Neglected Gems of Urban History

You know how Breitbart carries stories with captions like “The Democrats’ Five Steps to Socialism”? Or how the New York Times regularly updates its count of “The Whoppers that Trump Tells”? Well, herewith is my “Seven Neglected Gems in Urban History.” I’m hopeful it, too, will go viral.

The inspiration, if such it was, came while writing a book on the Urban Question, by which I mean ‘why cities matter.’ I finally got around to reading some works that I really should have tackled long ago (Richard Wade on slavery). I was inspired anew by some books that I hadn’t looked at in ages (Jonathan Raban’s Soft City). And I was disappointed by others that I had once revered (notably Mumford’s City in History). But what struck me most is the number of works – articles and books – that I found inspiring but which don’t seem to get much attention these days. I say ‘seem’ because, after all, I don’t read everything that urban historians write. (Who does?) And so my list not only reflects my tastes but also my biases in terms of period, place, and topic. Perhaps the gaps in this selection will inspire others to chip in.

Authors can be neglected for a variety of reasons. Perhaps their main subjects or periods were quite narrow, and so seem irrelevant to the rest of us who, after all, feel our own pressures to specialize. Or perhaps their area of interest has become unfashionable; maybe it was never popular. But I believe that, because in one way or another the following seven (plus a few others I have added in counterpoint) speak to the urban question, we should listen.

Eric E. Lampard. 1983. The nature of urbanization. In Derek Fraser and Anthony Sutcliffe, eds. The Pursuit of Urban History. London: Arnold, pp. 1-53.

Eric Lampard is the obvious place to start. For two generations, Lampard told urban historians that cities mattered especially, but not only, in economic terms. He also exhorted us to think more about the matter. Everyone listened politely and then, it seems, went about their business. Part of the problem was that Lampard was an economic historian, and few of us, then or now, have been seriously interested in the internal workings of the urban economy. The other part was that most of us have been reluctant to think in a general way – a social scientist might say ‘in theoretical terms’ – about urbanization. But Lampard suggested that we should.