Abstract
This article analyzes the garden city campaign of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP). Available literature suggests the agenda of the IFHTP was dictated by the British garden city militants who had established the IFHTP in 1913. Although the garden city concept dominated the agenda, its treatment was not static. The agenda evolved in the course of time from town planning on “garden city lines” to true independent garden cities, then from a national garden cities program to satellite towns, and finally merged into the broader concept of regional decentralization. This article demonstrates that the agenda of the IFHTP cannot be adequately framed in terms of exclusive agency of its British initiators. The agenda of the IFHTP, as a transnational network organization, was substantially influenced by the structure and substance of its membership and the wider transnational network society, Saunier’s Urban Internationale, to which it belonged.
Keywords
In recent years academia has focused on the importance of transnational expert networks in defining new professional fields and lobbying for social reform. 1 Daniel Rodgers has evoked a transatlantic network of interconnections through multiple biographical narratives of ideas and policy brokers in the period between the Gilded Age and the New Deal. 2 Drawing from the work of Giorgio Piccinato and Anthony Sutcliffe, Pierre-Yves Saunier has labeled this international milieu as the “Urban Internationale.” 3 The identification of a transnational planning society between the wars has given way to different interpretations. Some authors focus on material (design) culture and assess the Urban Internationale as an international sphere for planning experts to discuss the turbulent developments of their expanding profession. 4 Other authors stress the political contestations and negotiations underpinning transnational planning dialogue. 5 Transnational experts had to navigate between universal scientific standards and the political and cultural requirements of nation-states. 6 They wanted to formalize transnational planning diffusion to create a sheltered environment where they could discuss technical issues without their national political connotations. 7
The academic focus on transnational expert networks has sparked substantial interest in the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP) between the wars. Although planning historiography in the past persistently has overlooked the IFHTP in favor of the more familiar Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM), the latter was only a marginal player in the transnational diffusion of planning ideas in the interwar period, 8 and its agenda was in fact informed by that of the IFHTP. 9 The IFHTP was established in 1913 by the British Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (GCTPA) as an international extension of the British garden city movement. 10 In the 1920s it matured into one of the foremost transnational rostrums for the discussion of housing and planning issues. Authors focusing on material planning culture portray the IFHTP as a major transnational outlet for the transfer of planning practices. 11 Other authors focus on the political negotiations in the Bureau of the IFHTP. 12 They portray fierce contestations and political intrigues between the British initiators of the IFHTP and the continental members.
This article focuses on the relation between British and continental influence in the IFHTP in its formative years (1913-1926). How British or international was this transnational platform actually? On the basis of contemporary journals, official IFHTP congress reports, surviving minutes of the executive and governing bodies of the IFHTP, and correspondence of key participants, the changes in membership and national participation will be assessed. Who participated in the IFHTP, and why did they participate? Subsequently, this article analyzes the negotiations between the British and continental members to arrive at a shared IFHTP agenda, using Virginia Satir’s concept of coping or communication stances and Kenneth Thomas’s conflict management styles to frame this interaction.
Active Membership and National Participation
Membership is an obvious starting point to assess the early IFHTP. Although most authors agree that the IFHTP in its formative years was dominated by British garden city militants, we still do not know who actually participated in this organization. The historical IFHTP membership administration is lost, making an assessment of total membership impossible. The lecturers and reporters at the IFHTP congresses of course played a vital role in the transnational planning dialogue facilitated by the IFHTP and the audiences also played their part in the subsequent dissemination of the outcomes. Nevertheless, the agenda of this dialogue was negotiated by a relatively small population of active members, attending meetings of the executive and governing bodies of this organization. This core group also constituted the continuity within the IFHTP. The active members can be identified through the minutes of IFHTP meetings. The oldest surviving minutes date from 1919. The minutes identify fifty-nine individual active members in the period 1919-1926, twenty-nine individual members if we correct for incidental attendance (Figure 1). For the period before 1919 we depend on reports on IFHTP activities in periodicals, first and foremost Garden Cities and Town Planning Magazine, the organ of the GCTPA. These reports do not hand conclusive attendance lists, but they do identify prominent active members.
Continuity of active membership in the IFHTP, expressed in attended meetings by individual active members. Minimal attendance is three meetings.
It is important to note that principal IFHTP membership was constituted by national societies, not individual members. The active members mentioned before in fact were representatives of affiliated societies. Planners who wanted to join the IFHTP had to join an affiliated national society. This society provided a direct ticket to (passive) participation at the congresses of the IFHTP. Active participation—contributing to the drafting of the IFHTP agenda—was coordinated by the national societies. Thus the selection process to select active members not only took place at the (transnational) level of the IFHTP—formally the council appointed the executive members and officers—but to a large extent was defined at the national level. The national selection procedure was a means to serve the domestic agenda of the national societies concerned. The active members formed national factions to reinforce the domestic agenda on the transnational stage and often joined forces with other national factions to pursue shared interests. Of course active members often had a personal agenda as well. Ideally, individual, national, political, and professional agendas converged, but that was not always the case.
Active membership and national participation in the IFHTP were dynamic, as can be evidenced by the steadily expanding audiences at the IFHTP congresses: the London congress in 1920 attracted about 170 registered delegates, whereas the Vienna congress (1926) lured more than 1,000 registered delegates. 13 Throughout the period under scrutiny active members and national factions (temporarily) left the IFHTP, but their absence was more than compensated by new members joining the transnational transfer project of the IFHTP. The influence and composure of national factions changed as well throughout the years. Some factions rose to prominence, whereas other factions faded into marginality. Also the composure of active membership and national participation changed. Initially, the IFHTP was firmly rooted in the garden city movement and was dominated by interested laymen from the middle class with an orientation toward social reform. In the 1920s the IFHTP transformed into a transnational platform for the discussion of housing and town planning issues and mainly attracted planning technocrats (professional planners and administrators). In these changes of membership and participation, which certainly affected the relation between British and continental influence in the IFHTP, distinct stages can be identified. In the next section these changes are discussed, before we move on to the motivations of the members to join the IFHTP and the negotiations to align their agendas.
