CFP: Cold war urbanism: Histories of strategic plans, secure structures
and technocratic politics in post-war Britain and beyond
International Conference of Historical Geographers, London, 5-10 July 2015
Convenors: Richard Brook (Manchester School of Architecture) and Martin
Dodge (University of Manchester)
In this session we wish to explore how the threat of nuclear war in the
1950s and 60s affected planning at a range of geographic scales.
National and international telecommunications networks were built during
this time as a direct response to global political conditions. The rise of
atomic power and computational technologies required new facilities that
were often dispersed and situated variously for secrecy and locally
available expertise/experience. The zoning of land and organisation of
facilities and the planning of towns is not conventionally viewed as
informed by processes of the 'warfare state' (Edgerton, 2005), but we
want to ask; What were the patterns of the built environment, economic
structures and aesthetics / cultures of Cold War urbanism in Britain? As
Boyd and Linehan (2013) state in the introduction to their recent book
Ordnance: War + Architecture & Space, we need to be alert to 'escalation
in the intersections between the fabric of the landscape and the
technologies of war and the extrusion and mutation of war from the
battlefield into everyday life'. We seek papers drawing on a range of
different evidential bases, archival research, personal histories and
lived experiences and theoretical ideas to understand the spatiality of
technological development, primarily focused upon city scales and
architectural resultants.
The following is non-exhaustive list of possible themes:
+ spaces of production, testing, storage of novel military weapons
systems associated with cold war including aircraft and bombers, missiles
and submarines, radar system and satellites
+ sites associated with atomic weapons and the distinct design challenges
of keeping these safe and secure
+ civil nuclear power research and networks of production, with their
links to militarism
+ research and manufacturing facilities for advanced digital computing
technologies, programming, and data centres
+ academic research facilities associated with military funding and cold
war doctrines
+ civic spaces in cities with shelters and spaces of civilian refuge
+ developments of national telecommunications and need for hardened
facilities, underground bunkers and remote radio networks
+ bunkers for the strategic communications, military C&C and continuation
of government in the event of war
+ architectural design, materials science and electronics deployed to
counter atomic age threats
+ aesthetics of cold war urbanism, forms of visual representation of
atomic power and nuclear weapons, the cultural meanings attached to new
militarised landscapes and computerisation of society
+ development of transportation infrastructure, logistics and routing to
take account of cold war
+ overall shaping of cities, housing renewal and suburbanisation to try to
achieve population decentralisation that would reduce the risk of
annihilation of citizenry in a single blast
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Please send a title and brief abstract (of no more than 200 words) to
either of the convenors by 12 September 2014. Also, please detail if you
have any special audio-visual requirements or mobility requirements.
# Richard Brook, [log in to unmask], Manchester School of Architecture
# Martin Dodge, [log in to unmask], Department of Geography,
University of Manchester
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Further details on the ICHG Conference, including registration fees, are
available at:
http://www.ichg2015.org
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