G Schwake, Y Sun, K Zhu, P Zhu
Peer-reviewed Article
Year:
2018
Gabriel Schwake
Author(s):
The 18th biannual International Planning History Society (IPHS) conference took place 15–19 July
2018, in Yokohama, Japan. Themed ‘Looking at the World History of Planning’, the conference
asked to enhance and promote the diversity of perspectives and narratives existing in the research
of cities and their planning history (select full papers and abstracts are available for public access
from the IPHS website: https://planninghistory.org/conferences/yokohama/ and https://journals.
library.tudelft.nl/index.php/iphs/issue/archive). The conference consisted of diverse events, which
included a pre-forum, 3 keynote speeches, a Gordon E. Cherry Memorial lecture, 68 research panels
of presentations, 7 round tables, 23 book talks, as well as short and long tours. Based on a selection of
relevant panels and roundtables, this report explores three prominent themes discussed in the conference:
intercultural exchange, intracultural exchange and global planning history. It lays out how
planning diffusion among and within cultures influenced cities and their planning and emphasizes
the importance of understanding planning history from transnational and global perspectives. The
choice of Yokohama, a city which has a history that embodies the impact of globalization on planning
exchange, corresponded with its goals, given that it was one of the first ports that opened to
trade with Western nations under the so-called unequal treaties that ended the long era of Japanese
seclusion. The conference took place in the Port Opening Memorial Hall, a Neo-Renaissance building
located in the former foreign trade district opened in 1917 at the 50th anniversary of the city’s
port opening.