From Garden City Community to Planning Expert Network Organization
Throughout the period under scrutiny the British constituted the dominant national faction. Very likely, this British hegemony has contributed to the characterization of the early IFHTP as mere British extension in the Urban Internationale. The international body was established on the initiative of Ewart Culpin, secretary of the GCTPA, aided by befriended French and German garden city enthusiasts. 14 Up until 1922, all honorary officers of the federation had a British background (Table 1). Initially, all British active members had direct ties to the GCTPA or the National Housing and Town Planning Council (Henry Aldridge and Alderman Thompson) and the Co-Partnership Tenants Ltd (Frederic Litchfield and Henry Vivian), two lobby organizations that closely collaborated with the GCTPA in its domestic campaign devoted to raising housing conditions in a well-planned environment. Some of these active members (Thomas Adams, Stanley Adshead, George Montagu Harris, Barry Parker, George L. Pepler, and Raymond Unwin) were also affiliated with the Town Planning Institute. The British faction was a motley crowd, uniting middle-class reformers, planning professionals, and administrators.
Officers of the IFHTP in the Period 1913-1926.
Source: Minutes of the Executive Committee and the Council 1919-1926, IFHP Archives, IFHP Secretariat in The Hague and “official reports” of the IFHTP in Garden Cities and Town Planning Magazine 1913-1919.
After World War I active British membership changed. In 1922, a paid organizing secretary was appointed: Harry Chapman, former librarian of the GCTPA. Interested laymen stepped back and professionals and officials gained the upper hand as the IFHTP transformed from lobby organization devoted to the garden city idea to transnational planning expert network organization. The National Housing and Town Planning Council and the Co-Partnership Tenants Ltd silently abandoned their participation because of this reorientation, whereas this transition motivated the Town Planning Institute to officially join the federation in 1924. 15
International Garden City Society
The IFHTP also attracted foreign members. Ewart Culpin presented the IFHTP as the logical next step in the evolution of the garden city movement. 16 The international organization served as a formalization of the expanding foreign networks of the GCTPA. Reports on the early IFHTP meetings in Garden Cities and Town Planning Magazine suggest that the foreign active members were mainly recruited among befriended garden city societies. Germany presented the largest foreign delegation. German participation was fronted by active members Adolf Otto and Bernard Kampffmeyer of the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft (1902). The Russian garden city workers presented the second largest national faction. They were represented by active members Dmitri Protopopov and Alexander Bloch of the Russian Garden City Society (1913). French participation was lead by active members Georges Benoît-Lévy and Charles Gide of the Association Française des Cités-jardins (1903). These foreign active members were joined by Dr. W. T. Dobrzynski of the Polish garden city movement and Cebrià Montoliu of the Spanish Societat Civica Cuitat Jardi (1912), representing participation by smaller national factions in the IFHTP. 17
The prewar IFHTP also attracted a large audience from the United States, although American participation did not pivot around a central garden city association, nor did the Americans profess a sincere interest in active membership. Stanley Buder has identified these Americans as Christian socialists with a sincere interest in Howard’s garden city gospel. 18 Undoubtedly, the large American turnout originated in Ewart Culpin’s lecture tour in 1913 through North America to spread the garden city idea. 19
Not all foreign active members represented garden city societies. For example, prominent French active member Augustin Rey represented the Musée Social (1894). This organization was not just another continental garden city association. It assembled a professionally and ideologically diverse group of reformers to study contemporary social and economic issues. It was a social laboratory that lobbied for social legislation. Naturally, the Musée Social was interested in garden city experience, but it was not willing to resort to exclusive garden city propaganda. 20 Moreover, not all foreign GCTPA correspondents participated in the IFHTP. This certainly was the case for the short-lived Dutch and Belgian garden city associations (respectively 1908 and 1904). The early IFHTP gatherings mainly attracted interested architects, not garden city zealots, from the Netherlands. 21 Belgian participation was represented by senator Emile Vinck and architect Jules Brunfaut of the Union des Villes et des Communes Belges (UVCB). 22 This union had more in common with the Musée Social than with the GCTPA.
International Platform for Planning Experts
World War I had a profound impact on IFHTP membership. Some of the largest national participations (temporarily) ceased. The war inevitable divided membership in allies, enemies, and neutrals. The German and Austrian “enemies” were temporarily denied membership. After the October Revolution, Russian participation dropped. The new Bolshevist regime considered the bourgeoisie concept of garden cities inadequate to express the new socialist era. The American members avoided belligerent Europe. Effectively, the majority of foreign garden city militants (temporarily) left the federation. To stay in business the IFHTP launched its Belgium Reconstruction Campaign, after the war geographically expanded to include northern France. This endeavor propelled Belgian and later French participation into the center of attention. The IFHTP looked beyond its original garden city backing and addressed the officials and planners responsible for the reconstruction task. Among the new Belgian participants two names stood out: architect–planner Raphael Verwilghen, official representative of the Belgian government, and the earlier mentioned senator Vinck. The latter became the dominant Belgian representative in the IFHTP between the wars.
Many continental garden city associations did not return in a leading capacity of national participation after the war. The wartime focus on planning officials and professionals persevered and intensified. A restoration of Russian participation was shunned, because postwar Western Europe feared a spread of the communist revolution. The coordination of French participation was taken over by town planning professor Auguste Bruggeman, a Belgian architect who had relocated to Paris during the war, and socialist politician Henri Sellier. They were the prime architects of the Association Française pour l’Etude de l’Aménagement et de l’Extension des Villes, an umbrella organization founded in 1919 to unite French propagandistic and professional town planning bodies in one single institution. Bruggeman served as director of this new association that became the undisputed French representative of the IFHTP in France. 23 Dutch participation was briefly coordinated by the Netherlands Society of Architects, although this organization did not provide active members. 24 Dutch participation changed in 1922 when the Netherlands Institute for Housing and Town Planning, fronted by lawyer and planner Dirk Hudig, stepped in as the new coordinator. 25 Hudig became the dominant Dutch active member, seconded by Arie Keppler and L. S. P. Scheffer, respectively director of the housing department and the town planning department of Amsterdam.
