20151013 - urban development, 19th century

Thomas Hall.
 Planning Europe's Capital Cities: Aspects of Nineteenth Century Urban Development.

Reviewed by Erik C. Maiershofer (University of California, San Diego)
Published on H-Urban (February, 1999)

The nineteenth century in Europe was marked by the tremendous growth of cities, in terms of both population and area. The forces behind this growth are familiar to urban historians of Europe: the industrial revolution, population growth, and the expansion of the market economy. In the face of these demographic pressures upon urban infrastructure, city officials attempted to manage and regulate the growth of their cities so as to maintain political, social, and aesthetic order. The state or empire often took a keen interest in the case of capital cities, given their prominent position on the national and international stage. The planning that developed during the nineteenth century led to a transformation of many European cities, extending the boundaries of their territories, eliminating walls and fortifications, and providing more open space for urban dwellers. It is perhaps reasonable to believe that the transformation of these cities varied from city to city, but relatively little work has been done comparing the planning projects that took place in these cities during the nineteenth century, and certainly little to the breadth that Thomas Hall undertakes in his book Planning Europe's Capital Cities: Aspects of Nineteenth Century Urban Development. Hall, a professor of Art History at the University of Stockholm, Sweden, takes a selective look at a number of nineteenth-century European capital cities in order to compare the nature of the "major planning projects" in these cities, primarily in the period from 1850 to 1875.

 http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=2752

 http://econews.com.au/27978/un-sustainable-urban-development-good-for-economy/