The Uncharted Kahn: The Visuality of Planning and Promotion in the 1930s and 1940s

Shanken, Andrew M.

doi:10.1080/00043079.2006.10786292

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 4 publications

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“…The languages used in the booklet echoed graphic techniques, pictorial guidelines, visual strategies, modes of display, and tools used by the Federal Media to allegorize New Deal official planning culture (Shanken, 2006). Organizational charts, diagrams, and isotopes were used to reconceptualize outstanding planning experiences, such as the project for the privately built Radburn development in New Jersey, designed by H. Wright, C. Stein, and F. Ackerman in 1923 in the framework of the Regional Planning Association of America, or the analytical charts showing the needs in terms of facilities and recreational spaces of inhabitants of different ages, published by J. L. Sert in his Can Our Cities Survive?…”

Section: A Neighborhood Is Everybody's Business During Wwiimentioning

confidence: 99%

“You and Your Neighborhood”: Neighborhood, Community, and Democracy as New Paradigms in Wartime American Architecture

Caramellino

2022

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This article argues that a radical reconceptualization of the notion of neighborhood was introduced by architects in the United States during WWII in response to the new political, cultural, and economic conditions of the war. The efforts of architects and planners like Oskar Stonorov and Louis Kahn contributed to reconfiguring the organizational principle of the “neighborhood unit” model envisioned by Clarence Perry during the 1920s, transferring the discourse from the domain of urban sociology and technical planning to the realm of the American profession. This article revolves around the unexplored and intense period of architectural experimentation during WWII, when the neighborhood emerged as a vibrant platform for the efforts of professional circles to question the values of American democracy and introduce new participative practices in neighborhood and community design, fostering new forms of collaboration between citizens, governmental agencies, and speculative builders under the leadership of architects. Neighborhood design appeared as the testing ground to renegotiate the role and social responsibility of American architects and a foundational value of post-war American society, while its new meanings were to be renegotiated in post-war city planning and built communities.

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Section: A Neighborhood Is Everybody's Business During Wwiimentioning

confidence: 99%

“You and Your Neighborhood”: Neighborhood, Community, and Democracy as New Paradigms in Wartime American Architecture

Caramellino

2022

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“…The most comprehensive work being Cara Finnegan's Picturing Poverty: Print Culture and the FSA Photographs (2003), which studied the early diffusion of the photographs collected by Roosevelt's Ressetlement Administration (RA) and Farm Security Administration (FSA) to document the Great Depression. Other references on the pre-WWI and interwar context include Aubert (2005), Gordon (2006), Greenwald (1996), Mora and Brannan (2006), Shanken (2006), Seixas (1987) and Smith-Shank (2003). of science such as Norton Wise (2006) have called for a 'history of vision' that would transcend the traditional divisions between culture and science, geometry and algebra, laboratories and museums for the closer we approach the question, the more we realize that it is at the intersection between these dichotomies that visualization operates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economics for the Masses: The Visual Display of Economic Knowledge in the United States (1910-45)

Charles¹,

Giraud²

2013

History of Political Economy

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The rise of visual representation in economics textbooks after WWII is one of the main features of contemporary economics. In this paper, we argue that this development has been preceded by a no less significant rise of visual representation in the larger literature devoted to social and scientific issues, including economic textbooks for non-economists as well as newspapers and magazines. During the interwar era, editors, propagandists and social scientists altogether encouraged the use of visual language as the main vehicle to spread information and opinions about the economy to a larger audience. These new ways of visualizing social facts, which most notably helped shape the understanding of economic issues by various audiences during the years of the Great Depression, were also conceived by their inventors as alternative ways of practicing economics: in opposition to the abstraction of "neoclassical" economics, these authors wanted to use visual representation as a way to emphasize the human character of the discipline and did not accept the strict distinction between the creation and the diffusion of economic knowledge. We explore different yet related aspects of these developments by studying the use of visual language in economics textbooks intended for non-specialists, in periodicals such as the Survey, a monthly magazine intended for an audience of social workers, the Americanization of Otto Neurath's pictorial statistics and finally the use of those visual representations by various state departments and administrations under Roosevelt's legislature (including the much-commented Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration). We show how visualizations that have been created in opposition to neoclassical economics have lost most of their theoretical content when used widely for policy purposes while being simultaneously integrated into the larger American culture. It is our claim that those issues, which are familiar to those involved in cultural and visual studies, are also of crucial importance to apprehend the later developments of modern economics.

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“…Other references on the pre-WWI and interwar context include Aubert (2005), Gordon (2006), Greenwald (1996), Mora and Brannan (2006), Shanken (2006), Seixas (1987) and Smith-Shank (2003).…”

Section: Jean-luc Godard Vent D'estmentioning

confidence: 99%

Economics for the Masses: The Visual Display of Economic Knowledge in the United States (1921-1945)

Charles

Giraud

2010

SSRN Journal

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Abstract:The rise of visual representation in economics textbooks after WWII is one of the main features of contemporary economics. In this paper, we argue that this development has been preceded by a no less significant rise of visual representation in the larger literature devoted to social and scientific issues, including economic textbooks for non-economists as well as newspapers and magazines. During the interwar era, editors, propagandists and social scientists altogether encouraged the use of visual language as the main vehicle to spread information and opinions about the economy to a larger audience. These new ways of visualizing social facts, which most notably helped shape the understanding of economic issues by various audiences during the years of the Great Depression, were also conceived by their inventors as alternative ways of practicing economics: in opposition to the abstraction of "neoclassical" economics, these authors wanted to use visual representation as a way to emphasize the human character of the discipline and did not accept the strict distinction between the creation and the diffusion of economic knowledge. We explore different yet related aspects of these developments by studying the use of visual language in economics textbooks intended for non-specialists, in periodicals such as the Survey, a monthly magazine intended for an audience of social workers, the Americanization of Otto Neurath's pictorial statistics and finally the use of those visual representations by various state departments and administrations under Roosevelt's legislature (including the much-commented Historical Section of the Farm Security Administration). We show how visualizations that have been created in opposition to neoclassical economics have lost most of their theoretical content when used widely for policy purposes while being simultaneously integrated into the larger American culture. It is our claim that those issues, which are familiar to those involved in cultural and visual studies, are also of crucial importance to apprehend the later developments of modern economics.

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The Uncharted Kahn: The Visuality of Planning and Promotion in the 1930s and 1940s

Cited by 10 publications

References 4 publications

“You and Your Neighborhood”: Neighborhood, Community, and Democracy as New Paradigms in Wartime American Architecture

“You and Your Neighborhood”: Neighborhood, Community, and Democracy as New Paradigms in Wartime American Architecture

Economics for the Masses: The Visual Display of Economic Knowledge in the United States (1910-45)

Economics for the Masses: The Visual Display of Economic Knowledge in the United States (1921-1945)

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