ABSTRACT
Around 1900 cities in Southern and Eastern Europe were persistently labeled "backward" and "delayed." Allegedly, they had no alternative but to follow the role model of the metropolises, of London, Paris or Vienna. This edited volume fundamentally questions this assumption. It shows that cities as diverse as Barcelona, Berdyansk, Budapest, Lviv, Milan, Moscow, Prague, Warsaw and Zagreb pursued their own agendas of modernization. In order to solve their pressing problems with respect to urban planning and public health, they searched for best practices abroad. The solutions they gleaned from other cities were eclectic to fit the specific needs of a given urban space and were thus often innovative. This applied urban knowledge was generated through interurban networks and multi-directional exchanges. Yet in the period around 1900, this transnational municipalism often clashed with the forging of urban and national identities, highlighting the tensions between the universal and the local.
This interurban perspective helps to overcome nationalist perspectives in historiography as well as outdated notions of "center and periphery." This volume will appeal to scholars from a large number of disciplines, including urban historians, historians of Eastern and Southern Europe, historians of science and medicine, and scholars interested in transnational connections.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part Part I|93 pages
Building a Modern City
chapter 1|25 pages
The Ghetto and the Castle
chapter 2|25 pages
In Search of Best Practices Within the Confines of the Russian Empire
chapter 4|26 pages
The Exchange of Urban Planning Theory and Practice Along the Austro-Hungarian Periphery
part Part II|56 pages
Aiming at the Healthy City
chapter 5|15 pages
Learning From Smaller Cities
chapter 6|19 pages
Best Practices From a Polish Perspective
chapter 7|20 pages
Improving Health in a Mediterranean City
part Part III|124 pages
The New Urban Space