City Planning as an act of communication: Theodora Kimball Hubbard and the Harvard Landscape Architecture School Library

Abstract

The librarian Theodora Kimball (1887-1935) was one of the key figures in the institutionalization of urban planning in the United States. She contributed to the advancement of professionalism of planning by establishing criteria to rationalize the amalgam of knowledge and experiences that were taking place, favouring the formation of a specific literature that would allow a greater presence in the academic and professional fields. Her work in the library of the Landscape School of Harvard University was one of the leading American node in the international network of knowledge through which flowed the key issues of urban debate period as technician training, dissemination of knowledge and citizen participation, the emergence of zoning as a tool for control of urban development versus positive nature of city planning and landscape architecture step from regional planning.