ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book discusses the common themes that bind ten Urban Histories of Science together and discusses the potential but also the limits of the concept "periphery." It tries to show how other categories of analysis such as modernities, nationalisms, and agencies may help to unfold the thematic richness of case studies. The book is also teeming with animals. It presents a whole set of different urban modernities focusing on the urban history of science, technology, and medicine (STM). Nearly each case in this book tells a different story of this triangle between STM, the urban space, and the rise of nationalism in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, often with the tension between the strong impulse to reform and the increasing awareness of the historical value of urban structures.
