News from the Modern Front: Constantinos A. Doxiadis’s Ekistics, the United Nations, and the post-war discourse on housing, building and planning

Abstract

The Monthly Bulletin of Tropical Housing & Planning was founded by Constantinos A. Doxiadis and Jaqueline Tyrwhitt in October 1955. Originally meant to collect professionally useful information on the so-called ‘developing countries’, the publication soon changed its name and scope, becoming an internationally distributed, widely read and highly influential journal dedicated to the science of Ekistics and human settlements. Using previously unpublished archival material, the paper investigates the origin and early years of Ekistics: The Problems and Science of Human Settlements highlighting the strategic role of the journal for Doxiadis’s global agenda. Second, it is used as a case study to follow the evolution of the discourse on housing, building and planning during the UN Development decades and until the organization in 1976 of UN Habitat, the first international conference entirely dedicated to human settlements. Finally, by focusing on the journal and its meaning, this paper also explores the role that experts and international cooperation missions have played in the spread of modernity and on Doxiadis’s legacy in this field.