In late 1922 German and Austrian participation was reinstated. Otto and Kampffmeyer of the Deutsche Gartenstadtgesellschaft were the first to rejoin the active members of the IFHTP. Their readmittance initiated a wave of German and Austrian public, professional, and educational town planning organizations applying for affiliation. The new German active members included town planning pioneers Joseph Stübben and Gustav Langen, prolific town planning academics Cornelius Gurlitt and Roman Heiligenthal and Robert Schmidt, director of the Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlenbezirk. In December 1924 the scattered German participation was united in the Spitzenverband für Städtebau und Landesplanung, of which Robert Schmidt became director. 26 Austrian participation was fronted by active members Hans Kampffmeyer, director of the Viennese Settlement Office (1921), and Anton Weber, the Viennese senator responsible for municipal social and housing policies. 27
The postwar period witnessed the start of participation from Scandinavia. Norwegian active members Christian Gierløff, director of the Norsk Forening av Boligreformer (1913), and town planning professor Sverre Pedersen of the Norwegian Town Planning Association (1919) were the first active members from Northern Europe. They were joined by diplomat Erik Sjöstrand, an active (international) campaigner of the labor movement, and Gothenburg’s city planner Albert Lilienberg from Sweden. Prominent active Danes included socialist politician Frederik Dalgaard and attorney Frederik Boldsen, both representing Danish housing reform organizations. Boldsen of course is also known as the founder of the Danish Garden City Association (1912). 28 Surveyor Kai Hendriksen and city engineer Aage Bjerre of the Dansk Byplanlaboratorium (1921) completed the active Danish members.
Once international relations stabilized, Americans once again crossed the Atlantic to seek transnational trade facilitated by the IFHTP. However, now it was predominantly professional planners that joined the IFHTP to learn more about the experiences of their European peers. The active members from the United States included housing expert Lawrence Veiller of the National Housing Association (1911), architect John Nolen and planning pioneer Thomas Adams of the American City Planning Institute (1917), and architects Clarence Stein, Henry Wright, and Frederick Bigger of the Regional Planning Association of America (1923). 29
Changing Patterns
Surveying national participation and active membership of the IFHTP in the period 1913-1926, distinct patterns become visible. Although an international organization in name, the IFHTP definitely had a British core with anchor points in Europe and Northern America. Participation from the colonies and other continents was negligible. During World War I participation from foreign countries dropped, but in the 1920s the number of countries represented in the IFHTP rapidly increased. In this new era of mass participation the British active members soon found themselves outnumbered.
Although Stanley Buder labels the early IFHTP an important conduit for professional affiliation, prewar foreign active membership suggests the organization initially foremost was a conduit for ideological affiliation. 30 The IFHTP was established by the British GCTPA that recruited foreign participants among befriended garden city societies in Europe. Their representatives, the active members of the IFHTP, predominantly were interested laymen from the middle class. During its reconstruction campaign in World War I the IFHTP started targeting a new audience: professional planners and government administrators. After the war this focus persevered. Representation of public and professional bodies rapidly advanced, reflecting the postwar institutionalization of housing and town planning in the Western world. 31 The lay garden city zealots soon found themselves outnumbered. The IFHTP slowly transformed into a transnational planning expert network organization.
The Rationale of Transnational Planning Dialogue
National societies and individual active members joined the IFHTP with a purpose. These motivations not only account for growing affiliation, but also shed a light on the changing patterns of participation and (active) membership. Anthony Sutcliffe has identified two considerations to engage in transnational planning dialogue: artistic inspiration and Schumpeter’s classic innovation diffusion theory. 32 Dutch architect Jan Stuyt attended the IFHTP congress in London in 1914 to learn more about British garden city experience. 33 The Netherlands Institute for Housing and Town Planning joined the IFHTP to stay in touch with the latest town planning achievements, although it explicitly dismissed the garden city idea as impracticable. 34 Being an association, the rationale of civil society—“united we stand, divided we fall”—of course also applies to the IFHTP. By engaging in (transnational) associative life the IFHTP members gained a sense of belonging and by allying interests they could produce a forceful lobby to promote their garden cities and town planning ideals. According to Culpin, the IFHTP served to promote “unity of action between workers for the same object in different countries.” 35
The IFHTP also represented a place of symbolic power where the definition of the most appropriate objects, methods, tools, and people to think about and act upon the city was continuously contested and negotiated. 36 The IFHTP was an international arena to gain standing and legitimacy for ideas, policies and positions. International endorsement could be used to further one’s goals at home. Vinck sought international support for his position in a heated debate at home about the reconstruction of the destroyed Flemish town of Ypres. At the IFHTP congress in London in 1920 he presented his case to preserve the ruins of Ypres as an enduring monument to commemorate the British sacrifice. Because Vinck’s proposal followed popular British opinion, the IFHTP was an obvious forum to seek support. 37
Stanley Buder labels the IFHTP as a major conduit for professional affiliation. 38 Pierre Yves Saunier has demonstrated what participation in the IFHTP meant for the professional career of American planner John Nolen. 39 Branding oneself as a town planner in the early twentieth century meant active participation in the formation and institutionalization of the emerging town planning profession. Internationalization was crucial to this strategy. It allowed creating a sense of an international professional community, to share the latest experiences, to try to set common professional standards, and to build a network of advisors and supporters. Following the observations of Pierre Chabard about the advance of city planning in the United States, we can distinct two competing approaches to town planning in the IFHTP: urban reform as a kind of civic action and town planning as an emerging autonomous profession. 40 The latter gained importance during the Belgium Reconstruction Campaign as planning professionals and government administrators became the principal target group and eventually ousted the former in the early 1920s. In this process of institutionalization and professionalization two distinct strands of transnational networking can be isolated. The first mobilized transnational resources to legitimize the position of professional city planners. The second promoted city planning among local authorities to create a field of action for this new profession. The IFHTP congress in Vienna in 1926 where the Viennese city administration sought international endorsement for its housing policies is a good example of the former. 41 The IFHTP congress in Brussels in 1919 where the hosting UVCB attempted to sell the idea of comprehensive planning to local authorities is a good example of the latter. 42
Borrowing and Imposition
Stephen Ward identifies two modes of transnational planning dialogue: borrowing and imposition. 43 These modes correlate to the agenda of the members and the form of national participation (providing passive or active members) adopted. Passive membership provided a ticket to the congresses of the IFHTP, enabling transnational networking and digestion of the offered body of knowledge. This type of borrowing could be laborious. Passive members could not directly influence the agenda of the organizations in the Urban Internationale. They had to “shop” at different transnational platforms to acquire potential answers to their specific planning issues. They only attended a congress if the program was of interest to them or if the congress attracted enough interesting delegates. To (directly) influence transnational flows of planning knowledge active membership was essential. Larger national factions and opportunity alliances that held a majority or active members with sufficient diplomatic skills could “impose” their issues on the IFHTP agenda. They could raise domestic issues to facilitate focused borrowing. Moreover, they could seek international endorsement to legitimize their own positions, policies, and plans.
