City maps and town plans. Statistical maps of population density and the building plan of 19th century Berlin.

Abstract

The paper presented parts of a chapter of my PhD research into the notion of the plan in late 19th and early 20th century Germany. In this presentation I was particularly interested in the paper plan as a medium and cultural technique that established a unique way of visualizing, theorizing, and managing the city. In the paper I explored the connection between the cartographic depiction and conception of Berlin in statistics, and speculated about the coherence between the formation of the city in statistical maps and techniques for its transformation by means of building plans in the late 19th century. I discussed the positions of Georg Mayr, director of the Royal Bavarian Statistical Office, and Hermann Schwabe, director of the Statistics Office of the City of Berlin, on visual representations of statistical data and presented their conceptions of the connection between visualization, view, and imagination. I did show their conviction in the coherence between seeing and knowing, and how that was understood and constructed. I then speculated on the relation between the first statistical maps of population density, edited by the statistics office from 1869 to 1875, and the building plan for the municipalities outside of Berlin, passed in 1892 by the Royal Government. I proposed that these statistical maps can be understood as a prerequisite for imagining building classes of different building density, and for areas of different conditions for industry, public health, and housing; consequently for a plan that established separate areas for the new graded building bye-laws.