ABSTRACT

This chapter examines the changes in local economy and city governance. Landmark Leeds showed how new forms of urban governance dilute democratic inputs into the decision-making process. Over the centuries cities and towns have had continuously to reinvent themselves in order to survive: in Leeds historians record the changes from a medium-sized commercial and retailing centre in the eighteenth century to a centre for industrial manufacturing in the Victorian period. Understanding the history of the twentieth century Leeds is far more complex. Here a number of distinct periods: until around 1914, it was businesses as usual and in the inter-war period, there were aspirations for modernity which largely focused on making Leeds a more egalitarian place. The struggle for modernity took different turn in the years after the Second World War when the erosion of the city's manufacturing base and the related modifications in the social structure produced some of the changes which some now wish to claim for post-modernity.