ARCHITECTURE AND TOWN PLANNING: UNINTERRUPTED DIALOGUE

THE BIRTH OF THE TWO FIRST URBAN TRADITIONS

Jose Luque
Departamento de Urbanismo. Escuela de Arquitectura. Universidad de Navarra
Campus Universitario
31080 Pamplona (Navarra)
Spain
Tfno +34 948 425600
Fax +34 948 425629
e-mail: jluque@unav.es

ABSTRACT
The appearance of modern urbanistica signalled the beginning of an as yet uninterrupted
dialogue between planning and architecture. A study of the main congresses and meetings
th
that the discipline held in the first thirty years of the 20 Century enables us to define the
characteristics of two different programmes for identifying the role of architecture in planning.
This essay analyses each of these programmes and defines their respective strategies. We
are able to characterise two urban traditions, which form part of a single discipline, but for
which we can identify two different profiles, planning as practised in Anglo-Saxon areas, and
the urbanistica (in Italian and Spanish. Urbanisme in French) of the European continent.
A consideration of the results of both these strategies helps us to comprehend the significance
of the present dialogue between architecture and planning, and the way it is reflected in the
relation between planning and urbanistica.

It is evident that the complex and ambiguous, but undeniable, phenomenon that has received the
name of Modern Architecture, for better or for worse, has marked the professional activities of
th
architects throughout the 20 century.
Possibly one of the most productive contributions was the identification between Architecture and
Town Planning, an identification that led to the integration of town planning into the practice of
architecture and the appearance of a complex two-way process that alternatively denied the profiles of
each of the two disciplines.
It is well known that in Mediterranean countries this identification was very different from Anglo-Saxon
environments. Mediterranean architecture did not appear to have given up its own identity, in spite of
its concern for defining each of the disciplines and clarifying their mutual relationship; the Plan-Project
debate that has dominated Italian architecture since the mid-sixties is a good example of this concern.
In the meanwhile, in Great Britain, the United States and other culturally related countries, the relation
between one discipline and the other has been pragmatically solved by the definition of urban design
as a discipline that is defined by its scale and positioned in between architecture and planning. Using
this instrument, and in a relatively pacific manner, architects and town planners, or what is the same
thing, the RIBA and the RTPI, converged upon an area of common ground.
th
Through the development of a discipline that began at the start of the 20 Century, and was basically
completed by the end of the thirties, two traditions that have undeniable points of connection and even
contamination, are defined [1]. To the first identification related to cultural background, we now add the
terms used by one tradition and the other to refer to the discipline: urbanistica [2] and planning. Both
have concrete operating principles, and their specific characteristics are particularly clear in the way
that they establish dialogue with Architecture.
This brief synthesis, necessarily simple, is the background for the issue that I wish to consider here. It
concerns identifying the exact way in which the Academy, which at the start of the Century appeared
to have given up the idea of modelling cities, provided the conceptual and formal instruments that
permitted the programmatic defence of Architecture’s capacity to solve the great problems that faced

1
 th
cities in the first half of the 20 Century. This process can be seen with even more clarity if we
compare it with what happened in America, where the architects who showed that they were willing to
contribute their knowledge and sensitivity to create a new discipline, Civic Art, were ignored by a new
class of professionals who claimed full responsibility for planning themselves.
th
In the first place, we can briefly summarise what happened in this field in the first thirty years of the 20
Century, in chronological order, and then clarify the way in which the different attitudes were defined
and presented. As noted, they were two processes that, from an architectural point of view, were
relatively independent, and each of them is based on a specific programme.

