ABSTRACT
The main focus of this series has been the social relations of technology as exhibited in the physical form and fabric of towns and cities. In this chapter we will look at a particular dimension of those relations – the interaction of technology with some aspects of the governance of cities. Both the nature of urban government and the way that technology was involved in it changed considerably from the late nineteenth century onwards. The technological ‘networking’ of cities during the nineteenth century raised issues about whether and how city authorities should be involved with technologies. At the same time, US cities adopted a new attitude towards government, becoming more active providers of services instead of passive regulators (Monkkonen, 1988, chapter 9; Tarr, 1989). In some cases, technologies were deployed as part of this process; in others, the process affected technology, or technology to some extent stimulated the process. For example, the technologies of street lighting and fire-fighting became essential tools of city governance, while the development of large-scale, networked transport and utilities infrastructures in the nineteenth century involved city authorities in making numerous, incremental decisions that amounted to what might be seen as piecemeal planning. The emergence of the modern planning movement in the twentieth century was to some extent stimulated by these earlier approaches. Modern planning then became part of the sphere of government, and part of the context within which decisions about urban technologies were made. Planners, in turn, were strongly influenced by the technologies that were available to them.
