A Global History of urban development policies since 1945

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Marc Frey
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2014 to 2019
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 252987858

The proposed project analyses the history of urban development policies between 1945 and 1992. In this sense, it assumes that development policies are policies that were undertaken for developing countries. However, from this specific angle, the project seeks to provide important insight into the general history of urbanization in the 20th century. Based on notions of global governance, and utilizing a multi-centered writing of history, basic questions shall be addressed which are also of relevance for the social sciences, geography, and anthropology. When, why and how did urban development policies develop as a new global policy field? What kind of development doctrines and strategies did the actors involve conceive? How did these change over time, and why did they do so? Which local ramifications did urban development projects have?The proposed project investigates these questions in three partial projects. These itemize different sets of problems of urban development policies; however, they look at roughly the same actors. This ensures a high degree of homogeneity among the partial projects and guarantees exchange and cross-fertilization. Partial project 1 investigates the change of global perceptions, discourses and developmental approaches in regard to a need for housing in cities of developing countries, a need which manifested itself since the 1940s by the proliferation of so-called slums. The partial project makes use of a biographical approach and focuses on a group of globally active experts who were instrumental for urban development policies of international organizations between the 1940s and the 1970s. Partial project 2 uses urban water policies to address the problem of urban resource crises from the 1960s to 1992. It investigates a range of projects funded by the World Bank in Bogota, Nairobi and Mumbai. In addition, it researches the approaches of other actors towards these three cities such as the WHO, UNESCO, the Gesellschaft für technische Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) and the International Institute for Water Management in Stockholm. Research on the specific local water policies will be embedded in the context of changing notions of and prescriptions on water policies. Partial project 3 looks at the more conventional environmental dimension of urban development policy. It is concerned with perceptions and handling of urban environmental pollution since the 1970s. More concretely, the example of Mexico City is used to investigate air pollution; Sao Paulo is selected as a focus on water pollution; and Singapore has been selected in order to analyze changing conceptions of soft categories such as life quality. The actors addressed comprise the World Bank, the WHO, UNEP and the Ford Foundation.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants