New Approaches To Governance And Rule In Urban Europe Since 1500

Urban power and politics are topics of abiding interest for students of the city. This exciting collection of essays explores how Europe’s cities have been governed across the last 500 years. Taken as a whole, it provides a unique historical overview of urban politics in early modern and modern Europe. At the same time, it guides the reader through the variety of ways in which power and governance are currently understood by historians and new directions in the subject. The essays are wide-ranging, covering Europe from Scandinavia to the Mediterranean, Russia to Ireland, between 1500 and the twentieth century. Each chapter employs a specific case-study to illuminate a way of examining how power worked in regard to topics such as women, popular culture or urban elites. A variety of approaches are deployed, including the study of ritual and performance, morality and conduct, governmentality and the state, infrastructure and the individual. Reflecting the state of the art in European urban history, the book is essential reading for anyone interested in the study of urban politics and government. It represents a fresh take on a rich subject and will stimulate a new generation of historical studies of power and the city.

The autonomy granted to local communities (such as towns, municipalities, and city-states) by larger, central powers (such as empires, kings, lords, and central states) is a recurrent feature of European history over time, from Antiquity to the contemporary period. This volume explores the political, social, and cultural aspects of this feature in a diachronic and comparative perspective, from the Roman Empire to today's city partnerships. To this end, it uses the concept of polycentric governance. Originally developed by political economist Vincent Ostrom in the 1960s and then expanded by the 2009 winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, political scientist Elinor Ostrom, this concept characterises the interdependent system of relations between different actors involved in a process and, for that reason, it is frequently used in policy studies. This volume applies the concept of polycentric governance to historical studies as a heuristic device to analyse the multilayer systems into which cities were integrated at various points in European history, as well as the implications of the coexistence of different political structures. Fourteen chapters examine the structures, the dynamics, and the discourse of polycentric governance through various case studies from the Roman Empire, from medieval towns, from early modern Europe, and from contemporary cities. The volume suggests that for extended periods of time throughout European history, polycentric governance has played a pivotal role in the organisation and distribution of political power.

This book examines Nordic cities from 1850 and their transformation from traditional, oligarchic towns to modern, inclusive welfare cities. In the contemporary world, the role of cities as hotbeds for progressive change has become increasingly topical. Historical studies on how Nordic cities addressed social and environmental questions a hundred years ago and how they eventually created new and inclusive policies for the future is a useful contribution to the current debate. The concept of the welfare city is addressed and elaborated upon to analyse the attempts by urban authorities to solve the problems following industrialization and urbanization. From the late nineteenth century, municipal public services promoted the integration of new groups in the urban community including workers, immigrants, women and children. The contributions in this book analyse various examples of welfare and public services that include infrastructure and transport systems, health care, housing conditions, outdoor life and entertainment. The chapters highlight the arguments and considerations promoting welfare policies, while also addressing differences between the Nordic countries. The evolution of the Nordic welfare city was a process of several overlapping phases or dimensions. This volume will be of value to students and scholars alike interested in urban history, social and cultural history and European history.

The Routledge Handbook of Comparative Global Urban Studies is a timely intervention into the field of global urban studies, coming as comparison is being more widely used as a method for global urban studies, and as a number of methodological experiments and comparative research projects are being brought to fruition. It consolidates and takes forward an emerging field within urban studies and makes a positive and constructive intervention into a lively arena of current debate in urban theory. Comparative urbanism injects a welcome sense of methodological rigor and a commitment to careful evaluation of claims across different contexts, which will enhance current debates in the field. Drawing together more than 50 international scholars and practitioners, this book offers an overview of key ideas and practices in the field and extends current thinking and practice. The book is primarily intended for scholars and graduate students for whom it will provide an invaluable and up-to-date guide to current thinking across the range of disciplines which converge in the study of urbanism, including geography, sociology, political studies, planning, and urban studies.

Governance and Public Space in the Australian City is a rich and evocative examination of the production and use of public spaces in Australian cities in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Using Brisbane as a case study, it demonstrates the way public spaces were constructed, contested, and controlled in attempts to create ‘ideal’ city spaces. This construction of space is considered not just in the literal and material sense but also as a product of aspirational and imaginative processes of city-building by municipal authorities and citizens. This book is as much about people as it is about cities – uncovering the manner in which perceived models of ideal urban citizenship were reflected in the production and ordering of city spaces. This book challenges common narratives that situate public spaces as universal or equalising aspects of the urban sphere. Exploring three distinct types of public space – the streets, slums, and parks – the book questions how urban spaces functioned, alongside how they were intended to function. In so doing, Governance and Public Space in the Australian City situates public spaces as products of manipulation and regulation at odds with broader concepts of individual liberty and the ‘rights’ of people to public space. It will be illuminating reading for scholars and students of urban history and Australian history.

Around 1900 cities in Southern and Eastern Europe were persistently labeled "backward" and "delayed." Allegedly, they had no alternative but to follow the role model of the metropolises, of London, Paris or Vienna. This edited volume fundamentally questions this assumption. It shows that cities as diverse as Barcelona, Berdyansk, Budapest, Lviv, Milan, Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Zagreb pursued their own agendas of modernization. In order to solve their pressing problems with respect to urban planning and public health, they searched for best practices abroad. The solutions they gleaned from other cities were eclectic to fit the specific needs of a given urban space and were thus often innovative. This applied urban knowledge was generated through interurban networks and multi-directional exchanges. Yet in the period around 1900, this transnational municipalism often clashed with the forging of urban and national identities, highlighting the tensions between the universal and the local. This interurban perspective helps to overcome nationalist perspectives in historiography as well as outdated notions of "center and periphery." This volume will appeal to scholars from a large number of disciplines, including urban historians, historians of Eastern and Southern Europe, historians of science and medicine, and scholars interested in transnational connections.

For the first time, Early Modern Streets unites the diverse strands of scholarship on urban streets between circa 1450 and 1800 and tackles key questions on how early modern urban society was shaped and how this changed over time. Much of the lives of urban dwellers in early modern Europe were played out in city streets and squares. By exploring urban spaces in relation to themes such as politics, economies, religion, and crime, this edited collection shows that streets were not only places where people came together to work, shop, and eat, but also to fight, celebrate, show their devotion, and express their grievances. The volume brings together scholars from different backgrounds and applies new approaches and methodologies to the historical study of urban experience. In doing so, Early Modern Streets provides a comprehensive overview of one of the most dynamic fields of scholarship in early modern history. Accompanied by over 50 illustrations, Early Modern Streets is the perfect resource for all students and scholars interested in urban life in early modern Europe.