HISTORIC SUMMARY: THREE STEPPING STONES AND TWO PROGRAMMES

Three congresses, two held in just over a year, mark the steps in this complex operation. In 1909, the
First National Conference on City Planning was held in New York; the following year the RIBA held the
Town Planning Conference in London. The third event took place in 1928 in the Swiss castle of La
Sarraz. The two conferences held in America and England, in spite of their specific differences, have
several things in common: not only is the London conference attended by a large number of the
people who took part in the New York meeting, but in both cases the events were widely advertised, to
ensure the attendance of as many specialists as possible, preventing any-one from being left out, and
based on a wish to reach a consensus to define the practice of planning.
In La Sarraz, on the other hand, the number of attendants was restricted, in a conscious search for a
homogeneous perspective. The purpose was not to compare viewpoints and clarify positions, but to
present public opinion with a common and coherent front, capable of relieving the Academy of its
professional control and prestige.
The Conferences in the United States and England are decidedly concerned with town planning. The
Swiss meeting, later called the Premier Congrès International d’Architecture Moderne, is only
instrumentally related to the discipline, more as a means than as an end, without ignoring that Town
Planning is from the very start the pragmatic and common objective of the CIAM.
The contribution of architecture was also very different in both cases. In the two first conferences we
have mentioned, architects were just members like any others, although in London they were indeed
the organisers and the hosts. In the CIAM, they were the only attendants, although they would soon
invite other members. In any case, the architects go to these meetings with very different objectives,
and with different results. One programme can be identified with the movement called City Beautiful; it
occupies a place of honour in the two 1909 and 1910 conferences, but has fallen into oblivion. The
second programme appears when the CIAM were founded. It was first reflected in the Le Sarraz
declaration, and its development and victory come from the following conferences and the open
support of. Le Corbusier. It was the final consecration of Modern Architecture, and, paradoxically, the
practical demonstration that the beaux arts tradition contained the elements required to provide an
architectural solution for cities.

THE CITY BEAUTIFUL MOVEMENT AND CIVIC ART

The American City Beautiful phenomenon was inseparably related to the establishment of Civic Art as
a specific discipline, with architectural content, but objectives that were more than merely architectural.
It was, of course, a multiple process, in which different sensitivities converged and examples were
produced on both sides of the Atlantic. Together with the American experience, we must consider the
English version of Civic Art, the French Art Urbain and the Belgian Art Public. Each of these had a
specific approach, but they also possessed have evident similarities.
The United States provided a double catalyst in which different trends are included and which leads to
a particularly fortunate formula. On the one hand, we have the success of Daniel Burnham when he
prepared the headquarters of the Chicago Exhibition in 1892; on the other, the criticism and publicity
provided by Charles Mulford Robinson, a journalist who eventually, in 1913, occupied the first Chair in
Civic Design in the new world, in the University of Illinois.
Although the City Beautiful movement should not be identified with the Chicago exhibition, it is
undeniable that the work carried out next to Lake Michigan was an essential point of reference for the
American people, and encouragement for governors and businessmen to improve their urban
surroundings. This, indeed, was the task that Robinson takes upon himself from the press, and later
through several civic associations. The publication of The Improvement of Cities and Towns (1901)
and, two years later, of Modern Civic Arts (1903), confirmed him as the leading exponent of the City
Beautiful Movement
2
However, as indicated by the title of his first book, what Civic Art intended was not merely to make the
city beautiful, but to improve it. It was precisely because the objective had more than an aesthetic
dimension that the author considers that it is necessary to create modern civic art, understood as the
art that allows us to take “in just the right way of those steps necessary or proper for the comfort of the
citizens” [3].
Robinson took particular care to define the fundamental differences between Civic Art and other
artistic disciplines, mainly their social component. The mission of civic art is to glorify the city, and
artists must be at the service of the city and its inhabitants. The second difference refers to the way
that utilitarian and functional factors are treated. It is the mission of Civic Art to provide solutions not
only for aesthetic factors, but also for traffic and hygiene, since the three are inter-related.
These texts also defends plans as the essential instruments of Civic Art in its search for urban
improvement. The preparation in 1909 of the Chicago Plan by Burnham is a practical example of the
way in which urban beauty and improvement are part of a comprehensive framework in which the city
is seen as a dynamic entity.
Nevertheless, criticism of the City Beautiful Movement based on its monumentalism and its failure to
tackle real urban improvement had already started by the First National Conference on City Planning
(1909), and worsened in the following years. The protests of its followers and the general public
appreciation of an increase in beauty that was seen as part of urban improvement were completely
ignored [4].
In any case, if the decline of the City Beautiful Movement in the United States was a gradual process,
the European, and in some ways world, situation was even clearer. Except for specific discrepancies
that arose from Burnham’s confidence in democracy as the guarantor of town planning, we could say
that the Town Planning Conference (1910) ignored the recent American experience. On the other
hand, the conference organised by the RIBA contemplated, and supported, the convergence of the
reformist ideas that were emerging in Great Britain with the consecrated German Städtebau. Geddes’
support for the City Garden, and the German experience, left no room for the proposals of Burnham
and Robinson, or the English architects who were more concerned with an architectural solution for
cities, who were met with a respectful silence.
In this sense, it is significant how Stanley Adshead’s paper, significantly entitled City Improvement,
was received. The old professor, who occupied the first Chair of Civic Design established in Great
Britain, defended the need for a search for style and scale for city architecture. The speaker who
opened the debate, a member of the presidency for that session, indicated: “Professor Adshead has
raised so many points of interest, though some, perhaps, are rather outside Town Planning”. It is not
surprising that the debate ended with a warm vote of gratitude for Prof. Adshead, but completely
ignored his concerns [5].
Of course, the defeat of the City Beautiful Movement in town planning forums did not mean it
disappeared from the scene completely. The Canberra call for designs in 1912 gave rise to a large
number of proposals along clear Civic Art lines. The winning proposal presented by Griffin, a good
exponent of the City Beautiful, was put into practice, reasonably faithful to the original idea, as late as
the fifties. The final defeat of the movement, however, did not come from planning but from Modern
Architecture. In any case, before we go that far, we should return to the start of the century, and
consider the proposals that the Academy makes for the city.

