Eighteenth-century England was not merely ‘polite and commercial’; it was also notoriously competitive. This article argues that competition and contrast were not confined to weighing up the comparative status and achievements of individuals but were also fundamental to the development of civic consciousness and identity. Contemporaries developed a wide, comparative frame of reference which encouraged a heightened sense of competition with rival urban centres. However, this process also encouraged elements within urban society to define themselves in opposition to rival ‘communities’ within their own walls.

By 1974, northern England had become one of Europe's most urbanized areas, though it had very few towns in 1500. However, the dense population of the industrial regions lived in towns which were unusually crowded together and which had not developed conventional hierarchical structures. No dominant northern metropolis ever emerged, and this unusual urban system displayed intense rivalry at all levels. Was this coincidental, or can it help explain the region's nineteenth-century dynamism?

The criticisms of the early nineteenth-century metropolitan water supply by contemporary interest groups have been largely accepted by present day historians. This article argues that these criticisms were undeserved. It is argued that the London water companies provided an adequate amount of water; charged reasonable prices, given their large capital investments; and that, although the quality of water may have been poor compared to modern standards, it was far purer than sometimes supposed.

This article discusses the relationship between company towns and peripheral cities by looking at the evolution of two Chilean towns between 1917 and the 1940s. It argues that the construction and the regulations of company towns created acute social conflicts and economic contradictions in urban settlements located in the periphery. It also analyses how the periphery both challenged the hegemonic dreams of planned communities and became a safety valve to release tensions from the camps.

Immigration adaptation and race relations in the United States began receiving a great deal of scholarly attention early in the twentieth century, primarily in response to the arrival of large numbers of newcomers from eastern and southern Europe. The pre-eminent theory has been sociologist Robert Park's (1950) ‘race relations’ cycle, which posits that immigrants and racial minorities initially clashed with natives over cultural values and norms, but over time, adapt and are eventually absorbed into the mainstream society. This four-part cycle of contact, competition, accommodation and assimilation, according to Park, is ‘progressive and irreversible’. Unlike European Americans, however, the Chinese American experience in the United States has never been a consistent trajectory toward progressive and irreversible acceptance and assimilation.