1. Building bridges; 2. The idea of progress; 3. Surveying the city; 4. Writing and picturing the city; 5. Improving streets; 6. Public spaces - practised places; 7. Building suburbia; 8. Consuming suburbia; 9. Mansion flats and model dwellings; 10. Geographies of downtown: office spaces; 11. Geographies of downtown: the place of shopping; 12. Networked cities.
This book explores what made cities 'modern' in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Richard Dennis is Reader in the Department of Geography, UCL. He is associate editor of the Journal of Urban History and the author of English Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century: A Social Geography (1984).
'… a very erudite and incisive piece of work, which draws strength
from the rich and diverse research that informs it. It expertly
negotiates and synthesizes work within architectural history,
geography, building, cultural and feminist studies, sociology,
business, and finance, creating an accessible, engaging, and
informative work, of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars,
researchers, and students.' H-HistGeog
'With its subtle argumentation and rich use of sources, Cities in
Modernity is sure to be of interest to students and specialists of
urban history, geography, and culture, and will undoubtedly become
an essential reference for those interested in the tensions and
contradictions that make urban modernity so pervasive an object of
inquiry.' Nicolas Kenny, H-Urban
'By using the lives of characters from well-known novels, Dennis is
able to contextualize his study with the experience of urban life
across ninety years. This is an impressive addition to works on the
nature of urban communities, and useful for historians of the
city.' Urban History
'Dennis' important book is a bridge that allows urban scholars
segregated by academic disciplines to journey to new destinations.'
Reviews in History
'The book is brimming with insights and connections drawn across
time and space … This book truly melds technology and culture. It
deserves the attention of all scholars interested in how the modern
city came to be … Cities in Modernity provides both a critical
model and a prime example of the essentially interrelated nature of
both aspects of the modern city.' Project Muse
'Dozens of illustrations from the period help bring the relatively
distant era alive for the reader, and the voluminous footnotes both
attest to Dennis's detailed research and, frequently, offer
additional insights.' American Society of Civil Engineers
' … the range of this book creates the possibility for such debates
over the fences which separate our proliferating disciplinary
specialisms. Dennis's work will instruct and provoke in equal
measure, and is set to become a key reference for students of
modern urban history in Britain and North America.' American
Historical Review
' … leans upon concepts embedded in studies of urban form and has
much to offer readers interested in the cultural manufacture of
urban space. Expertly researched and drawing on a variety of source
materials, there is much for scholars of urban and cultural
studies, geography, and history to take from this book. Dennis
should be congratulated for composing a clear and lively account of
spatial production, consumption and improvement.' Urban
Morphology
It is a synthetic work that will seem familiar and yet still
fascinating to scholars of the nineteenth-century city. The book is
built upon the work of several decades of historians, geographers,
literary critics and art historians who have explored diverse
aspects of metropolitan modernity … Dennis does not stray too far
afield from the principal avenues of bourgeois London and its
environs. he does, however, consider how class, gender and, to a
lesser extent, race shaped the architecture and representation of
the metropolis.' The London Journal
'… an ambitious work in the way it offers a highly nuanced reading
of the complexities of modernist urban geographies … That Cities in
Modernity attends to both the modernist and realist artistic
traditions is pleasing for it rearticulates the continuities, and
not just the changes, of the period.' H-Net Reviews
'Richard Dennis's book addresses the modern city through the eyes
of fictional urbanites, in various novels of the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries … The book contains an interesting
discussion of the human-scale experience of technology … This is an
impressive additiion to works on the nature of urban communities,
and useful for historians of the city.' Urban History
'Cities in Modernity constitutes not only a much welcomed addition
to a body of literature whose growth has been less vigorous than
other geographic subdisciplines … [the book] is valuable,
necessary, and probablyu canonical' I've already assigned it to my
students. Phillip Gordon Mackintosh, Journal of Historical
Geography
'As it stands, the book is remarkable for its breadth as well as
depth. it will attract a wide readership, especially from those
interested in geography, urban history, cultural, leisre and urban
studies.' Planning Perspectives
'Cities in Modernity remains a formidable accomplishment; it should
encourage further efforts to position Canadian urban development
within a global historical context.' The Canadian Historical
Review
'… the book is remarkable … for its breadth as well as depth, and
it should attract a wide readership, especially from geography,
urban history, cultural, leisure and urban studies.' British
Journal of Canadian Studies
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