Cross-Membership
Considerations to engage in transnational dialogue should not be confused with considerations to join the IFHTP. Saunier has demonstrated that the Urban Internationale was populated by a myriad of rivaling organizations. 44 Financially speaking, they existed on a knife’s edge and continuously competed over scarce resources. Despite these tensions, IFHTP members could and often did join rivaling international organizations to pursue their agenda. Cross-membership at times did prompt issues of loyalty. Hudig and his NIVS only wanted to join the IFHTP if their membership would not affect the Congrès Internationaux des Habitations à Bon Marché (CIHBM) to which they already were engaged. 45 The British officers of the IFHTP were suspicious of executive member Vinck who also acted as director of the Union Internationale de Villes (UIV). This “envious” Belgian executive was suspected of trying to sabotage the postwar advance of the IFHTP to benefit the UIV. 46
Rivalry did affect (active) IFHTP membership. Michel Geertse argues that the British garden city workers had established the IFHTP to counter competition from the CIHBM (1889) and the UIV (1913). 47 They wanted to establish what Saunier calls a “circulatory regime”: by institutionalizing transnational planning dialogue they wanted to control the diffusion of ideas, agendas, and professional standards. 48 British garden city experience was to be the universal standard. Initially, the IFHTP recruited members among the national garden city societies. During and especially after World War I it successfully targeted planning professionals and government officials. The postwar growth of the IFHTP can be partly attributed to the appeal of its message, but to a large extent originated in the inactivity of the CIHBM and the UIV. Their members switched to the IFHTP to resume their transnational trade.
Safely located in London, the IFHTP could continue its activities during the war and even launch a new initiative, the Belgium Reconstruction Campaign, whereas the international associations in Brussels suddenly found the war at their doorsteps. Moreover, the IFHTP was not truly independent. Although British supervision was to become a major stumbling block in the 1920s, it did provide sound footing during and immediately after the war. There were fundamental differences at play as well. The IFHTP was governed by a quintessentially British culture of harmony and unanimity, whereas its continental rivals had a culture of fierce debates and majority voting. The postwar CIHBM was torn apart by heated conflicts between advocates of government intervention and private initiative, cottages and tenements, cooperative housing, and collective housing. 49 The harmonious IFHTP culture held such confrontations at bay. The postwar UIV experienced heavy weather because of its institutional character. 50 It principally served local authorities and promoted the idea of global governance by associated local authorities to replace belligerent nations, although after the war the nation-state was generally acknowledged as the basic unit for global governance. This orientation was most clearly embodied in the League of Nations, an authority that drastically pruned the municipalities’ liberties of action on the international stage. The UIV first reestablished itself in the mid-1920s once it abdicated its ideological outlook and focused on practical issues instead.
Organizational Negotiations
To perform successfully as a transnational platform the IFHTP had to cater for the agendas of the participating national factions and individual members. So far, the internal negotiations in the IFHTP to arrive at a shared agenda have been predominantly framed as either professional discussions at its congresses or political intrigues in its Bureau. The institutional setting of these negotiations has been ignored, although these negotiations were governed by well-defined parameters. Literature usually identifies the early IFHTP as a mere British extension, although the British officers surely must have accounted for the agenda of other national factions and members. Otherwise the foreigners would seek transnational exchange elsewhere. Obviously, organizational communication and management of potential conflicts must have been key factors for sustaining a vital transnational platform. Organization and management studies can offer valuable leads to frame the internal negotiations of the IFHTP. The relation between historical studies and organization and management studies is awkward. In their research on the advance of managerial culture in Dutch politics Ronald Kroeze and Sjoerd Keulen argue that these disciplines can benefit from each other’s research methods. 51 Urban historians do not have a strong tradition in methodologies from management and organizational studies. This article uses the concepts of organizational communication stances, management styles, and organizational institutionalization to analyze the transnational negotiations on town planning methods in the IFHTP.