THE URBAN CONTRIBUTIONS OF L’ÈCOLE DE BEAUX-ARTS AND L’ART URBAIN

History acknowledges Guadet and his Eléments et theorie de l’architecture [6] as one of the main
exponents of the Academy’s teachings and its theory on composition at the start of the century. This is
an extensive manual, in which the author, with a great deal of experience and recognised prestige,
provides the details of his classes in L’Ècole de Beaux-Arts. Frampton, and Banham [7] before him,
have shown the influence that architectural composition as taught in L’École has had on the birth of
Modern Architecture. Tony Garnier’s industrial city, acknowledged by orthodoxy of Modernism as the
fore-runner of functionalist town planning, was above all an exercise in composition, criticised by his
professors not exactly because of its lack of quality, but because of the unorthodox use that the young
architect makes of a sacred resource during his stay at the French Academy in Rome.
The academic reaction to the work that Garnier did in Rome can be better understood if we remember
the opinion that Guadet expressed at the beginning of the two chapters of his manual on town
planning issues. In “L’architecture et les voies publiques” he writes: “There is a town planning

3
architecture. But I will never admit the a priori idea of a city. This idea does not exist, and if it did it
would be regrettable, if not from the perspective of utility, from the perspective of art. In Europe at
least, cities have grown over centuries, with no rules and pre-conceived ideas, with the collaboration of
chance and time, which can only generate the picturesque” [8].
With this approach, it is hardly surprising that academic architecture was not present at the Town
Planning Conference (1910). Many architects were present, and of course there were architects
trained at L’École de Beaux Arts. But their contributions never appear in connection with academic
principles. Let us consider, for example, Hénard’s paper on the city of the future. His objective was
quite clear from the start of the paper: “My purpose is to inquire into the influence which the progress
of modern science and industry may exercise upon the planning, and particularly upon the aspect, of
the Cities of The Future” [9].
It is true that architecture plays a decisive role in his proposal: that is clear also in his Etudes sur les
transformations de Paris ; but in neither case a town planning from architecture was proposed. This
attitude is faithful to the principles defended by Guadet: architecture can open new roads, or solve
concrete urban problems. What cannot do is to contemplate the creation of a city. That is why when
he talks in London about the city of the future, he is careful not to claim a definite role for architecture,
but to present forms that are useful for a future designed from outside the discipline.
Neither can we forget the contributions to art urbain made in France by town planners from the L’École
de Beaux Arts, as good as Prost or Jaussely. In this country, Jaussely is associated to the “Link” plan
for Barcelona, presented at the International call for ideas in 1905, when he still resided in the
Academy in Rome, a proposal that is particularly fortunate in joining compositional and formal criteria
with a concern for traffic requirements. However, none of these authors seems to feel the need, or the
possibility, for programmatically defining the conceptual and instrumental content of art urbain. It is
significant that the text of the Course d’Art Urbain that Jaussely taught from 1917 in L’Ècole des
Hautes Etudes Urbaines has not been published and remains in the school’s archives.
In any case, this illustrates that the theory of composition already contained the seeds of a theory of
urban projection, particularly if we consider the two dimensions of composition. One the one hand, we
have the abstract composition of shapes, and on the other, the composition of the parts that cover the
needs of the programme. Architecture feels capable of establishing the criteria to compose one and
the other, to analyse the programme, identify the conditions of the parts required to complete it, and
relate the parts to each other. It is then able to compose the different elements (parts), obtaining the
required harmony through the principles of unity and contrast.
It is possible to catch a glimpse of the reasons that prevent the Academy from going from the
programme for a building or a group of buildings to the programme for a complete city. In any case,
the disciplinary instruments are there, at the disposal of whoever, like Garnier, dared to use them and
has the opportunity to justify their use in a way that is convincing for public opinion.
THE FOUNDATION OF THE CIAM
This, of course, did not occur at the Town Planning Conference. It would have to wait for a favourable
public opinion based on the CIAM. In the years between 1910 and 1928, there was a decisive change
in European culture, when the Great War, and the Kulturcrisis, questioned the way that modernity had
been modelled by liberalism. An increasing manifest need was felt then to tackle the social component
of man, to base action on criteria overcoming individualism.
So the architects who went to La Sarraz was in a condition to include in their programme the social
objectives that were essential to tackle the social and economic challenge that was facing Europe. The
declaration approved in 1928, and its later development, particularly the Athens Charter, define the
social ideal to which Architecture, accepting a decisive role in the solution of society’s problems, must
contribute.
In any case, what we are interested in here is not so much to examine these well known proposals, or
point out how they fit in with culture at that time in history. What seems to us to be decisive is to
identify the change of strategy that occurred among the architects that went to the Town Planning
Conference and the CIAM founders. A brief look at the epistemology will provide us with some
conceptual hints that will help us fully understand these changes.

