Nineteenth-Century Urbanization as Sacred Process

2011 ◽  
Vol 37 (6) ◽  
pp. 828-841 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Steinhoff

This article examines a crucial site for modernity’s encounter with religion during the long nineteenth century, albeit one largely ignored both by religious and urban historians: the modern big city. Drawing on evidence from Strasbourg, which joined the ranks of Germany’s big cities soon after the Franco-Prussian War, it points out first, that urbanization had a significant urban dimension. It altered the absolute and relative size of the city’s faith communities, affected the confessional composition of urban neighborhoods, and prompted faith communities to mark additional parts of the urban landscape as sacred. Second, while urban growth—both demographic and physical—frequently challenged traditional understandings of religious community, it also facilitated the construction of new understandings of piety and community, especially via voluntary organizations and the religious media. Thereby, urbanization emerged as a key force behind sacralization in city and countryside as the nineteenth century ended and the twentieth began.

2015 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-35
Author(s):  
Julian Wolfreys

Writers of the early nineteenth century sought to find new ways of writing about the urban landscape when first confronted with the phenomena of London. The very nature of London's rapid growth, its unprecedented scale, and its mere difference from any other urban centre throughout the world marked it out as demanding a different register in prose and poetry. The condition of writing the city, of inventing a new writing for a new experience is explored by familiar texts of urban representation such as by Thomas De Quincey and William Wordsworth, as well as through less widely read authors such as Sarah Green, Pierce Egan, and Robert Southey, particularly his fictional Letters from England.


Author(s):  
Kory Olson

This chapter examines the 1934 Carte générale de l’aménagement de la Région parisienne (Carte générale), a brightly-coloured, multi-page representation of Paris and its suburbs. Parliament passed ‘la loi du 14 mars 1932’ which officially defined ‘la région parisienne’ geographically as the area within a thirty-five-kilometre radius from the ‘parvis Notre Dame.’ A forty-member commission chose Prost’s Carte générale and named him Urbaniste en chef. Prost’s map, the last officially approved cartographic proposal for the capital under the Third Republic recognized the changing nature of early-twentieth century cities, where the automobile enhanced personal movement and overwhelmed nineteenth-century infrastructure. Reinforcing the desire to both know and control the growing region and address current transportation infrastructure inadequacies, Prost highlights new autoroutes and clearly delineates – geographically – where the region ends. Prost acknowledged the growing presence of the banlieue (suburb). He followed Jaussely’s lead and documented future development and existing green space. Prost also suggests controlling urban growth. This chapter investigates how Henri Prost’s Carte générale demonstrates the government’s desire to move beyond the ideals of urbanism in Jaussely’s 1919 Plan. Prost provides a much more realistic plan to address the region’s needs.


Author(s):  
Matthew Vaz

While American gambling has a historical association with the lawlessness of the frontier and with the wasteful leisure practices of Southern planters, it was in large cities where American gambling first flourished as a form of mass leisure, and as a commercial enterprise of significant scale. In the urban areas of the Mid-Atlantic, the Northeast, and the upper Mid-West, for the better part of two centuries the gambling economy was deeply intertwined with municipal politics and governance, the practices of betting were a prominent feature of social life, and controversies over the presence of gambling both legal and illegal, were at the center of public debate. In New York and Chicago in particular, but also in Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Detroit, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, gambling channeled money to municipal police forces and sustained machine politics. In the eyes of reformers, gambling corrupted governance and corroded social and economic interactions. Big city gambling has changed over time, often in a manner reflecting important historical processes and transformations in economics, politics, and demographics. Yet irrespective of such change, from the onset of Northern urbanization during the 19th century, through much of the 20th century, gambling held steady as a central feature of city life and politics. From the poolrooms where recently arrived Irish New Yorkers bet on horseracing after the Civil War, to the corner stores where black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers bet on the numbers game in the 1960s, the gambling activity that covered the urban landscape produced argument and controversy, particularly with respect to drawing the line between crime and leisure, and over the question of where and to what ends the money of the gambling public should be directed.


