Daunton M. The Cambridge Urban History of Britain, Volume 3: 1840-1950
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Alone’s in Bleak House, and the isolation and bewilderment of much urban expe-
rience by incidents like Florence Dombey’s journey through London but the
characteristic structure of a Dickens novel draws everything together. The novels
begin by outlining groups of characters who are isolated from each other whilst
the story proceeds by showing the often hidden links between each group. The
dishonesty and greed of the financier brings ruin to the hard-working artisan in
Little Dorrit and the distress of Joe, the street sweeper, brings sickness and
disfigurement to the middle-class heroine of Bleak House. Whatever grief and
disorientation intervenes, the novels of Dickens, like those of Mrs Gaskell for
the industrial towns, always restore order.
111
There was no such outcome for the
poets and novelist of the s and s. T. S. Eliot in the ‘Wasteland’ never
resolved his alienation. Rose Macaulay in The World my Wilderness retained the
bombed ruins of the late s city as the place of urban children. By the late
s, the fictions of the city were more aggressive and confident but the urban
place was a backdrop within which the characters had their experience. In Room
at the Top and Saturday Night and Sunday Morning or even A Kind of Loving, Joe
Lampton, Arthur Seaton and the rest are wrapped around by Nottingham or
Warlay and can only resolve the tensions of the novel by distancing themselves
from their urban place.
112
The search for a clear relationship between key structural features such as the
large unit of production and political cultures such as the aggressive sometimes
violent challenges to existing forms of authority was a search which tempted
both the contemporaries and historians of the middle years of the nineteenth
century. The industrial towns, the rapid growth of the regional centres like
Manchester and Leeds as well as the power and growth of London demanded
attention. The factory, the foundry, the railway network which linked all to
London were spectacular and new. The perfecting of market relationships, the
spread of new forms of political knowledge and ambition and the prominence
of wage labour relationships made an uneven impact and explanations seemed
to be possible on a town-by-town basis. The project was the more tempting as
each town was separate and discreet in its geography, its forms of government
and in its elites and organisations. No simple generalisations emerged for several
reasons. Each urban place experienced massive inequalities but in different ways
which varied from the wage relationships of the factory, the dissatisfaction with
prices paid to outworkers to the tensions of the grain market. Distribution and
production were tied together by the economic structure of the market, by
forces which the radicals often called ‘competition’. The manner in which each
place resolved the tensions created by such inequalities was not influenced by
R. J. Morris
111
Kathleen Tillotson, The Novels of the Eighteen-Forties (Oxford, ); R. Williams, The Country
and the City (London, ), pp. –.
112
John Braine, Room at the Top (London, ); Alan Sillitoe, Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
(London, ); Stan Barstow, A Kind of Loving (London, ).
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simple economic structures such as the size of the units of production or the pro-
portion of wage labourers. Each town was affected by its own political history
and tradition, by the leadership of the radicals who challenged established struc-
tures of power or by the skill and values of elites who sought to conciliate or
suppress by a variety of voluntary, ideological and main-force-based means. Nor
can explanation remain focused on the urban place itself. Each place was part of
a wider network. This provided access to a variety of ideas, people, forms of
organisation and products which flowed along such networks. The visiting lec-
turer, the radical periodical or the fashion and consumer goods which raised
ambitions all made their impact and can probably be traced to the railway station
not the local economic or social structure.
A close examination of the evidence showed that the urban nature of place
was important in two respects. First, this provided an increasing experience of
size and density, and variety. Density was not simply a matter of people per acre
but a transactional density and a density of flows of people, goods and informa-
tion. The urban place was one of ever increasing choices. It was this if nothing
else which made any simple relationship between structures and cultures unlikely
if not impossible. Secondly, the urban place was a focus of power and institu-
tional resources. The dominant agencies of local government, the local media,
the institutions of education, culture and philanthropy and the elite belonged to
the town. This produced three overlapping phases in the relationships of culture
and structure. The first saw a rapid expansion of ‘civil society’. The towns
created and developed a wide range of organisational resources. These were
dominated by principles of representation and debate. These organisations
offered people a choice of identities, politics and association. But most impor-
tant experience of such organisation enabled people in the towns to negotiate
and persuade. Such negotiations might address economic inequalities or relig-
ious differences. Cultural and political outcomes depended as much on varia-
tions in cultural and institutional resources as upon the balance of economic
interests. Birmingham, rich in institutional resources, produced a powerful
municipal culture very different from fragmented Sheffield, although both had
economic structures which depended upon small workshops and a small number
of major capitalist employers. The dominance of this municipal culture from the
s marked the second phase. Identity and pride were based upon the achieve-
ments of a local government led by selected members of the local economic and
professional elite. By the s, populations turned naturally to municipal
government to secure their living standards and much of their leisure. In St
Helens ‘men from the town hall would pump gas into the place to kill infec-
tion’.
