1890-1930 was a formative period in the evolution of the modern town planning movement. It was a time when the relationship between social development and the physical environment, in all its complexities, was being explored, and when the prospect of future change could run ahead of the problems of implementation. This study highlights the richness and variety of European responses to modernisation by offering a comparative approach to exploring these themes in cities in Britain, France, Germany, Spain and Central Europe. Of key importance in the development of European cities during this period was the first world war, which accelerated technological changes at the same time as inspiring both nostalgia for the past and a desire to create new ways of urban living. For large provincial cities that had grown in the 19th century, imagining a new future was the greatest challenge. What kind of understanding was necessary to promote effective new developments? How could these be implemented in the face of economic, social and political change? Who made the decisions? Answers to these questions must be drawn from a number of directions: from the political and administrative structures of nation-states; from the economic and social history of Europe; from the growth of new professional expertise in dealing with urban problems and the international exchange of ideas; from the specific histories of cities; and from the actions of individuals who were ultimately responsible for creating new possibilities.

This is a study of the physical transformation of Edinburgh in the nineteenth century.

First published in 1999, this volume explores how the cities of central Europe, among them Berlin, Budapest, Hamburg, Vienna and Prague, went through a period of phenomenal growth during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their rapid expansion and growing economic importance made citizens aware of the need to manage the fabric and culture of the urban environment, while burgeoning nationalism and the development of local and international tourism constructed cities as showcases for national and regional identity. Competing visions of how city and nation should represent themselves were advanced by different social groups, by commercial interests and by local and national political authorities. Among the developments examined in this collection of essays are the campaign for the architectural development of Hamburg; international modernism and notions of the garden city in Czechoslovakia; competition among German cities as art centres; the role of Wawel Hill in Kraków as a vehicle for Polish nationalism; tourism in Austria-Hungary; Jewish assimilation in Vienna; social control and cultural policy in Vienna; and the representation of Berlin on film. The volume is introduced by Malcolm Gee, Tim Kirk and Jill Steward who provide an historical overview which establishes a context for the exchange of ideas and competition between the cities of central Europe during this period.

Unsettling traditional understandings of housing reform as focused on the nuclear family with dependent children, Single People and Mass Housing in Germany, 1850-1930 is the first complete study of single-person mass housing in Germany and the pivotal role this class- and gender-specific building type played for over 80 years-in German architectural culture and society, the transnational Progressive reform movement, Feminist discourse, and International Modernism-and its continued relevance. Homes for unmarried men and women, or Ledigenheime, were built for nearly every powerful interest group in Germany-progressive, reactionary, and radical alike-from the mid-nineteenth century into the 1920s. Designed by both unknown craftsmen and renowned architects ranging from Peter Behrens to Bruno Taut, these homes fought unregimented lodging in overcrowded working-class dwellings while functioning as apparatuses of moral and social control. A means to societal reintegration, Ledigenheime effectively bridged the public-private divide and rewrote the rules of who was deserving of quality housing-pointing forward to the building programs of Weimar Berlin and Red Vienna, experimental housing in Soviet Russia, Feminist collectives, accommodations for postwar “guestworkers,” and even housing for the elderly today.

This interdisciplinary collection explores the relationships between women and built space in England between the 1870s and the 1940s. Historians working in cultural, literary, architectural, urban, design, labour, and social history approach the topic through case studies of often neglected organisations, individuals, practices and initiatives. Included are East End rent collectors, tenants, diarists and correspondents, the All-Europe House, the Women's Co-operative Guild, the Housewives Committee of the Council of Industrial Design, provincial and metropolitan exhibitors, and activists of varying kinds. Moving beyond the study of buildings and their designers, the volume considers the making of space in its broadest sense, from the production of discourses to the consumption of domestic appliances and the performance of roles as diverse as social reformers, committee members and homemakers. It thereby demonstrates that women made a significant contribution to the creation of modern built environments in both public and private spheres.

Fin-de-siecle Vienna has become the glorified icon of innovative modernism in the arts and letters. This detailed account of the suburban life-worlds presents a very different image, one of harsh struggles for subsistence and survival, disparities between the social classes resulting in spatial and cultural segregation."