THE REPLACEMENT OF PARADIGMS AND RESEARCH PROGRAMMES

Since Kuhn, in his Theory of scientific revolutions, described the process of scientific development and
progress, the concept of paradigm, with all its ambiguity, forms part of normal vocabulary related to the
4
history of science [10]. Different authors, among which special mention should be made of Lakatos
and Laudan [11], have enriched and corrected the conceptual tools available for the study of the
development of science, by means of their own theories.
On the other hand, the gradual but now firm rejection that epistemology makes of the criteria for
separating science from non-science, has lead to the application of these theories to the historic study
of many different disciplines. Town planning has also been affected by this movement, as shown for
example by the work carried out by Cesare Blasi, Gabriella Padovano and Bernardo Secchi [12].
Lakatos himself has reminded us that “the history of science is always richer than its rational re-
construction. But rational re-construction, or internal history, is primary. External history is only
secondary because the most important problems of external history are defined by internal history”
[13]. So our next step is to understand, from within the practice of town planning, the process by which
th
the discipline was created in the first thirty years of the 20 Century.
The period we are considering really contemplates the establishment of the two first paradigms of the
discipline. On the one hand the results of the Town Planning Conference of 1910, which is based on
the professional practice of planning that was by that time firmly established both in the United States
and the United Kingdom. On the other hand, the approach that we have been calling urbanistica,
characterised by the practice encouraged in the CIAM and that, in a different way, inspires the
discipline in other European countries [14].
Consequently, the process that we are examining is not so much the replacement of one town
planning paradigm by another, but the establishment of the first two paradigms, and more specifically
the role played in this process by Architecture, from two different programmes, the CIAM and the
proposal of Civic Art.
The word programme has been used several times in this paper, and we should define the sense in
which it is being employed. It was Lakatos who introduced this concept in the epistemological
examination of scientific development. Under the name of research programme, this philosopher of
science refers to the set of theories that, maintaining a basic conceptual and instrumental core, face
the theoretical and empirical problems that are generated by scientific advances [15].
In this sense, challenged with unsolved or unexplained problems, some scientists attempt to protect
the continuity of the science that they practice by proposing different stratagems that act within what
we could call their protective casing, leaving the core of the theory unaltered. In fact, this desire for
continuity does not necessarily imply maintaining the same paradigm. The operation is frequently seen
as a correction, and at times as a break from their fore-runners. The important thing is the conviction
that the science concerned has the material required to face new challenges.
We intend to apply this perspective both to the operation carried out by the City Beautiful Movement,
on the one hand, and the programme developed by Modern Architecture, on the other.

