Urban microcosms are small-scale communal spaces that are integral to, or integrated into, city life. Some, such as railway stations or department stores, are typically located in city centres. Others, such as parks, are less quintessentially metropolitan, whilst harbours or beaches are often located on the peripheries of cities or outside them altogether. All are part of a network of nodes establishing connections in and beyond the city. Together, they shape and inflect the infrastructure of modern life. By introducing the concept of urban microcosm into social, cultural, and literary studies, this interdisciplinary volume challenges the widely held assumption that city life is evenly spread across its spaces. Sixteen case studies focus on selected urban microcosms from across Europe between 1789 and 1940, and examine the external appearance, representation, histories, and internal rules of these organizational structures and facilities. In so doing, they contribute to an understanding of modernity, and of the impact of the dynamics of urban life on human experience and intersubjectivity. Margit Dirscherl is Lecturer in German at St Hugh's, University of Oxford. Astrid Köhler is Professor of German Literature and Comparative Cultural Studies at Queen Mary University of London.

John Breuilly brings together a distinguished group of international scholars to examine Germany's history from 1780 to 1918, featuring chapters on economic, demographic and social as well as cultural and intellectual history. There are also chapters on political and military history covering the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, the post-Napoleonic period, the revolutions of 1848-1849, the unification of Germany, Bismarckian Germany and Wilhelmine Germany, and Germany during the First World War. This new edition, which retains the helpful further reading suggestions for each chapter and a chronology, has been completely updated to take account of recent historiography. The statistical data has been expanded, more maps and images have been introduced, and there are two new chapters on transnational approaches and gender history. Finally, the editor has added a conclusion which reflects on the key developments in the history of Germany over the “long nineteenth century”. Providing clear surveys of the central events and developments and addressing major debates amongst historians, Nineteenth-Century Germany is vital reading for all those wishing to understand this crucial period in modern German history.

Why have so many central and inner cities in Europe, North America and Australia been so radically revamped in the last three decades, converting urban decay into new chic? Will the process continue in the twenty-first century or has it ended? What does this mean for the people who live there? Can they do anything about it? This book challenges conventional wisdom, which holds gentrification to be the simple outcome of new middle-class tastes and a demand for urban living. It reveals gentrification as part of a much larger shift in the political economy and culture of the late twentieth century. Documenting in gritty detail the conflicts that gentrification brings to the new urban 'frontiers', the author explores the interconnections of urban policy, patterns of investment, eviction, and homelessness. The failure of liberal urban policy and the end of the 1980s financial boom have made the end-of-the-century city a darker and more dangerous place. Public policy and the private market are conspiring against minorities, working people, the poor, and the homeless as never before. In the emerging revanchist city, gentrification has become part of this policy of revenge.

In nineteenth-century Paris, passionate involvement with revolution turned the city into an engrossing object of cultural speculation. For writers caught between an explosive past and a bewildering future, revolution offered a virtuoso metaphor by which the city could be known and a vital principle through which it could be portrayed. In this engaging book, Priscilla Ferguson locates the originality and modernity of nineteenth-century French literature in the intersection of the city with revolution. A cultural geography, Paris as Revolution "reads" the nineteenth-century city not in literary works alone but across a broad spectrum of urban icons and narratives. Ferguson moves easily between literary and cultural history and between semiotic and sociological analysis to underscore the movement and change that fueled the powerful narratives defining the century, the city, and their literature. In her understanding and reconstruction of the guidebooks of Mercier, Hugo, Vallès, and others, alongside the novels of Flaubert, Hugo, Vallès, and Zola, Ferguson reveals that these works are themselves revolutionary performances, ones that challenged the modernizing city even as they transcribed its emergence. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1994.

The experience of modernization -- the dizzying social changes that swept millions of people into the capitalist world -- and modernism in art, literature and architecture are brilliantly integrated in this account.

Cities are both real and imaginary places whose identity is dependent on their distinctive heritage: a network of historically transmitted cultural resources. The essays in this volume, which originate from a lecture series at the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, explore the complex and multi-layered identities of European cities. Themes that run through the essays include: nostalgia for a grander past; location between Eastern and Western ideologies, religions and cultures; and the fluidity and palimpsest quality of city identity. Not only does the book provide different thematic angles and a variety of approaches to the investigation of city identity, it also emphasizes the importance of diverse cultural components. The essays presented here discuss cultural forms as various as music, architecture, literature, journalism, philosophy, television, film, myths, urban planning and the naming of streets.

Social Theory and the Urban Question offers a guide to, and a critical evaluation of key themes in contemporary urban social theory, as well as a re-examination of more traditional approaches in the light of recent developments and criticism. Dr Saunders discusses current theoretical positions in the context of the work of Marx, Weber and Durkheim. He suggests that later writers have often misunderstood or ignored the arguments of these 'founding fathers' of the urban question. Dr Saunders uses his final chapter to apply the lessons learned from a review of their work in order to develop a new framework for urban social and political analysis. This book was first published in 1981.

A social history of cosmopolitanism in Southeast Asia's ethnically diverse port cities, seen within the global context of the interwar era.

The work of Henri Lefebvre - the only major French intellectual of the post-war period to give extensive consideration to the city and urban life - received considerable attention among both academics and practitioners of the built environment following the publication in English of The Production of Space. This new collection brings together, for the first time in English, Lefebvre's reflections on the city and urban life written over a span of some twenty years. The selection of writings is contextualized by an introduction - itself a significant contribution to the interpretation of Henri Lefebvre's work - which places the material within the context of Lefebvre's intellectual and political life and times and raises pertinent issues as to their relevance for contemporary debates over such questions as the nature of urban reality, the production of space and modernity. Writings on Cities is of particular relevance to architects, planners, geographers, and those interested in the philosophical and political understanding of contemporary life.

The past - ecological background; Ecological perspectives; Land, nature and people; Life conditions and biopsychic state in early Hong Kong; The present - Hong Kong in the 1970s; Conceptual framework; Modern Hong Kong - an overview; Extrasomatic energy; Energy in the Hong Kong food system; Nutrients and water supply in Hong Kong; The built environment and transportation; The population; Material aspects of human experience; Social relationships and some important intangibles; Behavioural aspects of human experience; Environment, life style and health: problems and principles; The future - human ecological imperatives; The future of urban settlements; Life conditions check list; Common behavioural tendencies; Biosocial survey.