ABSTRACT
I want to think about the spaces of the metropolis, specifically, how the
shaping of urban environments – the landscapes and topographies of a city –
has a kind of endurance and mutability. My focus is London, specifically the
area known as the West End, during the long eighteenth century. Here I look at
the ways in which patterns of landownership and land development show how
the decisions of the past still influence the present. The modernity of these
developments has now become history. We see them as part of the past rather
than as a strand that runs from the past into the present. This viewpoint gives
urban spaces a volatility of meaning through our separation of the past and the
present. In this chapter I want to try to explore the continuities of space and
time to see how notions of modernity in country and city in the long eighteenth
century can endure. In this way I aim to begin to develop our understanding of
the porous relationship between urban and rural.1