THE CITY BEAUTIFUL OPTION AND THE MODERN ARCHITECTURE PROPOSAL

There is no doubt concerning the architectural base of the option represented by the City Beautiful
Movement. The use of composition made by the L’École de Beaux Arts is shown both in the activities
carried out and in the points of reference used: from the Chicago Fair to the L’Enfant plan for
th
Washington at the end of the 17 Century, or the Plan that Wren proposed for the re-construction of
London after the fire in 1600.
The programmatic proposal is supported by a dual capacity of Architecture: on the one hand,
architectural forms are capable of solving the problems associated with urban development (hygiene
and traffic), and on the other, they provide the inhabitants of the city with a reason for pride and
satisfaction, helping them to feel that they are real citizens.
In spite of acknowledging and being supported by these possibilities, from the start there are marked
differences between Civic Art and Architecture, and the most outstanding is the social and public
nature of the new art, compared with the private significance of Architecture. “The exterior of your
home [...] is not private property”[16], says Robinson, following Ruskin. But these words, at the same
time that they defend the public nature of the facade, also implies rejecting the social dimension of the
rest of architecture. Civic Art has little to say on the ventilation of houses, except for what depends on
public spaces. The defenders of the City Beautiful do not lack concern for the bad conditions in the
areas with rented homes, but when they consider the problem they go no further than the facade of
the building.

