Model cities: argumentation, institutions and urban development since 1880

Abstract

Bangalore, Barcelona and Singapore are just three of the many “model cities” identified in urban studies. Such model cities constitute a phenomenon which has received little critical attention in urban studies, though there has been much progress in the related fields of urban policy mobilities, comparative urbanism and global urbanism. This thesis builds upon these contributions whilst concentrating specifically on the model city. It defines three core characteristics of grounded model cities – i.e. models based on actually-existing cities - in the twenty-first century and conceptualises model cities as argumentative resources, mobilised in debates about urban development. Having indicated how this conceptualisation can help with the identification of model cities, the remainder of the thesis historicises the contemporary phenomenon of the model city in order to establish its origins and identify other argumentative resources that might be mobilised instead.

The thesis makes reference to three archival sources. These are the Association of Municipal Corporations/Association of Metropolitan Authorities (AMC/AMA); International Federation for Housing and Planning (IFHP) and the journal Town Planning Review. These institutions provide an account of the changing nature of argumentation about urban development in the twentieth century within the two constituencies of planning and local government, at national and also international scales and between practitioners and academics. Each archive demonstrates a trend toward the emergence of grounded model cities.

Besides the grounded model city, other argumentative resources identified include the illustrative city, the model national system, the utopian model city and the rational model city. The thesis concludes with a typology the various kinds of argumentative resources identified as well as a periodization of model cities on the basis of the types observed. Utopian model cities, exemplified by Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City, were commonly invoked earlier in the twentieth century, whilst rational model cities took centre stage in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then the grounded model cities have been cited with increasing frequency in discussions of urban policy, though the broader classification of illustrative cities remains significant also. The relative periods of ascendancy of each kind of these argumentative resources is explained with reference to changes within the particular institutions studied and the wider professional contexts in which they were embedded.

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ORCID for Nick Clarke: orcid.org/0000-0001-9148-9849

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