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The urban historian and the political will

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

S. G. Checkland
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Extract

At the Leicester urban history conference in 1966 there was very little discussion of the relationship between public policy and urban history. There were some points at which linkages were implied, but these arose merely incidentally. There was no attempt to adopt public policy as a general perspective on urban development. Reciprocally, the planners paid no attention to the historians: Jim Dyos remarked that the largest part of ‘research and policy making is taking place without reference to the historians’. The picture has not greatly changed over the past 14 years. There have indeed been studies in which policy, its formation and limitations, have been implicit, but few in which they have played a central part.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History Yearbook , Volume 7 , May 1980 , pp. 5 - 11
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1980

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References

1 Dyos, H. J. (ed.), The Study of Urban History (1968), 4, 5.Google Scholar

2 For useful studies in today's terms see McKay, David H. and Cox, Andrew W., The Politics of Urban Change (1979)Google Scholar; Maclennan, Duncan and Parr, John B. (eds), Regional Policy. Past Experience and New Directions (1979)Google Scholar; Cameron, Gordon C. and Wingo, Lowdon (eds), Cities, Regions and Public Policy (1973).Google Scholar

3 Skinner, G. William (ed.), The City in Late Imperial China (Stanford, Cal., 1977)Google Scholar; Elvin, Mark and Skinner, G. William (eds), The Chinese City between Two Worlds (Stanford, Cal., 1974).Google Scholar

4 See Bater, James H., St. Petersburg. Industrialisation and Change (1976).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 Buck, David D., Urban Change in China. Politics and Development in Tsinan, Shantung, 1890–1949 (Madison, Wisconsin, 1978).Google Scholar

6 See Jefferson, Mark, ‘The law of the primate city’, Geographical Review, 29 (1939).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Kindleberger, C. P., ‘The formation of financial centres. A study in corporative economic history’, Princeton Studies in International Finance, xxxvi (Princeton, 1974).Google Scholar

8 Some of the absolutist states of the Continent, especially in the German lands, had extended their paternalistic philosophy to cover the health and physical well-being of the people; Prussia had a Board of Health in 1685. There were authors who produced entire systems of communal care, pronouncing a state duty to promote well-being, uninhibited by any fear of intrusion into the liberties of the individual. But the necessary bases in medical knowledge, social data and administrative machinery were lacking. The result was that the absolutist states, in spite of their difference in philosophy, did as Britain did; namely, left the matter to local community action until well into the nineteenth century. Rosen, G., A History of Public Health (New York, 1958).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Kellett, J. R., The Impact of Railways on Victorian Cities (1969).Google Scholar

10 Kellett, J. R., ‘Municipal socialism, enterprise and trading in the Victorian city’, Urban History Yearbook (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Allan, C. M., ‘The genesis of British urban development, with special reference to Glasgow’. Economic History Review, 2nd ser., 18 (1965).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Royal Commission on the Distribution of the Industrial Population, Cmd. 6153. (HMSO 1940).Google Scholar

13 Schaffer, Frank, The New Town Story (1972)Google Scholar; Osborn, F. J. and Whittick, A., The New Towns: The answer to megalopolis (revised edn, 1969).Google Scholar