The Belt and Road Initiative, launched in 2013 by China, has been described as the biggest development plan in history. However, the Initiative is part of a longer history of state-led, multilateral project since World War II. This session will revisit them and question the ways in which the dynamics of multilateral cooperation resulted in architecture and urbanisation at multiple scales. Possible topics include the Chinese-financed and built Uhuru Railway linking Tanzania and Zambia (1970-75) as well as the coordinated, multilateral technical assistance granted to Cuba, Chile, Mongolia, and Vietnam by socialist countries, and to Afghanistan (1960s) by countries across Cold War divisions. Papers also may address the management of multilateral cooperation and technical assistance by international organisations, such as UNESCO, and the European Development Fund (since 1957). We are particularly interested in collaboration within the Comecon, or the Council of Mutual Economic Assistance, and its multilateral coordination of architecture, planning, construction, and construction material industries in socialist countries. The latter straddled many scales and materialities, from large-scale projects such as the Druzhba pipeline, linking the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites, to attempts at the unification of architectural norms, building regulations, and industrial standards in Comecon countries.

While in the recent years scholars have given much attention to architectural cooperation during the Cold War, most of these studies have been focused on bilateral relations, including continuities in architectural mobilities since the colonial period (Western Europe) and the emergence of new actors (USA, Eastern Europe, Israel, China). The study on multilateral cooperation not only advances this scholarship but also allows to reconceptualise its terms. In particular, the focus on more than two actors facilitates a move beyond the dichotomies between dispatcher and receiver, centre and periphery, the foreign and the local. Instead, it foregrounds questions of collaboration, coordination, and the division of labour, including the changing power dynamics such questions entail. Because of the often prolonged character of these engagements, they pose questions about learning processes, feed-back loops, and the incorporation of gained experience into new projects. Because of their large scale, multilateral projects facilitate comparison between the specific ways in which strategic objectives were implemented and modified by various actors and the effects of these initiatives in diverse geographic locations.

Lukasz Stanek, The University of Manchester
Richard Anderson, The University of Edinburgh

Contact : Lukasz Stanek, Email : [email protected]