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Urban Transformation

A Note on the Objects of Street Improvement in Regency and Early Victorian London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 December 2008

H. J. Dyos
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The gradual acceptance by politically influential people of the belief that deliberate control of town growth was both feasible and fruitful is a theme in the history of town planning which has many aspects. The transformation of nineteenth century cities by means of street improvement was one of these; and Mr. David Pinkney has recently made a mature assessment of the range of motives underlying the sweeping changes wrought in the configuration of Parisian streets under the Second Empire. By contrast with Paris under the prefecture of Baron Haussmann, the transformation of London was tentative, not to say hesitating, and not undertaken for all the same reasons. In Paris, Mr. Pinkney has shown that political and strategic aims were mixed with desires for aesthetic and social amelioration. “In London”, Napoleon III is reported as saying, “they are concerned only with giving the best possible satisfaction to the needs of traffic.” But were they? It is the purpose of this brief note to comment on the validity of this assertion, and in doing so to illustrate an early approach to matters of urban improvement which are still at the heart of some contemporary town-planning problems.

Type
Research Article
Information
International Review of Social History , Volume 2 , Issue 2 , August 1957 , pp. 259 - 265
Copyright
Copyright © Internationaal Instituut voor Sociale Geschiedenis 1957

References

page 259 note 1 Pinkney, David H., Napoleon III's Transformation of Paris: the Origins and Development of the Idea, in: Journal of Modern History, xxvii (1955), pp. 125–134.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 260 note 1 His four reports were reprinted in British Parliamentary Papers, 1812 (274), xii.

page 260 note 2 First Report, H. M. Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, British Parliamentary Papers, 1812 (357), xii, pp. 9–12.

page 260 note 3 Second Report, H. M. Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, British Parliamentary Papers, 1816 (147), xv, pp. 122–123.

page 261 note 1 First Report, R. C. on Metropolis Improvements, British Parliamentary Papers, 1844 (15), xv, p. 5.

page 261 note 2 Summerson, J., Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830, London 1953, p. 299.Google Scholar

page 261 note 3 First Report, H. M. Commissioners of Woods, Forests, and Land Revenues, 1812, loc. cit., p. 89.

page 261 note 4 J. Elmes, Metropolitan Improvements; or London in the Nineteenth century, London 1828, pp. 1–2.

page 262 note 1 Report, S. C. (H. C.) on Metropolis Improvements, British Parliamentary Papers, 1836, xx, QQ. 8, 20.

page 262 note 2 Ibid., QQ. 21, 285.

page 262 note 3 Ibid., Q. 375.

page 262 note 4 Second Report, S. C. (H. C.) on Metropolis Improvements, British Parliamentary Papers, 1837–8, xvi, p. iii.

page 262 note 5 Ibid., vii.

page 263 note 1 Ibid., viii.

page 263 note 2 This was a formative stage in the financial development of public works of this kind: the largest single source of income was the London Bridge Approaches Fund formed mainly from the proceeds of a duty on all coal brought into London; this was supplemented by local rates, private subscriptions, and loans raised on the security of the coal duties and of the land revenues of the Crown. Details of metropolitan improvements financed by the coal duties before 1838 may be found in Report, S.C. (H.C.) on the Coal Trade (Port of London) Bill, British Parliamentary Papers, 1837–8 (475), xv, Appendix No. 5; further details are available in Seventh Report, R.C. on Metropolis Improvements, British Parliamentary Papers, 1851(1356), xxix, Appendix.

page 263 note 3 First Report, S.C. (H.C.) on Metropolis Improvements, British Parliamentary Papers, 1840 (410), xii, p. v.

page 263 note 4 Second Report, R.C. on Metropolis Improvements, British Parliamentary Papers, 1845 (348), xvii, QQ. 31, 40. Pennethorne continued to have an eye for this type of street improvement: some of his suggestions in the Covent Garden improvement, for example, were aimed primarily at slum clearance: Seventh Report, R.C. on Metropolis Improvements, 1851, loc. cit., p. 5.

page 264 note 1 Ibid., p. iv.

page 264 note 2 Metropolitan railways, it is worth adding, were also regarded in this role: see Dyos, H. J., Railways and Housing in Victorian London, in: Journal of Transport History, ii (1955)Google Scholar, Nos. I and 2, pp. 11–21, 90–100.

page 264 note 3 Chapman, Brian, Baron Haussmann and the Planning of Paris, in: Town Planning Review, xxiv (1953–1954), p. 191Google Scholar; and S. E. Rasmussen, London, The Unique City, 2nd ed., London 1948, pp. 134–135. Cf. Dyos, , loc. cit., passim, and Some Social Costs of Railway Building in London, in: Journal of Transport History, iii (1957), pp. 25–30.Google Scholar

page 264 note 4 See Pinkney, David H., Money and Politics in the Rebuilding of Paris, 1860–1870, in: Journal of Economic History, xvii (1957), pp. 45–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Chapman, loc. cit., pp. 189–90.

page 265 note 1 [Unsigned] The Financial Question of the Works in Paris, in: The Builder, xxi (1863), p. 874Google Scholar; and [Editorial] A Quarter of a Gentry of London Street Improvement,Google Scholar in: Ibid., xxiv (1866), p. 877.

page 265 note 2 The Times, 25 February 1861 (ed.).Google Scholar

page 265 note 3 See Ashworth, W., The Genesis of Modern British Town Planning, London 1954, p. 65 seq.Google Scholar

page 265 note 4 [Unsigned] The Question between London and Paris Improvements, in: The Builder, xix (1861), p. 870Google Scholar; [Editorial] A Quarter of a Century of London Street Improvement, loc. cit., pp. 898–9; Report of Meeting of Royal Institute of British Architects, 18 December 1871, in: The Builder, xxx (1872), pp. 22–24.Google Scholar

page 265 note 5 Tite, W., On the Paris Street Improvements, and their Cost, in: Journal of the Statistical Society, xxvii (1864), p. 385.Google Scholar