Facilitating planning communication across borders: The International Federation for Housing and Town Planning in the interwar period

Several scholars, including Pierre-Yves Saunier and Renaud Payre, have studied how the members of the various networks of the ‘urban internationale’ attempted to overcome professional and political cleavages throughout the twentieth century. In contrast, only a few scholars have scrutinized the ways in which international professional institutions sought to prevail over interlingual difficulties. Although various institutions restricted communication to English, French, and German, many members had only a limited command of foreign languages; additionally, amateur interpreters further impeded multilingual conversation. Resulting language difficulties worsened professional and political conflicts within the urban internationale. Charting the attempts of the International Federation for Housing and Town Planning (IFHTP) to establish an international notation of town plans and an interlingual glossary for urban planning, this essay studies attempts of the urban internationale to facilitate communication across borders during the interwar era. Through the example of the IFHTP, this article studies how planners within this international network organized transborder expert cooperation. It focuses on the debates surrounding the creation of a notation system and a glossary, designed to facilitate communication between planners from Western industrial societies while largely excluding connections to the Colonies and other parts of the world.