Virginia Satir’s model of coping or communication stances is popular among managers to assess effective organizational coping behavior. 52 Satir, a pioneering psychologist in the field of family therapy, argues that people cope in different ways with reality. 53 In communication (perception of) reality is represented by an interaction between three elemental factors: the self (the way the sender copes with reality), the other (the way the receiver copes with reality), and relevant context. Effective communication requires congruent coping patterns that account for all three elemental factors. Incongruent coping stances which disregard one or more elemental factors are likely to produce ineffective communication. Communication stances are closely tied up with management style(s). Conflict management styles have been widely examined. Management theorists Robert R. Blake and Jane S. Mouton’s managerial grid (1964) can be seen as the conceptual grandparent of all conflict styles taxonomies in the field of communication. 54 This grid posits five management styles along two dimensions, concern for production and concern for people. 55 Managerial theorist Kenneth Thomas translated these dimensions as concern for self and concern for others, resembling Satir’s communication stances. 56 His five main conflict management styles vary in their degrees of cooperativeness and assertiveness.
Pamela Tolbert and Jeffrey Arthur stress that organizational negotiations take place within institutionalized frames. 57 The creation of intersubjective rules within organizations takes shape over time and proceeds in a two stage process. First the members accept a common definition of distinctive group interests. Power elites are central figures in this stage. The acceptance of these elites over time as part of the organization constitutes acceptance of the issues important to their interests. The second stage of institutionalization involves the definition of issues subject to negotiation, the relevant procedures, and the defined set of possible outcomes. The second stage of institutionalization depends on organizational factors key to maintaining a well-defined sense of what is legitimate for negotiation. As certain ways of doing things become entrenched in organizational culture, and thus accepted by the members, they take on an air of immutability.
Prewar Congruence and Collaboration
At first sight, the IFHTP was established in a state of near congruence. The GCTPA had launched the IFHTP to distribute its garden city policies, whereas foreign members joined the IFHTP to learn more about British garden city experience and to seek inspiration, acknowledgement and support from their British peers. The foreigners looked to the British garden city workers to take the lead. They accepted the GCTPA representatives as the internal power elite that were to shape the international organization. 58 The GCTPA offered accommodation to the IFHTP and provided all its officers. These officers built the IFHTP agenda on British garden city propaganda, advocating garden cities and garden suburbs and villages. Moreover, they modeled the organization after the GCTPA. They introduced a strict hierarchical structure, governed by a culture of harmony and unanimity, to be administered by honorary (unpaid) officers. The British officers drafted the IFHTP agenda, the approval of their proposals being a mere formality. Over time this management style became routine. Although this style essentially was unilateral, it nevertheless qualifies as what Thomas calls a collaborative management style, because this style was requested and acknowledged by the foreign members.
Beneath the surface, already at the early hour seeds of incongruence were present. Culpin had invited GCTPA contacts to London to discuss the establishment of an international garden city association, but at the founding meeting the proposed scope was being challenged. Some representatives, fronted by British architect Henry Lanchester, an adamant supporter of the ideas of Patrick Geddes, proposed to advocate “the promotion of social and civic science, covering the whole scope of municipal organization and activities and general social and economic problems.” 59 Emile Vinck of the UIV and Henry Aldridge of the NHTPC pointed out that this broader scope was already being covered by the UIV and the CIHBM. In the end a majority favored to adhere to Culpin’s original proposal. The broader scope was dismissed as fanciful and unrealistic. Alderman Thompson of the NHTPC preferred the pragmatic garden city path to “building castles in the air.” 60 Adolf Otto intimated that he did not want to ally himself with people and organizations that potentially advocated the very opposite of the garden city idea. The assembled garden city militants ignored sentiments among seasoned participants in the Urban Internationale. British planners Patrick Abercrombie and Stanley Adshead of the Department of Civic Design at Liverpool University objected to the expanding volume of international town planning venues. They wanted condensation, not expansion. 61
The garden city focus did provide common ground, but it was a poor safeguard for continued congruence. Interpretations of the garden city idea among the IFHTP members were diverse. Not all of them were “on all fours” with official GCTPA policy. 62 Some of Howard’s assumptions were outdated—for example the exclusive focus on civic action, whereas in most Western countries the state was starting to take an active interest in housing and town planning affairs—or simply did not meet foreign conditions. 63 These dormant differences did not cause immediate conflicts. For the time being, the British garden city workers settled for a “gentle” mode of instruction, emphasizing the element of cooperative organization as the essential characteristic to distinct proper town planning on “garden city lines” from promiscuous adaptations, without directly insisting on proper implementation. 64
Wartime Infatuation
During the Belgium Reconstruction Campaign the tone of British instruction changed. At home, the British garden city workers had been tug-at-war for years about initiating a second garden city. 65 The ravaged fields of Flanders presented an opportunity to implement Howard’s ideas on an unprecedented scale. A new Belgium, designed as a model garden city nation, would be a powerful example to be followed at home and abroad. Belgium—and later northern France—was to embrace the garden city in its purest form and not to settle for watered-down interpretations. Culpin openly attacked continental faubourg-jardins as inadmissible. 66 Howard urged the Belgians to concentrate on a real garden city, on far more generous lines than witnessed at Letchworth. Such a garden city was to be an international garden city, “the most cosmopolitan of all cities: a monument of light and leading, of skill and enterprise, and above all of goodwill—a monument which no nation on earth so fully and completely deserves to have erected on its soil, made for ever sacred by self-sacrifice, as does the great-small nation of Belgium.” 67 Satir labels this kind of communication as infatuated coping. The British officers were so preoccupied with their own agenda that they forgot to account for the sentiments among the foreign members and the context abroad. The Belgians, like most continental members, preferred the pragmatic path of building garden suburbs near existing centers to offer immediate relief. The need for instant affordable mass housing made Howard’s one-garden-city-at-a-time approach hopelessly outdated. Moreover, scattered land ownership in Belgium made the implementation of true garden cities cumbersome. Despite their reservations, the Belgian participants did not directly oppose the British proposals, so for the time being the appearance of a collaborative management style could be maintained. 68
Despite the Belgian reluctance, the British officers did not deter. They introduced an alternative path toward the model garden city nation. C. B. Purdom proposed a national garden cities program for Belgium, echoing the pleas of the British National Garden Cities Committee (1918). Purdom had started this committee with Howard to cleanse the garden city creed. They argued that the successful garden suburb movement had obscured the true garden city teachings. Their manifesto, New Towns after the War (1918), conveyed a reaffirmation and updating of Howard’s original tract. The new garden city radicals looked to the state to support a national garden cities program to alleviate the pressing housing shortages. 69 Purdom acknowledged that it would be difficult to implement this British proposal in a Belgian context. He proposed “unifying the rural population of Belgium into some social and economic grouping.” 70 Belgium was to adapt to his model. Unsurprisingly, the proposal failed to convince the Belgians.
