ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects upon Michel Foucault’s theory of ‘governmentality’ and focuses upon its central point—that the introduction of technologies in Western Europe in the eighteenth century provided the basis for the freedoms and the self-government enjoyed by the cities of the region in the nineteenth century. It then proposes that the development of urban centres within the Russian empire provides a useful comparative study, which offers a divergent ‘genealogy’ to the historical experience of the cities of Western Europe. Using the foundation of the new capital of St Petersburg as a case study, it outlines the ways in which this city both resembled the other major cities of Europe and yet diverged from them. Established by Peter the Great in 1703, it was built to reflect the cameralist ideals of rational government and administration. Yet, whilst it became an iconic symbol of urban planning, the requirements of the Russian ‘service state’ impeded the development of similar models of urban governance and civil freedoms that would become the norm from London to Christiania.
