CSBE Book Corner: 

Urbanism - Imported or Exported? ^new

Native Aspirations and Foreign Plans

Edited by:

JOE NASR, independent researcher, Toronto (Canada), Washington (USA) and Beirut (Lebanon);

MERCEDES VOLAIT, Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, laboratoire CITERES, Université de Tours (France).

The modes of diffusion of ideas that shape planned environments, and the ways these ideas are realized, have been gaining prominence as subjects of study and discussion among planning historians and others. Recently, some researchers have begun to approach the relations between actors and stakeholders in the processes of planning diffusion in increasingly complex and ambiguous ways. 

The planning influences started to be seen as going in multiple directions, including back to the source of dissemination.  The natives in developing countries, whether colonial or post-colonial, are now being recognized as full-fledged participants in the shaping of the built environment, with a variety of roles to play and means to play them, even if they frequently face many constraints to their actions.  The specific traits of the indigenous are even in question: ultimately, who are the ‘locals’?

The research presented here recognizes the importance of both provider and recipient as essential and influential entities within this diffusion process.

This book raises important conceptual questions as to the identities and roles of the actors involved and looks at the methodological implications for historians and the new challenges that arise from this questioning of a long-standing traditional view.

CONTENTS:

Introduction: Transporting Planning – Joe Nasr and Mercedes Volait 

Writing Transnational Planning Histories – Anthony D. King 

THE LATEST MODELS:

Making Cairo Modern (1870–1950): Multiple Models for a ‘European-Style’ Urbanism – Mercedes Volait

The Transformation of Planning Ideas in Japan and its Colonies – Carola Hein 

Learning from the United States: The Americanisation of Western Urban Planning – Stephen V Ward 

CITY-BUILDING, STATE-BUILDING AND NATION-BUILDING:

Urbanism as Social Engineering in the Balkans (1820–1920): Reform Prospects and Implementation Problems in Thessaloniki – Alexandra Yerolympos 

From ‘Cosmopolitan Fantasies’ to ‘National Traditions’: Socialist Realism in East Berlin – Roland Strobel 

The Preservation of Egyptian Cultural Heritage through Egyptian Eyes: The Case of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe – Alaa el-Habashi  

POWERFUL SUBJECTS:

From Europe to Tripoli in Barbary, via Istanbul: Municipal Reforms in an Outpost of the Ottoman Empire around 1870 – Nora Lafi 

Beirut and the ‘Etoile’ Area: An Exclusively French Project? – May Davie

Local Wishes and National Commands: Planning Continuity in French Provincial Towns in the 1940s – Joe Nasr

FOREIGN EXPERTS, LOCAL PROFESSIONALS:

Foreign Hires: French Experts and the Urbanism of Buenos Aires, 1907–1932 – Alicia Novick 

Politics, Ideology and Professional Interests: Foreign versus Local Planners in Lebanon under President Chehab – Eric Verdeil 

Towards Global Human Settlements: Constantinos Doxiades as Entrepreneur, Coalition-Builder and Visionary – Ray Bromley