To support the Belgium Reconstruction Campaign, the British garden city workers launched an educational program to initiate the Belgian debutants into the realm of modern (British) town planning. The Belgian pupils did not want to confine their education to British garden city experience. They professed a sincere interest in civics as advocated by Patrick Geddes. The broader scope that had been easily dismissed at the founding meeting of the IFHTP was back on the agenda. Civics regarded the city and the countryside as a continuum. Civics not only regarded the technical dimensions of town planning, but also beheld its social, spatial, and administrative implications. It was saturated with regional thinking, borrowed from French social geographers, and handed the method of Civic Survey to map the body of knowledge necessary for comprehensive town planning. 71 Belgian architect–planner Raphael Verwilghen recognized the opportunity to elevate town planning as a rational science. Referring to the British “Survey” studies program, he advocated analytical research by unemployed Belgian architects to diagnose the Belgian towns. 72 Verwilghen was not the only planner contemplating a new conception of modern town planning. Contemporary town planning reference books like Cities in Evolution (1915) by Geddes, Préliminaires d’Art Civique (1916) by Belgian architect–planner Louis van der Swaelmen, and Comment reconstruire nos cités détruites? (1915) by French architect–planners Alfred Agache, Marcel Aubertin, and Edouart Redont revealed that the town planning profession was moving away from its (garden city) roots as mere architecture of urban ensembles to a modern interpretation of town planning as a comprehensive science of spatial coordination.
However, the British officers were reluctant to relinquish the garden city focus of the IFHTP. The insistence on true garden cities thwarted the exploration of a nascent modern town planning discipline. Infatuated coping persevered. The Belgian hosts were offered another dry piece of garden city propaganda at the IFHTP conference in Brussels in 1919, while planners such as George Pepler, Henry Lanchester, Henry Aldridge (England), Georges Risler, Leon Jaussely, Edmond Bonjean (France), and many others were already discussing the foundations of a comprehensive town planning science at the Interallied Town Planning Conference of the French Society of Urbanists in Paris. 73 The reconstruction campaign of the IFHTP largely failed to produce the desired outcomes. Thus the British officers lost their interest and silently abandoned the campaign in the early 1920s.
Postwar Incongruence and Compromise
In 1920 the British officers reappraised the objectives of the IFHTP. Even in Britain garden suburbs were far more popular than the true garden city. The former had received legislative blessing in the Housing and Town Planning Act (1919). 74 British officers Purdom and Unwin presented their solution at the IFHTP congress in London: satellite towns. Purdom perfectly summarized the case for satellites with a bold proposal for a system of twenty-three satellite towns around London. 75 A year later satellites would be endorsed as official GCTPA policy. 76 A satellite town basically was a garden suburb with the properties of a true independent garden city. Initially, Welwyn Garden City was presented as the perfect satellite, but by 1923 Unwin also acknowledged that Letchworth was a mere satellite of London. 77 Satir would characterize this reorientation as a combination of infatuated and irrelevant coping. Irrelevant coping is coping by flight. The British officers clung to their garden city ideals, but at the same time could not ignore dominant planning practice. Transferring the key characteristics of the garden city to the garden suburb was the easiest way out. The new satellite message did not convince the critical continental members. Grand satellite schemes did not produce mass affordable housing. By now the British cottage had been outstripped by cheap(er) continental workers’ houses. 78
Despite the continental reservations, the British officers continued to insist on satellites. They saw the righteousness of their ideas confirmed by leading captains of industry like Henry Ford who favored industrial decentralization. 79 They boasted that the Business School of Columbia University had adopted garden city planning as the most efficient form of town planning. 80 The British officers added elements of Satir’s super reasonable coping stance to their communication strategy. This stance favors rationality and emphasizes “proven facts” to legitimize positions.
The continental members increasingly resented the British insistence. Although on paper the IFHTP was governed by a collaborative style, they felt that the British management in reality used a competitive management style to impose its domestic agenda. They felt uncomfortable with the continued exclusive focus on garden city experience. Dutch active member Dirk Hudig complained that the IFHTP congress in Paris in 1922 had not paid sufficient attention to the reconstruction efforts in northern France. 81 Moreover, the continentals demanded more influence. French active member Auguste Bruggeman, seconded by Belgian senator Emile Vinck, aptly put words to the growing continental discontent. 82 Careful not to breach the harmonious culture of governance, he raised the issue of the future of the IFHTP. He proposed to widen the scope, to attract more members, and to formally provide for the affiliation of national housing and town planning organizations. He also suggested the possibility of a second office of the IFHTP on the continent. The British officers recognized the writings on the wall. They were reluctant to relinquish their power, so they adopted a compromising management style. They sought to partially satisfy the discontent members while losing as little ground as possible. They hid behind institutionalized procedures and the “corporate culture” of harmony and unanimity to delay the inevitable organizational reform.
