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doi: 10.1068/d070367pmid: N/A
The images of the French Revolution and French political space are simultaneously experiencing rapid and deep changes. Using a qualitative survey and cartographic materials, the authors try to establish a link between both dynamics. After a long period in which the French political map remained very similar to that of revolutionary times, a new geography, which also has a new relationship to politics, is emerging. Mental and objective maps provide interesting instruments to understand these major mutations.
doi: 10.1068/d070381pmid: N/A
In the last half of the 20th century in the United States of America, the modernist planning project that emerged in the first half is being challenged by the political and economic manifestations of postmodernity and its corresponding cultural practices, Despite a serious erosion of its rationalist roots, critical distance, reformist intentions, commitment to master narratives, and focus on the city as object of theory and practice, that project persists. Modernist planning seems suspended between modernity and postmodernity. In order to resolve these tensions, planners need to refocus their work on the built environment (specifically the process of city building), to reestablish a mediative role between capital, labor, and the state, and to project a more democratic profile in public debates surrounding the meaning and consequences of urban and regional development.
doi: 10.1068/d070397pmid: N/A
Neurath, a prominent member of the Vienna Circle, was involved in much practical reform work. He was also a member of CIAM, and participated in the famous Athens meeting where its basic principles were formulated. But his plans for intensive cooperation with CIAM did not come to fruition, because of fundamental differences regarding the role of scientific evidence in decisionmaking and planning. CIAM members were looking for a solid bedrock on which to base design norms and principles. Neurath was a sceptic and emphasised the pluralistic nature of knowledge. He also held that decisions were to be taken on pragmatic grounds, reflecting one's chosen “path of life”. Experts had no superior skill in this. Neurath developed the Vienna Method of pictorial statistics to allow people to make their own inferences from such evidence as there was. Neurath's views of decisionmaking in planning are very modern, and suggest that the critique of positivism in planning needs to be reconsidered.
doi: 10.1068/d070419pmid: N/A
The earliest ventures in applied geography and area research were developed during the Weimar Republic. In 1933 the first theoretical study appeared: the central place theory by Walter Christaller. Under National Socialism good research conditions existed for social scientists (at least, those who were not persecuted, exiled, or murdered) who wanted to implement their theories. Law and central planning organizations provided the political and institutional basis for scientific research. Power struggles and conflicts concerning competence between different institutions headed by Hitler, Himmler, and Rosenberg afforded scientists freedom to develop new approaches and conduct research within the control imposed by a central organization. Walter Christaller, who was too old for a university career, worked in such institutions under Himmler. His personal and political biography is imbued with paradoxes: a former member of the Social Democratic Party, he switched to the Nazi Party in 1940, in 1945 to the Communist Party, and once again to the Social Democratic Party in 1959. However, these events merely hint at the complex nature of the political context in which Christaller and other scientists worked from 1933 to 1945. This paper is an attempt to illuminate the ‘reactionary modernism’ of the Nazi State, drawing from archival material and recent historical studies on social science in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
doi: 10.1068/d070433pmid: N/A
The social production of built form can be characterized by three ideal types: vernacular building, organizational management, and creative individual. An ethnography of contemporary architectural practice in the USA portrays an alternative model of the design process as a social construction, comprised of dilemmas which, once resolved, pose new contradictions. An analysis of three case studies of buildings with design quality reveals that design participants invoke a series of dialectical strategies to respond to the uncertainties and contradictions of the situation. These strategies, introduced by quotations from the buildings' makers, are described in contrast to the approaches taken by participants in everyday design practice. The production of the built environment is seen as a complex, interactive, social process which is formative, constructed out of a loosely orchestrated constellation of key individuals in organizations, who together develop design solutions.
doi: 10.1068/d070449pmid: N/A
In this paper the privatization of the planning profession is examined. The analysis proceeds with an exploration of how planners represent their profession through text and speech. Three kinds of rhetoric dominate discussion: a rhetoric of instrumentalism, which is concerned with reestablishing physical planning at the core of the discipline; a rhetoric of negotiation, which often loses sight of why negotiation was initiated in the first place; and a rhetoric of performance assessment, which is content with a planning which achieves its sponsors' goals. None of these concentrations is intrinsically wrong, but their cumulative effect has been to permit a commodification of the functions of planning, which has subsequently facilitated the privatization process. Other elements of planning, not susceptible to commodification, have been dropped from the discourse. One such loss has been the rhetoric of reform, which has traditionally connected planning with its progressive roots and political action. Also absent is a rhetoric of theory, which would permit comparative analysis of the meanings of a postmodern planning.
doi: 10.1068/d070463pmid: N/A
The authors argue the advantages of an approach that explores the understanding of participants in political discourse. A spectrum of rhetorics is proposed which can provide a framework for such exploration and draws on what is termed ‘the rhetoric of partial rationality’ to examine a particular discourse, that concerning green belts. Throughout the paper it is stressed that such rhetorical analysis must be contextualised. Interpretation must complement, rather than replace, explanation. Providing complementary explanatory and interpretative analyses suggests a potential way of tackling ideological effects. Therefore the authors deal both with a general methodological issue—the analysis of ideological effects—and with a specific policy issue—green belts.
Barnos, T; Beauregard, R A; Dear, M J; Thrift, N J
doi: 10.1068/d070481pmid: N/A
This paper is a review of books published in 1988 and likely to be of interest to readers of this journal.
Pryke, M; Oliver, S; Cosgrove, D; Sibley, D; Hooper, A
doi: 10.1068/d070491pmid: N/A
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