This collective volume investigates the multi-scalar and international manifestations of planning models, projects and policies from the mid-twentieth century onwards. The publication aims to delineate the notion of welfare planning and situate its historical emergence in its application to social, environmental and spatial policies. Taking a global perspective – including study cases from France, Netherlands, Denmark, Sri Lanka, the USSR and the USA – the book interrogates how physical design played an essential role in social and economic modernization by way of state–market balance, from liberal to socialist systems. The articles examine how planning policies addressed well-being and living standards as devices to shape a welfare society. The authors gather planning, social and urban historians from France, Denmark and Netherlands to offer new insights into transnational research in architectural and urban welfare studies.
Exploring the models, the theories and the policies of urban and spatial planning from the mid-20th century to the present day, this collective book interrogates at a transnational scale how architectural and urban design served as instruments of modernization to shape a welfare society.
Dorian Bianco: Introduction: Rexford Tugwell and the case for welfare
planning Benoît Pouvreau: Eugène Claudius-Petit's regional planning policy
Dorian Bianco: Planning is a redemption. The contribution of Lewis Mumford
to Jean-François Graviers planning model Dirk van den Heuvel: A Country
Planning Its Change: Jaap Bakema and the Rise and Fall of the Dutch Welfare
State Stéphane Gaessler: Regional planning in Soviet Russia and the
influence of Western welfare policies (1945-1970) Mikkel Thelle & Anne
Brædder: A problem of an abstractfuture or polluted presence ? Environment,
welfare, and planning in Denmark Dorian Bianco: Tropicalizing Danish
architecture ? The projects and realizations of Ulrik Plesner in Sri Lanka
and the case of tropical modernism (1958-1987) Mikkel Høghøj & Anne Corlin:
Designing social life: visions for community in Danish social housing
architecture Elodie Bitsindou: The Suburban Ideal: A Historical Model of
Planning for the Mixed Economy of Welfare.
Dorian Bianco is currently a postdoctoral fellow at Sorbonne University Abu Dhabi. He holds a PhD in the History of Art from Sorbonne University (Centre André Chastel). His doctoral thesis examined the role of the dense-low housing movement within the history of Danish community planning.
