Introduction

Abstract

The concern with urban matters has long been a feature of social commentary in Britain. In the nineteenth century the scale and pace of urbanisation was tremendous. Bustling towns seemed to grow over green fields and quite market towns were transformed into major cities. In the course of only a few Victorian decades the predominantly agricultural landscape was studded with coke-towns and a predominantly rural population became city dwellers. For some, the urban transformation was something to be feared as the city became a symbol of the breakdown in traditional social order. The fear of social unrest, the problems of drunkenness, vice and disease in the poor city areas were all seen as symptoms of a moral and social collapse. For others, the city became a kind of early social science laboratory in which the facts of social existence were noted and recorded. While the Livingstones were in Africa, the Booths and Mayhews were exploring darkest London. For yet others the city became the symbol of a new order. Urban industrial life according to Marx and Engels saved people from rural idiocy and gave workers an indication and experience of collective struggle; the city was the womb of a new, better society.