1st Edition

New Approaches to Governance and Rule in Urban Europe Since 1500

Edited By Simon Gunn, Tom Hulme Copyright 2020
    304 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    304 Pages 14 B/W Illustrations
    by Routledge

    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.

    Introduction: Unravelling Urban Governance

    Simon Gunn and Tom Hulme

    Part I: Elites, Institutions, and Civil Society

    1. Reassessing Power and Governance in Late Medieval Cities: Institutions and the Cursus Honorum

    Justin Colson

    2. Urban Governance and Prison Building in Pre-Famine Ireland, 1820–1845

    Richard J. Butler

    3. Governing Taste: Fin-de-SieÌcle Cracow, Its Museums and the Urban Elite in the Shaping of the Modern Metropolis

    Markian Prokopovych

    Part II: Behaviour and the Governing of Morality

    4. Governing Sexuality: Regulating Prostitution in Early Modern Europe

    Marion Pluskota

    5. Negotiating Urban Governance: Norm Entrepreneurs in Dutch Cities, 1850–1900

    Stefan Couperus and Dirk Jan Wolffram

    Part III: Urban Rituals and the Performance of Power

    6. The St Francis Housing Project: Rituals, Symbols and Discourses in Housing Policies in Rome After the Second World War

    Bruno Bonomo

    7. Post-War Urban Pageants in Finland: Performance, Participation and Power

    Tanja Vahtikari

    Part IV: Governmentality and the State

    8. The Foundation of St Petersburg as a Variation upon Foucault’s Governmentality: The Russian Service City, 1703–1740

    Gayle Lonergan and Kuzma Kukushkin

    9. Urban Materialities: Citizenship, Public Housing and Governance in Modern Britain

    Tom Hulme

    10. "A Community Not Our Own": Urban Enclosure and Spatial Governmentality Under Fascism

    Álvaro Sevilla-Buitrago

    Part V: Beyond Foucault: New Narratives for Urban Governance

    11. Urban Individuality and Urban Governance in Twentieth-Century Europe

    Moritz Föllmer

    12. Heterodoxies: New Approaches to Power and Agency in the Modern City

    Simon Gunn

    Biography

    Simon Gunn is Professor of Urban History at the University of Leicester.

    Tom Hulme is Lecturer in the School of Anthropology, History, Philosophy and Politics at Queens University, Belfast.