How many cities is Pan-America made with? Political-urban Dimensions of the Bulletins of the Pan American Union

Abstract

This article intends to discuss the importance of the urban and the cities in the political projects of continental integration led by the Pan American Union. The analysis of some editions of the Bulletins of the Pan American Union and the historiography dedicated to Pan Americanism aims to underline the metonymic relationship between American nations and their cities. The holding of a series of congresses and conferences indicates how the institution, based in Washington D.C., brought together disciplines and practices in favor of mapping and cataloging the different traditions identified in the continent, appeased by the ideal of cooperation and the rhetoric of American solidarity. This conciliation was operated through liberalism, an assumption for Pan-Americanist practices, to which one is establish a critique. In the midst of this plot, architecture and architects occupied a privileged place and formulated professional perspectives that made use of this inter-American project to establish a network and guarantee the permanent debate of American cities within the scope of the Pan-American Congresses of Architects.