5
In fact, regardless of these limitations that could be considered as objective or external (since they fail
to respond to concrete problems), it is possible to identify other subjective, or internal, limitations,
derived from the structure of the concept itself. On the one hand, there is no attempt at the dual
dimension (functional and formal) of architectural composition, and therefore the relation between one
dimension and the other is not clear, and, on the other hand, the social content of architecture that
appears to be exclusively based on its capacity to manifest a character, for our purposes the character
of citizenship, is not clear.
We can conclude, then, that the Civic Art proposal is based on a fundamental strategic error: the
conceptual and operative core provided by Architecture is neither clearly defined nor decisively
defended. From the very start, certain basic limitations are acknowledged, which leads to the
establishment of a discipline that is weighed down by Architecture. Its contribution is also related to
side issues, such as citizens’ pride, related to the problems suffered by the city. The strategy itself is
replaced by a mere tactic, which appears to be within the strategy of planning. There is no
identification of the core of the beaux arts theory of architecture, and less still of stratagems that
modify the protective casing.
Modern Architecture tackled the battle in a very different way. From the start the objective was clear.
The architecture being produced by the Academy was to be replaced by a new architecture. The basic
strategy was soon defined. Modern Architecture must demonstrate its capacity to solve the problems
associated with the new socio-economic circumstances.
It is convincing to consider that the final solution of the call for ideas for the Palace of the League of
Nations, and the role adjudicated to the proposal presented by Le Corbusier, acted as a revulsive that,
together with other occurrences, such as the success of the exhibition of the Werkbund in Stuttgart,
provided the points of reference to correctly tackle the battle waged from La Sarraz against the
Academia. It was necessary to show public opinion not only that the proposals of Modern Architecture
were useful and effective, but also that the monumentalism of beaux arts architecture was ineffective
and useless [17].
It is precisely this strategy that leaded them to identify the core of the architectural paradigm of the
time, valid for their purposes. The stratagems applied (for example, to cease to search for character,
of utmost importance for the L’École des Beaux-Arts) was a result of the objectives established.
Composition, in the meantime, associated to form and function, became a highly rational instrument,
capable, therefore, of tackling the complex problems of modern cities. Character was considered as a
dead weight that is preventing the birth of a new architecture.
Above all, the theory of composition contributed its analysis of the programme to the urban question,
so that the complexity of reality, with its physical and cultural restrictions, with its social trends, with its
history, is rationalised by the identification of the four functions [18]. The development from analysis to
project is very similar to the development from the architectural programme to the chosen
composition. An element is assigned to each requirement, and an area is assigned to each function.
The immediate progression from analysis to project is possibly the greatest contribution of the
urbanistica of the CIAM. It was what makes the theory of composition unexpectedly operational. It
gived the city, and each of its areas, the importance it deserves as a space for experiments in Modern
Architecture. Urbanistica appears, then, as the main instrument with which to dampen the persistent
vitality of academic architecture, and the proof that Modern Architecture is capable of facing the
problems that L’École acknowledged were not within its scope. This objective implies identifying town
planning as one of the privileged fields of architecture, and firmly within its scope.
THE COST OF VICTORY
The victory of Modern Architecture over beaux arts architecture simultaneously implied the
consolidation of a new paradigm for town planning, thus establishing a new tradition that, through
different programmes and theories, today still contrasts with the Anglo-Saxon model.
The virtues of this new tradition are clearly manifest in its own development. It would be unfair to deny
th
the consequences that the process has had on the improvement of our cities in the 20 Century. This
acknowledgement, however, does not prevent us from being aware of the cost of the victory of this
new paradigm. I will provide a brief summary, primarily concerned with strictly disciplinary
consequences, without considering the indirect consequences for professional practice, or the facilities
that the discipline provided for economic systems [19].
Above all, we can see the restrictions of the theory of composition for application to town planning
projects. Guadet understood these failings well, not only when he declared that Architecture was
6
incapable of tackling the global construction of cities, but also when he characterised architectural
composition. As he says in Elements, composition implies handling elements that are familiar “from a
double point of view, adapting them to concrete programmes and material requirements”. He goes on
to insist that “to compose is to make use of what you are familiar with” (ce qu’on sait) [20]
This definition of the limits of composition shows its failings when its is applied, with no further criteria,
to city. When he faces a city, the architect, together with familiar elements (the buildings themselves,
the result of the composition of architectural elements), uses new elements, urban spaces, that are by
nature residual. For beaux arts architecture, external space is merely the neutral field of architectural
composition, and this sense is initially given to urban spaces in CIAM town planning. The function for
this space was soon defined, based on a necessarily abstract purpose (hygiene, recreation, leisure),
since it was an unknown and unfamiliar concept.
Equally abstract are the cities that are planned as if they are external objects, independent from the
men that have built and will inhabit them. For Modern Architecture, the city is only different from
architecture because of its scale. Its collective and dynamic dimension is ignored. The main
stratagems employed by the successive generations of Modern Architecture, and in a particularly
explicit way, by Team X, consist of overcoming the abstract nature of space, filling it with existence
and life and character. The fact that Modernity forgot character and attempted to recover it with no
consideration for historical experience, is therefore one of the highest prices paid by the victory of this
town planning tradition.
Against this background, the ambiguity of town planning, particularly in Mediterranean countries, is
especially clear. Modern Architecture, when it absorbed Town Planning, has laid itself open to the
dialectics of modernity. It is worth considering this paradoxical characteristic of modern thought that is
its intrinsic ambivalence. Modernity faces reality in a dialectic manner, by identifying two contradictory
and incompatible principles: reason and will, object and subject, freedom and need, capitalism and
socialism. From this dialectic perspective, modernity decisively chose one of the principles, denying
the validity of the other.
In fact, this unilateral decision forces the part of reality that has been chosen to play not only its own
role, but the role of the principle that has been denied, which can only be done in so much as it is
absorbed by its alter ego. So modernity, by making a unilateral choice, finally surrenders to the part of
reality that it intends to deny [21]. This same dialectic is found in Modern Architecture, in its
acceptance of functionalism, which in fact is decidedly formalistic, or in the rejection of the theory that
leads to practice being based on what has been called operative criticism, that is the conversion of the
project into a theory that dictates how the project is carried out.
A similar process has been experienced by the Modern Movement in its relation with Town planning.
By denying it its own scope, Architecture has taken on the only role in the construction of cities.
Consequently, by denying and absorbing town planning, Modern Architecture finally lost its own
definition. The new avant-garde movements, from Italian neo-rationalisms to The Five in America,
defend the independence of architecture, which is merely the result of denying the same
independence for socio-economic factors, and of trying to solve all society’s problems with
Architecture (“Architecture or revolution”, Le Corbusier dared to cry). Among these problems is the one
that Town planning attempts to tackle: city development.
But the victory was not merely costs. The acceptance by Architecture of impossible responsibilities is
evidence of the fact that Architecture and Town planning are inseparable. In any case, here is where
we find the greatest virtue of the Town Planning supported by Modern Architecture: the conviction that
there is a town planning side to architecture and an architectural side to town planning. This
perspective is particularly helpful when it comes to acknowledging the unity between Architecture and
Town Planning, without necessarily denying one of the two dimensions.

