ABSTRACT
The cities of classical and pre-modern Europe developed as centres of civilisation and urbanity; sites for the generation of cultural, social, intellectual and political capital (see Madanipour, 2003). As edifi ces of human achievement they offered both real and symbolic distinction from the perceived chaos of untamed nature that held sway beyond the city walls, whilst the citizens enjoyed a way of life deemed far superior to that of the rustic, unenlightened and ever-toiling peasantry. As mentioned in Chapter 6, in much of Western Europe this characterisation of the city continued into modern times, but this was not the case in Britain. Here the concentrated industrialisation that distinguished the nineteenth century gave rise to a vision of the city as a smoke-fi lled, tumultuous and festering place, teeming with an underworld of criminals and vagabonds: a vision reproduced in the imaginings of literary fi gures such as Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Gaskell.
