Based on notarial and municipal sources in Madrid from the late sixteenth century to 1808, this article challenges current views of Castilian urban elites as mere reflections of noble hegemony. It assesses the implications of widespread venality of offices, as well as the real meaning of the estatuto of 1603, which formally excluded non-nobles from the city council. Ultimately, it argues that the system of preferment contributed in part to the long-term backwardness of seventeenth-century Castile.

Seventeenth-century Edo was a city built by and for the shogun. The immense concentration of power in the shogun imposed stability in the city, and this made it unnecessary for the authorities to interfere directly in the city's general administration and economic affairs. Even given the overwhelming power of the shogun, however, the city did not develop a distinct culture at that stage.

The adoption of non-traditional housing by local authorities is customarily explained in terms of economic factor shortages or a nationally determined policy discourse. This underestimates the significance of distinctly local understandings of civic responsibility. Based on Leicester and Nottingham, this article argues that those influences frequently used to predict outcomes – like party political allegiance – mattered less in decision-making than a city's intrinsic view of itself. Such perceptions were grounded in subtle constructions of civic community, perceived need and political reinterpretation. Particularly important was the role of the local press. Even cities with similar problems, therefore, could be represented, and subsequently see themselves, in very dissimilar terms and act accordingly.

The article begins by showing the differential impact of slum clearance on regions, conurbations and major cities through the three decades of the slum clearance campaign which began in 1955. It discusses the main methods of clearance procedure, the nature of compensation and the relation of clearance to ‘unfit’ housing. House condition surveys revealed an increasing mismatch between patterns of unfit housing and those of slum clearance and this began, it is argued, in the 1960s. Factors such as the development of property markets, and the rise of owner occupation, had differential economic and political effects which in turn reacted on the incidence of clearance.

The intention of this paper is to review the ways in which the role of urban elites has been examined and interpreted, and to show how the traditional concepts of social control and hegemony have required modification. The paper identifies two phases of study. The first phase was descriptive, concerned primarily with the identification and categorization of elites. The second phase, which began in the 1980s, was interactional and explored the influence of elites in inter-class relationships. The interactional role of elites is discussed in detail in relation to the exemplar of mid-nineteenth-century Manchester. The paper continues by considering the changes which elites began to undergo in the transitional conditions of the late nineteenth century. The significance of recent work is assessed and the paper concludes with some comments regarding the future direction of study on urban elites.

It seems bizarre and inappropriate that so many books dealing with African-American lives in both Southern and Northern cities pay scant attention to the music that provided their only clear political as well as cultural voice. This seems even more anomalous now that historians of slavery appreciate that the music is a vital conduit for black responses to oppression and discrimination. In the five books under review, cultural consciousness is frequently relegated to a marginal position in the attempt to define the parameters of racism in cities as diverse as Philadelphia, New York, Chicago, Detroit and Charlotte.

This year's review is slightly shorter than usual, but does provide a broad overview of the types of current research being undertaken in the field of urban history by doctoral students in Great Britain and North America. As in previous years, the survey employs a wide interpretation of ‘urban history’ which includes both the history of, and history in, urban areas. Providing brief summaries of a selection of abstracts published in the Aslib Index to Theses [ASLIB] and Dissertations Abstracts International [DAI] of theses completed mostly in 1998 and 1999, it attempts to highlight both the novel and traditional in current research.