Tracing urban design's ‘Townscape’ origins: some relationships between a British editorial policy and an American academic field in the 1950s

ABSTRACT In the 1950s, ‘urban design’ was born in American debate thanks partly to the import of foreign discourses in a new context. Among others, was the fragmented and erratic translation of the British Architectural Review 's ‘Townscape’ discourse. This article traces carefully this translation not only to describe another key moment in the Anglo-American dialogue on planning but also to give a more complex portrait of the foundation and early development of the field of urban design. Involving some American universities, Fortune magazine and the Rockefeller Foundation, these lines of exchange also exemplify variations on the translation of a militant discourse into an academic one.