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The publication of l’Histoire de l’urbanisme, encompassing the entire 20th century, together with the relations that Pierre Lavedan developed with town planners provide an exceptional terrain to identify the various approaches adopted by this historian regarding planning and development. Over the period from the 1920s to the 1950s, the vision of the relationship that this historian maintained with urban architects and town planners was overturned. While the first Lavedan was an admirer of the artist, responsible for collecting and evaluating forms, styles and heritage, the second was more directive, giving pro-active guidance of which architects were expected to become the ‘executors’. Woven into this historian’s treatise, there are visions of town planning which had since since become obsolete but which had the effect of inhibiting the appropriation of Lavedan’s work by urban historians who began publishing their works in the 1970s.