2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (4) ◽  
pp. 495-515
Author(s):  
E. Anthony Wrigley

Historical narrative commonly involves both description and explanation. The nature of the information available to historians gives rise to problems that seldom appear in other disciplines. For example, it is not possible, given the nature of historical data, to conduct controlled experiments to resolve uncertainties concerning the cause of a given event. It is normally the case that the concept of negative and positive feedback is a more appropriate framework for this purpose than causation. Such a framework can be used in discussing the interplay of demographic behavior, urban growth, and occupational change in facilitating England’s escape from the constraints suffered by all organic economies. Comparison of the contrast in this regard between England and continental Europe helps to clarify the nature of the divergence between the island and the continent over a period of 300 years, from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-nineteenth century.


2015 ◽  
Vol 58 ◽  
pp. 109-139 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Butler

It is the aim, in this article, to identify the reasons why certain designs for courthouses in early-nineteenth-century Ireland remained unexecuted, and to do so by analysing surviving drawings and placing them in the political context at this time of Irish local government and of the efforts of Westminster politicians to institute reform. The funding and erection of courthouses were managed by grand juries, an archaic form of local government which gave few rights to smaller taxpayers and was widely perceived as an unaccountable institution associated with theancien régime. In addition to hosting court sittings, courthouses were used by these grand juries for their private meetings and functions. By exploring the agendas and pretensions of these bodies, and by looking at the fluctuating availability of funding sources that were needed to initiate building work, I will argue through a series of Irish case studies that a renewed focus on elite patronage and its associated politics allows a new insight into courthouse building, which places less emphasis than is often the case on, for example, the role played by the changing legal profession in the architectural development of the courthouse.In nineteenth-century Ireland, courthouses demarcated the visible and tangible presence in the urban landscape of the law and state-sanctioned justice. Laws passed by the Irish parliament and then, after its abolition in 1800, by the Westminster government, were enforced in assize courthouses by travelling judges on established ‘circuits’, visiting each city or county town twice a year (in the spring and summer). These judges travelled with great splendour through the countryside, and were welcomed by a high sheriff at the county border and escorted with military pageantry, ritual, and procession to their destination.


2019 ◽  
pp. 009614421987786
Author(s):  
Joe Curran

Nineteenth-century Dublin and Edinburgh were “stateless capitals”; they were no longer home to parliaments but still had many of the characteristics of a capital city. This article begins to explore the idea that the stateless capital constitutes a particular type of city. It analyses philanthropic activity to assess how middle-class life in each city was affected by their positions as stateless capitals. In particular, it examines the significance of the close interactions between central state and philanthropy that helped to shape stateless-capital status in early nineteenth-century Dublin but not Edinburgh. It argues that central state intervention in Dublin did not dampen the vibrancy of associational culture, but it did politicize philanthropy, reducing voluntary organizations’ ability to mediate social conflict. More seriously, the provision of parliamentary grants to Dublin’s charities damaged the city’s image, making it appear unable to perform basic urban functions. This was in sharp contrast to Edinburgh’s image as Scottish metropolis.


1988 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 550
Author(s):  
W. Edward Orser ◽  
David Schuyler

PMLA ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 94 (5) ◽  
pp. 876-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Javier Herrero

In the history of literature the change from the idealized worlds of the shepherd and the knight to the world of the pícaro; from arcadia and chivalry to the desolate urban landscape of misery and hunger; from romance to irony—in fact, the Copernican revolution that produced a new genre—could only have been born of an upheaval that affected men’s lives and forced educated writers to see conditions they had so far ignored. This change stemmed from an increased awareness of human misery, which the urban growth of the Renaissance had made highly visible. The genius of the Spanish author of the Lazarillo consists in his having found the literary voice for such a profound transformation of European society. The Lazarillo, of course, did not annihilate the past, but it gave artistic form to the all-pervading crisis that was destroying the basis of the traditional order.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vaiva Deveikienė

The article analyses the problem of the relationship and interaction between urban design and landscape architecture. This refers to the period of the modern city from the late nineteenth century to the present day. There are presented and discussed urbanization processes and examples of solutions with emphasis on problems arising from the relationship between a city and nature as well as those related to urban landscape and sustainability of urban landscaping in the twentieth century. Straipsnyje analizuojama urbanistikos ir kraštovaizdžio architektūros santykio ir sąveikos problema. Aprėpiamas moderniojo miesto laikotarpis – nuo XIX a. antrosios pusės iki nūdienos. Pateikiama XX a. urbanizacijos procesų ir sprendinių pavyzdžių, aptariama akcentuojant miesto santykio su gamta, želdynais, t. y. gyvo, tvaraus miesto kraštovaizdžio, formavimo problematiką.


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