Download - German Historical Institute London

Conference Reports
Dirk Schubert (University of Hamburg) described responses to
the clearance of the slums in Hamburg and London. Via legislative
initiatives, the clearing of slums was increasingly integrated into a
town-planning or social reform approach. William Whyte (Uni -
versity of Oxford) demystified the town-planning conference and
exhibition held by the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) in
London in 1910, which attracted international visitors. He explained
that this conference played a significant part in the domestic British
discussion of the aims of town-planning. In particular, the voice of
architects was loudly raised against national planning practices.
Thus Whyte relativized the degree of international participation in
such events, and called for a more critical reading of conferences on
town-planning. Christiane Crasemann Collins presented her
research on the lives of Werner Hagemann and Cipriano Montoliu.
Her comments made clear that both were national pioneers in their
discipline, and prepared the path for the international discourse on
planning. The events and biographies presented so persuasively in
this session made it all the more surprising that no mention was
made of the findings of research on cultural transfer.
In her paper on Patrick Geddes, Helen Meller (University of
Nottingham) also chose the biographical approach, explaining the
contribution Geddes made to the regional survey. What should be
stressed is that Geddes’s understanding of urban reform always
included the public. Christoph Bernhardt (University of Berlin/
University of Darmstadt) illustrated two different versions of regional
planning by comparing Berlin and the Ruhrgebiet. In both agglomerations,
the question of space was a spur to administrative restructuring,
which formed the subject of town-planning exhibitions in
1910 in Berlin and Düsseldorf, thus making possible a mutual ex -
change of experiences. Berlin stopped being a specific administrative
union (Zweckverband) and quickly adopted the model of a large mu -
ni cipality (Groβgemeinde), while the polycentric nature of the Ruhr -
gebiet produced a regional planning authority (Siedlungs ver band)
which, in the long term, established itself as the pioneer and model
of regional planning. Pierre-Yves Saunier (University of Lyon) was
invited to open up wider perspectives on the session which had
already dealt comprehensively with regional planning topics, and
did this by pointing to the complexity of the structure of inter-communal
dialogue. Given that it was not only Britain and Germany that
160