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This essay examines the historical role of graphic maps and plans in the Parisian municipal bureaucracy during the nineteenth century. Maps and plans became an important means to consolidate and organize administrative activities related to the built environment. As recognition of the growing number of actors involved, laws were implemented requiring not only an image to build but requiring that they be orthographic. The emergence of orthographic images in building practices was not a consequence of the specific needs of construction per se but rather was informed by the social and political exigencies to standardize diverse practices, to coordinate a variety of actors, and to develop a centralized administrative structure to manage urban development. Yet, even with the strong motivation for conformity, maps and plans were impossible to fully standardize due to the particularities of each site. Accordingly, it was this tension that encouraged the production of ever more paperwork as the basis of an urban bureaucracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to this special section, "Cities on Paper: On the Materiality of Paper in Urban Planning," explores the vital role played by paper documents in the practice of urban planning linked to the shaping of modern cities in Europe and the United States during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This introductory essay considers recent literature on the materiality of paper to show the significance of examining the visual and written information transcribed on its surface in concert with assessing how it has been assembled, organized, reproduced, circulated, distributed, and archived. By exploring such uses of paper documents in urban planning practices, such cartography, arboriculture, maintenance, and the production and dissemination of expert knowledge, the five essays in this section demonstrate the relevance of the material culture of paper within the municipal and national bureaucracies that spearheaded dramatic urbanization campaigns in modern cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]