Bruggeman’s suggestions initiated profound changes. The Council of the IFHTP acknowledged that strict guidance by the GCTPA did not correspond with the spirit of postwar internationalism. It resolved that the IFHTP should operate independently, from its own office, with its own staff. Thus the IFHTP established its own headquarters—still in the same building as the GCTPA—and employed its own paid organizing secretary: Harry Chapman, former librarian of the GCTPA. 83 Honorary Secretary Purdom gave up his position as officer of the GCTPA. 84 The severing of the ties with the GCTPA gained momentum at the 1922 Paris congress. The Council presented a new set of rules that served to restrain the free rein of the British officers and to provide for the affiliation of housing and town planning societies. 85 Principal membership no longer was reserved for national town planning and garden city societies. Now membership was open to “Garden City and Town Planning Propagandist, Educational or Professional bodies,” including to public bodies and institutions dealing with housing and town planning. Clearly, the continental members wanted the IFHTP to be a truly international collective of national societies, not an extension of the network of the GCTPA.
Although the new rules presented in Paris posed radical changes, they were only an overture to what was to follow at the Gothenburg congress in 1923. According to Hardy, in 1922 Montagu Harris had to hand his office of chairman to Henri Sellier, who thus became the first non-British officer. 86 However, in the 1922 conference report Sellier was listed as chairman of the Executive Committee, whereas Harris was and remained chairman of the Council. 87 Rather than to dismiss a British officer, the British management chose to create a new office to appease the continentals. The curtain fell for Harris at Gothenburg. At the Council meeting the suggestion was raised and subsequently adopted to appoint a chairman of the Council from the hosting country in the future. In addition, in future the hosting country was allowed to make proposals for the congress program. 88 Although this was carefully phrased, effectively the naturalness of British leadership had been disposed. Throughout the years the number of seats in the Council and Bureau was expanded to accommodate growing membership. By the mid-1920s the British garden city militants had lost their absolute majority in these internal bodies. Despite these changes, the IFHTP did retain “a distinct British flavor.” 89
The reticence to follow the British lead indiscriminately was perhaps even better felt at the sessions of the Gothenburg congress. For the first time British garden city workers felt a need to address growing criticisms of the garden city faith, criticisms that before had been persistently ignored. Unwin resorted to the incongruent coping stance of blaming as he attacked American planner Arthur C. Comey who in his Regional Planning Theory (1923) had dismissed decentralization to new self-contained nuclei as unnatural and contrary to economic forces. More importantly, the paper presentations revealed that the garden city concept alone was inadequate to solve regional planning issues. In an attempt to evade continental reservations about the rather high construction costs of garden city site development (irrelevant coping), the British officers deliberately focused on the potential of the garden city idea for regional planning. 90 Theoretically, the foreign lecturers championed regional decentralization, but they did voice reservations. German planning pioneer Gustav Langen, a confessed militant for resettlement, slated German new towns. These new settlements lacked viable communities. Comprehensive planning on the basis of sound scientific survey was to repair this deficit. 91 American planner John Nolen, designer of the American adaptation of the British garden suburb at Mariemont, Ohio (1920-1925), referred to pioneering business statistician Roger W. Babson, who predicted an unprecedented mass suburbanization. Nolen thought this inevitable exodus had to be coordinated by professional planners. 92
The British officers had introduced regional planning to strengthen the position of satellite planning, but this strategy backfired. The limitations of satellite planning were exposed. The continental members seized the opportunity to finish the (British) garden city monopoly and urged the study of the delineation of a regional planning discipline, whereas the (British) garden city zealots wanted to reassess the central position of the garden city idea in regional planning matters. The management of the IFHTP urgently needed a regional planning framework that could meet the approval of all the members. They adopted a strategy of compromise. For the next congress in Amsterdam in 1924 it invited leading regional planning pioneers. Only protagonists of practical regional planning experience that was (politically) undisputed and consistent with the satellite idea were called on. 93
British planner Patrick Abercrombie delivered a paper on British regional survey experience. Undoubtedly, his influential regional plan for the Doncaster region (1922) had earned him his ticket to the Amsterdam congress. While before the IFHTP had dismissed Geddes’s civics as immature, it now relied on Abercrombie’s practical survey work to provide a solid scientific foundation for regional decentralization to satellites. British planner Thomas Adams elaborated on the zoning instrument to control haphazard urban expansion. Adams illustrated his argument by referring to the Regional Survey of New York and Its Environs, of which he was in charge. This plan sought to use the benefits of concentration, without the evils of congestion. The surroundings of New York had to be suburbanized and connected with Manhattan by a high-quality transportation network, while at the heart of the city skyscrapers were to advance dramatically.
German planner Robert Schmidt presented the regional plan for the Ruhr area. As director of the Siedlungsverband Ruhrkohlenbezirk (1920) he was in charge of this first legislatively backed regional plan in Europe. This public corporation of the Ruhr municipalities was set up to coordinate the required growth of the mining industry and to house the flood of miners entering the region. Through intermunicipal regional planning it wanted to bundle traffic flows, to create self-contained new settlements (Siedlungen), to protect open spaces, and to prevent massive suburban sprawl. German planner Fritz Schumacher was the only lecturer who did not present coordinated decentralization as the answer to the pressing urban evils. He advocated city expansion in broad strips along arterial roads surrounded by nature. His regional extension planning attributed a key position to open spaces as a means to order the transition from the city center to the countryside. A coherent system of open spaces performed as a vital artery of the city. He had brilliantly translated these principles in regional extension plans for Hamburg and Cologne.
The Amsterdam congress achieved the desired compromise of the satellite idea and practical regional planning experience. A regional plan based on sound survey was to guide the suburban explosion in an orderly fashion to decentralized settlements, to provide for accessibility and mobility through bundled infrastructural networks and to project comprehensive park systems in order to preserve the open countryside and natural and historical values, to secure sufficient open spaces, and to provide facilities for leisure. A year later Purdom disseminated this compromise in his book The Building of Satellite Towns (1925).
