ABSTRACT
The main purpose of this book has been to illustrate that the modernization of the city contributed to a new self-consciousness about urban civilization. The public health movement had made the first and most lasting contribution to the raising of that consciousness. Problems of dirt, disease, pollution and mortality were pressed home in Chadwick’s Blue Books and taken up with dedication and a sense of mission by a new breed of professionals, Medical Officers of Health, Borough Surveyors and Engineers, Inspectors of Nuisances, men who were to do the ground-work for the evolution of a municipal civil service in all large cities. But the next step beyond public health, the social and cultural response to mass urbanization, required above all things, imagination; the ability to transcend the ugly facts and to work towards a vision of a future civilization which would bring greater happiness to a greater number.
