ABSTRACT
This chapter investigates the related narratives of catastrophe and urban improvement through the early American town. It explores how enlightenment urban planning and the catastrophic character of the colonial environment combined in this setting, which by the 1750s was receiving praise by contemporaries as one of the ‘genteelest’ townscapes in America. With urban governments of the enlightened male middling sorts and elites behind most of developments, the idea that the civic was indeed civilizing would become received wisdom on a wider scale than ever before. The contingency of the situation is further emphasized by recent work on the eighteenth-century British experience of urban improvement. Looking at the relationship between enlightenment, catastrophe and the built environment on the British Atlantic periphery is useful on a number of levels if we are seeking to untangle the relationship between these variables in the European (and especially English-speaking) town.
