The whole of the part: urbanism, planning, and the social process of construction of the city in the early 20th century

Abstract

Assuming that the territory is the whole space and the city is partt here of, this article focuses on the knowledge produced as of the 19th century that eventually flows into what we will call the urban development of Modernism. This author investigates initialconceptions widely held at the beginning of the 20th centuryregarding two spatial sciences – urbanism and urban planning.This author argues that both studies are at the same timeantagonistic and complementary. The difference between them is notonly an etymological question but rather part of their nature andobjectives. This difference leads us to a series of bipolarities, such asEurope against North America and the history of urbanism againstthe history of social production of the built space. In the gap between urbanism and urban planning we can better understand the city in all its complexity.The author concludes that urbanism was markedly European ing eneral and French in particular. In turn, planning was distinctly Anglo-Saxon in general and North American in particular. However, byseeking to respond to the demands of the cities from the 19th century onward, these two areas complement each other in the study of capitalist urbanization associated with the Second Industrial Revolution.