Rethinking Urban Extension and International Influences: Spain and the International Housing and Town Planning Congresses during the 1920s

Abstract

The International Garden Cities and Town Planning Association (founded in 1913 and later named, among others, International Federation for Housing and Town Planning) organized since 1914 the International Housing and Town Planning Congresses as forums for the debate and wide circulation of the ideas of the garden city and, progressively, of other concepts linked to the development of modern urban planning. This chapter analyses the ideas that spread through these congresses from the perspective of Spain, one of the countries that, differently from the United Kingdom, France, the United States or Germany, played a secondary role in them. Even though its participation started early and got its highest intensification during the 1920s, when the proceedings of the conferences were translated into Spanish by Federico López Valencia (representative from the Spanish Institute for Social Reforms), no causality relationship can be stated between these international congresses and the changes during that decade in social housing and town planning policies at national level in Spain. Therefore, the case of this country shows a complexity that cannot be reduced to the simple scheme of international dominant issuer and national, dominated receiver.