The spatial translations of theories and policies of decentralization, in the 20th Century
Résumé
“The two sister arts of Agriculture and Industry were not always so estranged from one another as they are now. There was a time, and that time is not so far back, when both were thoroughly combined”, explained P. Kropotkin in Fields, factories and workshops. “But then came the water-motors, steam, the development of machinery, and they broke the link which formerly connected the farm with the workshop.” According to Kropotkin, such a development was at the origin of the misery he could observe at the end of the 19th Century, in the urban as well as in the rural world. The solution, according to him, was the “industrial village”, so “the scattering of industries over the country” in such a way that industry and agriculture would be combined again. It wasn’t only a spatial remedy to the problem, it was mainly a economic solution in order to fight against the centralization of capital in the hands of just a few.
Beginning of the 20th Century, this observation was shared by many advocates of decentralization in the United States (as the members of the Regional Planning Association of America). According to them, electricity, telephone, automobile, opened up new horizons for such a reorganization of the various activities on the ground.