The steady growth of membership and the reorientation toward research (survey) soon called for organizational measures. In 1925 the IFHTP resolved to divide its membership into four sections—one dedicated to housing, one to garden cities, one to regional planning, and one to town planning. 94 Continental housing reformers in the IFHTP received the proposed housing section enthusiastically. They had embraced regional decentralization as a means to break the British garden city monopoly, but after two congresses dedicated to regional planning they were beginning to feel that the housing issue was being neglected. The housing section also offered an opportunity to ameliorate strained relations with other international organizations.
During World War I the IFHTP had gained an advantage over its rivals. Naturally, these rivals wanted to regain lost territory. The CIHBM realized it could not compete with the IFHTP. 95 Therefore it sought collaboration. However, the IFHTP was preoccupied with its own advancement and ignored the internationally organized housing reformers. It adopted a narcissistic coping stance toward its rivals. Only after a successful Inter-allied Housing and Town Planning Conference, organized by the CIHBM in London in 1920, this attitude changed. For its congress in Amsterdam in 1924 the IFHTP sought its competitors out to make arrangements and avoid unnecessary competition. The faltering CIHBM was trying to get a conference together in Brussels in the same period. More importantly, the UIV returned to the international stage with its first postwar conference in Amsterdam in the same period. Emile Vinck, being an obvious choice because he was an executive member of all three international bodies, was charged to draft principles for cooperation. 96 Formal arrangements never materialized. The CIHBM was eventually torn apart by fierce internal debates, but the UIV firmly reestablished itself in Amsterdam. In the years to come, the IFHTP in vain tried to press for a mutual arrangement with the latter. 97
By 1925 the CIHBM wanted to disband and transfer its activities to another organization. Informed by shared members, it had come to the conclusion that the new housing section of the IFHTP would be the perfect candidate for such a transfer, provided that this section would retain some autonomy. 98 Obviously, the housers still felt the IFHTP was too British. The IFHTP accepted these terms and subsequently the two amalgamated at the IFHTP congress in Vienna in 1926. Henri Sellier expressed his great pleasure to have presided a meeting “where so many workers in housing reform had agreed to unite all their efforts . . . for holding that meeting . . . prove to be epoch-making in the future of the housing reform movement.” 99 After nearly a decade of incongruent coping patterns the IFHTP had reached a brief moment of congruence.
Conclusion
Recent literature stresses the importance of transnational expert networks in defining new professional fields and lobbying for social reform. Transnational experts had to navigate between universal professional standards and national political and cultural requirements. At the same time, the transnational arena was a place to lobby for domestic agendas. This article used the international garden city campaign of the IFHTP in the period 1913-1926 to explore the problematic relations between the national and international dimensions of transnational planning diffusion. The early IFHTP had been predominantly characterized as a mere international extension of the British garden city movement to impose its domestic garden city policies on an international audience. Although this characterization adequately assesses the motivation of the British GCTPA, this article argues that we must look beyond the nationality of the prominent dignitaries and contributors to grasp the relation between the international and national dimensions of transnational dialogue at institutionalized platforms. It is essential to behold the participation from the various countries and the representation by active members, the motivations to engage in transnational dialogue, and the internal negotiations to arrive at a common agenda.
Membership is a weak link in the nascent scholarship on the Urban Internationale. We still know relatively little of who actually participated in the international societies of the Urban Internationale. The assessment of national participation and active membership in the IFHTP reveals dynamism. Membership and participation increased over time, and their composure changed as well. Initially, the British garden city militants were firmly in the saddle in the IFHTP, but by the mid-1920s they had lost their majority. Like so many prewar agents of transnational civil society, the IFHTP started out as a proponent of the wider social reform movement, attracting middle-class social reformers and campaigning for a brave new world. World War I changed the face of transnational civil society. Social reform issues, in the case of the IFHTP housing and town planning, became issues for governmental concern. As such, proper housing in a well-planned (decentralized) environment no longer was a cause that needed to be lobbied for; the focus shifted to conceiving methods to implement these concepts. This quest especially bore relevance to planning professionals and government administrators that soon made up the bulk of IFHTP membership. These experts favored a technical treatment of housing and planning issues. This “technocratic internationalism” not only reflected the ambition to base the nascent modern town planning profession on rationality and science, but also served to avoid political controversies. This trajectory was not unique to the IFHTP. Rivaling organizations such as the Union Internationale des Villes underwent similar “soul searching” in the 1920s. Ideological issues became the domain of the new international sphere of the League of Nations and the International Labour Organisation. This sphere was dominated by nation-states, not civil society.
Transnational experts engaged in the Urban Internationale with a purpose. The national societies and their active representatives joined the IFHTP for very different, at times conflicting, reasons. They sought inspiration, information and camaraderie. They also used the IFHTP to legitimize domestic concepts, policies, and positions and universal professional standards. To appeal to their members, transnational platforms such as the IFHTP had to accommodate the agenda of their members. Effective organizational communication and management to define and maintain a common interests were essential to reconcile potentially conflicting agendas and bridge language barriers and cultural (political) differences. Power elites played a vital role in this process. But circumstances change over time. To sustain a transnational platform those in power have to account for changing contexts and new members aspiring influence. Compromises are inevitable to sustain transnational dialogue. Initially, the IFHTP was administered by the British garden city workers. This was not a British usurpation of power; the continental garden city zealots flocking to the IFHTP looked to the British initiators to take the lead. Over time the naturalness of British leadership and the monopoly of the garden city idea became entrenched in the organization. A growing group of new members, professional planners and government administrators, gained the upper hand during and especially after World War I. They challenged the institutionalized conventions of the IFHTP (exclusive British leadership and the garden city monopoly). The old British power elite was pressured to share influence and subsequently the garden city monopoly was compromised. The IFHTP became a transnational expert network organization devoted to the exploration of regional decentralization and housing. The well-documented cases of the American New Dealers and Nazi representatives who joined the Urban Internationale in the 1930s to increase their sphere of influence demonstrate that also other transnational societies in the Urban Internationale were affected by similar negotiations between vested power elites and new challengers. 100
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.