History 255 - Top: City Life, 1750-1950

'Our age is pre-eminently the age of great cities,' wrote Robert Vaughan in 1843. Many Europeans questioned whether the greatness of cities was such a good thing, but most agreed that the history of nineteenth-century Europe could not be written without reference to them. We will examine that history from the perspective of Europe's largest cities between the mid-eighteenth and twentieth centuries. Taking greatness in its broadest sense, our readings will treat both the feats of urban transformation and the murkier histories of streets, sewers, sex, and slums. We will learn of the unruliness of cities and of their being ruled through government, social reformers, planners, and engineers.'