mistranslation (IFHP, 1935).

The national dimension of IFHP congresses had three other effects upon the scope for model cities to be advanced as argumentative resources. I discuss each of those briefly in the following paragraphs.

(i) National submissions to congresses

The first consideration is the seeking of national submissions through the distribution of questionnaires to respondents answering on behalf of countries rather than cities. This began with the Paris congress in 1928, before which individual papers had been presented in the style which would late re-emerge later on. This had advantages in that the standardised nature of questionnaire responses meant that several national reports could be included together in the space taken for one individual presentation. A weakness was the general lack of new information and certainly of the theatrical excitement of listening to presentations. However, more interesting responses were generated when reporters deviated from the rigid set of questions on national experience and talked at length about their own acconmplishments, which happened

frequently. Geertse comments that:

“Although the reports were to convey an objective survey, the reporters nonetheless often focussed on their personal views and achievements”

(Geertse, 2012: 182)

Frustrating though this may have been for the congress organisers and other delegates, who were thus denied access to the more general information they sought, this concentration upon individual experiences and successes is probably preferable for my research.

As an example of a congress arranged by collecting national submissions in response to a questionnaire, let us consider that hosted in Hastings in 1946 (IFHP, 1946)to which submissions were prepared by England and Wales,

Scotland, Northern Ireland, France, Belgium and the United States. This in some ways formalised what had already been taking place at earlier congresses where submissions supposedly from cities tended to refer to national experiences. However, this congress is exceptional in being staged so soon after World War Two, when a lack of resources (as well as an intensification of Cold War hostilities) would have prevented greater levels of attendance.

The 1939 world congress in Stockholm is a better case study of the format of an IFHP world congress of this time. In August 1938, well in advance of the congress, a questionnaire was circulated from the IFHP’s headquarters (then in Brussels). The questionnaire posed two major questions about respondents’

experiences of the inter-relationship of town building and traffic problems, along with a number of subsidiary questions (IFHP, 1939). Responses were received and published in advance of the congress. The origin of these responses differed considerably. The German response came from a national government official but focused on the Ruhr district; conversely the Danish respondent was a municipal employee of Copenhagen but discussed the national situation. Czechoslovakia (then Nazi-occupied), Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and France also submitted one response each, as did the United States. Only Australia and Great Britain submitted more than one response. In the Australian case this is reflective of that country’s federal nature: New South Wales and Victoria operated different planning systems and so made separate submissions, focusing upon the cities of Sydney and

Melbourne respectively. Within the British submission, however, there were five separate responses, each from different cities. One of these is the capital city of London but the others are Birmingham, Norwich, Nottingham and Welwyn Garden City (an indication of the esteem in which the garden city continued to be held; see section ‎5.3). The disproportionate representation of provincial British cities is surprising given the lesser autonomy which they were granted compared with cities elsewhere (Judge, Stoker and Wolman [1995]), and can be attributed to their general over-representation as delegates at IFHP world congresses, with the IFHP retaining a strong British influence to the present day, as well as to Britain’s significant role in the early history of planning. Ward notes that both garden cities and new towns were British innovations admired elsewhere: “Viewed internationally, the British new towns were a uniquely powerful achievement, much studied and visited… The gospel of the British new town planning movement…was spread overseas, echoing on a larger scale the earlier transfer of the garden city idea itself” (Ward, 1992: 16)

With the exception of the United Kingdom, then, the system of national submissions to IFHP world congresses in the early decades of the twentieth century tended to reduce the scope for individual cities to be discussed at length since their particular experiences were overlooked in the search for

general reports of national activities. If individual cities were discussed at length within such reports, then there was usually only one, which was almost invariably the country’s capital city. Delegates were often representatives of the capital cities too, with an example being the 1929 Rome congress mentioned at the beginning of this section. This effect means that even where the

experiences of actual cities were expressed at these congresses, as opposed to those of nation-states, it is likely that the experiences of the majority of cities were excluded from consideration.

(ii) National hosting of congresses

The tendency for the congresses, ostensibly recorded by the IFHP as having been held in cities, to be “adopted” by the host country is a second instance of the “national” scale asserting itself where it is supposed to be subordinate in a formally international, intermunicipal forum. For example, the “London”

congress of 1935 featured study tours for which the itinerary included the northern English cities of Liverpool and Leeds (IFHP, 1935). National government officials were commonly invited to open congresses, and

discussions frequently featured delegates drawn heavily from the host country.

Moving forward to the post-war period, the Puerto Rico congress of 1960 is unique in being styled as such, by the name of a territory, rather than by the city in which it was held (in this case, San Juan). This is clearly an exceptional case given the small size of Puerto Rico and the large size of the city of San Juan in proportion. Delegates were impressed with Puerto Rico’s approach and appraised it in national terms. Thus Dr Rafael Picó, president of the

Inter-American Planning Society (SIAP) which co-hosted with the IFHP what was billed as a World Planning and Housing Congress, introduces it by presenting Puerto Rico as a model:

“The progress achieved by Puerto Rico up to the present is well known throughout the world. The program of technical cooperation and the interchange that is created by various professional meetings which, like this one, have taken place in Puerto Rico in recent years, have contributed notably to this process. Puerto Rico is proud and quite happy to share its experiences with our friends and neighbors throughout the world, because in this way a better understanding

between the countries and their people is strengthened…” (IFHP, 1960:

14)

Picó continues to use the language of mutual learning and the sharing of experiences, which is after all diplomatic in an international setting where a chauvinistic celebration of one’s own country might be offensive. Yet the opening sentence makes clear that Puerto Rico has much to teach. The lessons from Puerto Rico were real, but they were interpreted by delegates such as Manzo of Argentina to constitute evidence of the country’s planning system rather than that of any particular city:

“Puerto Rico has ideal conditions to carry out self-help and mutual aid projects in rural areas. On the other hand, in Argentina rural dispersion is such that only self-help looks feasible.” (IFHP, 1960: 93)

This statement suggests that Puerto Rico is an example of good practice, but perhaps not an effective model because it cannot easily be mobilised to a different context.

(iii) International differences in conference attendance

A third manifestation of the tacit but significant national dimension at the IFHP was the tendency for attendance at IFHP congresses to be confined to a

relatively few countries. Besides the inevitable over-representation of the host country, delegates tended to come from a handful of Western European countries and the United States. Soviet delegates were conspicuous by their absence at many congresses (their non-attendance being lamented at Hastings in 1946 [IFHP, 1946]). Incidentally a similar situation pertained at Town

Planning Review, where post-war editor Gordon Stephenson tried but failed to procure articles from beyond the Iron Curtain (Massey, 2012). Moreover, the countries of the global South were rarely represented until the 1960s (Geertse, 2012). This phenomenon did not disappear quickly; as late as the 1982

congress in Oslo (IFHP, 1982) the overwhelming majority of the speakers (for the congress format had by then been modified) were from the United

Kingdom, the Netherlands (where the IFHP is headquartered) and the Scandinavian countries (where the congress was hosted).

This section has shown that alongside the parallel trends for utopian model cities to be mobilised as argumentative resources and the general support for

planning and the devising of plans, early IFHP world congresses were also marked by a tendency to compare different national planning systems rather than individual cities. This effect reduced still further the possibility that an actually-existing city could be constructed as a model, but only occasionally did the “model national system” arise in its place. The incompatibility of different national systems with existing circumstances and a general

reluctance to privilege one country’s experience over another militated against this. This section has also indicated significant further effects of the unspoken

“national” element at IFHP world congresses: the reception of national submissions, the adoption of congresses by the host country and the numerical dominance of certain countries.