From Inter-American Circulation to the Recôncavo Baiano

Journals and planning ideas (1960–1980)

Abstract

This article investigates the circulation of planning ideas and typologies in Latin America between the 1960s and 1980s with emphasis on their reverberations in the Recôncavo Baiano region. Based on a comparative analysis of three specialized journals —Revista Interamericana de Planificación, Revista Aratu, and Revista Planejamento na Bahia— the study examines how modalities such as regional, integrated, urban, metropolitan, global, and social planning were disseminated, translated, and reappropriated across different territorial scales. Methodologically, the analysis privileges articles with conceptual density in which planning terms are understood as contested semantic operators in light of Conceptual History. It is argued that the Recôncavo Baiano did not function as a passive periphery but as a space of selective reception and situated reinscription, in which inter-American ideas were adjusted to agendas of industrialization, state institutionalization, and territorial reorganization. It is demonstrated that journals operated as central infrastructures of intellectual circulation articulating transnational networks, multilateral organizations, and governmental bodies. It is concluded that planning should be understood not as a unified doctrine but as a heterogeneous semantic field shaped at the intersection of international debates, local political conditions, and particular institutional practices.