Abstract

The essay begins with a methodological discussion of the concepts of technology, technology transfer, and social carriers of technology, followed by a consideration to set the context for the emergence of a scientific approach to city planning in the 1930s. An institutional framework that reflected the planning discourse was imported from Great Britain in the 1940s, and together with mass motorization, this framework paved the way for the key technical actors of the 1950s: traffic engineers.The essay then examines the process of transferring traffic engineering knowledge from America to Sweden, and shows how these new ideas combined with the institutional framework directed the city planning discourse toward a conception of a "Car City." Technology transfer was pivotal to the development, establishment, and impact of standards for parking, and these contributed to the rise of the Swedish car society.

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