Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ENVIRONMENTAL PLANNING FOR NATIONAL
REGENERATION: TECHNO-CITIES IN NEW DEAL
AMERICA AND NAZI GERMANY
ARTHUR MOLELLA AND ROBERT KARGON
From its beginnings, the Industrial Revolution aroused concerns about
environmental degradation and its harm to society.The First World War and
the ensuing worldwide depression refocused attention on the need for
comprehensive approaches to economic development without environ-
mental blight.The 1930s, for example, was an era of dramatic visions of the
future. Mixed in with often virulent ideologies were bold attempts to devise
inventive solutions to long-standing problems. Powerful activist regimes
were established in autocratic Italy, Germany, and the Soviet Union as well
as in democratic America. The European nations faced not only the great
world-wide economic depression but also the challenges of securing their
authoritarian rule and building their military capacity for the eventual
showdown with their enemies. As confidence in centralized planning was
immense, to address these problems they established new planned cities in
connection with technical enterprises. These “techno-cities” were created
by visionaries in each country as exemplars for the environmental, eco-
nomic, and moral regeneration. First, all these visionaries advocated the
decentralization of industry.“Back to the soil” provided a motto that was at
once geographic, economic, and morally uplifting. Second, despite the nos-
talgia for a pre-industrial bond between land and people, these attempts to
transform the nation paradoxically extolled the role of science and tech-
nology in building a new future. Theorists such as James C. Scott have
termed this complex of ideas “authoritarian high modernism.”
1
In an
important sense, these techno-cities were
inventions
aimed at implementing
the nation's planned tomorrow.
This essay compares two such endeavors: Norris, Tennessee (established
in connection with the TennesseeValley Authority) and Salzgitter, Germany
(established in connection with the Hermann-Göring-Werke, an arma-
ments factory).