NOTES AND REFERENCES

1. We use the term tradition in line with what Larry Laudan (Progress and its Problems. Toward a Theory
of Scientific Growth. Berkley: University of California Press, 1977) has proposed in his studies on the
history of scientific knowledge. He characterises the traditions of research as a set of general assumptions
that are to be used to investigate problems and build theories in this domain.
2. We use the Italian term (urbanistica) to refer to planning as it was practiced in Romance countries. It is
similar to the Spanish urbanismo (or urbanística) and the French urbanisme.

7
 3. Ch. M. Robinson, Modern Civic Art or the City made Beautiful. New York: G. P. Putnam´s sons, 1903.,
p. 27.
4. An authorised presentation of the City Beautiful, and the relationship between this movement and City
Planning, can be found in W. H Wilson, The City Beautiful Movement. Baltimore and London: The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1994. The terms of the debate are not as clear as most historic studies have
presented.
5. RIBA, Transactions of Town Planning Conference, Transactions of Town Planning Conference.
London, 10—15 October 1910. London: RIBA, 1911, pp. 505-507.
6. J. Guadet, Eléments et théorie de l'architecture. Paris: Librairie de la Construction Moderne, 1902-4.
7. K. Frampton, Modern Architecture: A Critical History. London: Thames and Hundson, 1980; and R.
Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age. London: The Architectural Press, 1960.
8. J. Guadet, op. cit., vol. IV, p. 49).
9. E. Henard, “Les villes de l’avenir”, RIBA, Transactions of Town Planning Conference, op. cit., p. 345.
10. A particularly clarifying examination of the different senses of the term can be seen in M. Mastermann,
“The nature of a paradigma”, in Lakatos-Musgrave (eds.), Problems in the Philosophy of Science.
Amsterdam: North Holland, 1965.
11. We have referred to Laudan´s theory previously when we used his terminology related to the
traditions of research. We will soon be covering Lakatos and his research programmes.
12. Cesare Blasi and Gabriela Padovano, Teorie della progettazione architettonica ed urbanistica. Milano:
ETAS, 1984; Secchi 1990, Un sapere cumulativo, Urbanistica, 11 (1990) 3-61; and B. Secchi, Tradizioni di
Ricerca: Il Posto dell’Urbanistica Nella Società Italiana (1945-1993), en DISP, Dokumentations und
Informationsstelle für Planung, 115 (1993) 60-65. Kuhn’s theory had previously been applied to the history
of planning in the Anglo-Saxon world: see, for example, T. D. Galloway and R. G. Mahayni, Planning
Theory in Restrospect: The Process of Paradigm Change, Journal of American Institute of Planners, vol.
43, n. 1 (January 1977).
13. I. Lakatos, History and its Rational Reconstruction, 1971; quoted in the Spanish edition, Historia de la
ciencia y sus reconstrucciones racionales. Madrid: Tecnos, 1974, p. 11.
14. We should perhaps clarify, although we hope it is clear from the entire paper, that the cultural and
geographic location of the two paradigms and their traditions can not be defined in an absolute manner.
There have been followers of planning in Europe, and English and American supporters of the search for a
continuity between architecture and planning that characterises urbanistica. It is also true that in these
cases, there is evident contamination. Consider Samonà or Quaroni, or even Astengo, in the first field, and
the Smithsons, Lynch or Alexander in the second.
15. I. Lakatos, History and its Rational Reconstruction, op. cit.
16. Ch. M. Robinson, Modern Civic Art, op. cit., p. 230.
17. This interpretation of the origin of the CIAM has been suggested, among other, by L. Benevolo, Storia
dell'architettura moderna. Bari-Roma: Laterza, 1960.
18. There is no doubt of the reductive character of this operation, particularly if we compare it with the rich
and ambiguous analysis made by Geddes in his Civic Survey.
19. As for those indirect consequences, consider the poor results that come from the mere imitation of
shapes, and the attraction, particularly for those who are less provided with critical capacity, of simple and
clear forms (such as the Town planning of the CIAM). Regarding the opportunities offered from the Modern
Movement to capital, see the abundant Marxist historiography, which is certainly reductive since it
considers the most important dimension of reality (that which is derived from the freedom of he who knows
and desires) as a mere reflection of the productive system.
20. J. Guadet, Eléments et théorie de l'architecture, op. cit., vol. I, pp. 2 and 7.
21. Adorno pointed out the terrible consequences of this dialectic in the modernity’s option of objective
thought, a choice that leads to the arbitrariness of the subjective end violently to reality, in the praxis of
totalitarianism.