Civil society and British cities

In March 1967 an elegant and powerful argument was set out in a conference paper in Bloomington, Indiana. This paper was saturated with ideas about the city and urban relationships. The argument, underpinned by sources both historical and literary, genuinely deserves the accolade of 'seminal'. Entitled 'Slums and Suburbs', the paper developed a significance far beyond the simplicity of the title, concerned as it was not just with housing but with the inner dynamics of Victorian capitalism. ¹ The argument owed much to David Reeder; the stylistic elegance owed much to Jim Dyos. Their credo was that towns and cities themselves added an extra dimension to social and economic relationships, a view subsequently expressed by Fernand Braudel:

Towns are like electrical transformers. They increase tension, accelerate the rhythm of exchange and ceaselessly stir up men's lives. ²

In its published form, explicitly and subliminally, the paper informs much of the current scholarship about towns and cities. Its analysis not only affected a generation of urban historians, some of whom have contributed to this volume, but also informed the agenda for social history in Britain, then still in its infancy. ³