113
The s and s saw the beginnings of the collapse of this close
relationship between the urban place, civil society and the municipal. The towns
Structure, culture and society in British towns
113
Forman, Industrial Town, p. .
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were abandoned by their elite. The middle class withdrew into their suburbs.
The working-class claim to the town was expressed in many ways from labour
politics to football teams. Elites were now organised around national and spe-
cialist groups. Even the labour movement provided a means of taking part in
national events and organisations. The general strike or the National Health
Service ignored and overlay the specific nature of the urban. These were only
some of the forces which led to the fragmentation of the specific urban place.
By the s the urban places of Britain had become an urban society.
R. J. Morris
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Construction
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·
·
Patterns on the ground: urban form, residential
structure and the social construction of space
.
(i)
I
be suggested that the analysis of space is particularly relevant to large
urban areas. There is general acknowledgement in much sociological and
geographical literature that the processes of modernisation and urbanisation
have both changed the ways in which spaces are used and created feelings of
placelessness in urban areas.
1
Whilst reviewing studies of the cultural meaning of
space, R. Rotenberg suggests that ‘urban agglomeration invites special treat-
ments of space’,
2
whilst M. La Gory and J. Pipkin develop a more extended argu-
ment supporting the significance of space for urban areas:
Spatial structure is particularly important to the city, for urban society is composed
of diverse groups living close to one another. The city is a compact community.
Land is relatively scarce; thus the urban space is necessarily highly organized and
segregated. Space is a major social force literally shaping the lives of those within
the urban container. We make the city, but once created it remakes us. The build-
ings we occupy and the neighborhoods we reside in restrict our activities. The
buildings and neighborhoods not only limit our social participation but also
influence what we think and feel about others who share our city.
3
Although this argument is directed mainly at studies of the contemporary
American city, its sentiments can equally easily be applied to British cities in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In focusing on the ‘socio-spatial dialectic’
4
1
E. Relph, Place and Placelessness (London, ); D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity (Oxford,
); D. Massey, Space, Place and Gender (Cambridge, ); D. Harvey, Justice, Nature and the
Geography of Difference (Oxford and Cambridge, Mass., ).
2
R. Rotenberg and G. McDonogh, eds., The Cultural Meaning of Urban Space (Westport, Conn.,
), p. xii.
3
M. La Gory and J. Pipkin, Urban Social Space (Belmont, Calif.,), p. .
4
E. Soja, ‘The socio-spatial dialectic’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, (),
–; See also M. Dear and J. Wolch, ‘How territory shapes social life’, in J. Wolch and M. Dear,
eds., The Power of Geography (Boston, ), pp. ‒.
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this chapter essentially attempts to examine the ways in which people made
urban spaces and, in turn, were influenced by the spaces in which they lived and
worked. The main focus of the chapter is on residential space, but more limited
reference is also made to spaces through which people passed, or in which they
spent varied periods of time for work, consumption, leisure or social activities.
Following discussion of some theoretical considerations, the chapter outlines
national trends from the s to the s before illustrating these themes
through specific case studies drawn from provincial towns for which relevant data
exist. The built form of urban areas, especially housing, is related to the social
construction and meanings ascribed to spaces inhabited by urban populations. A
detailed consideration of London is presented above in Chapter .
(ii)
Urban spaces are almost always contested in terms of their production, use and
meaning. The city, past and present, has been created from debates over the pro-
duction and design of space, structured by competition for space by urban pop-
ulations and viewed through the varied meanings that urban inhabitants ascribe
to both public and private spaces.
5
Although, traditionally, urban residential
space has received most attention, and was arguably the space in which many
people spent most of their time, attention has also recently been focused on the
contestation of other public and private spaces including streets, parks, squares,
shops and workplaces in cities in many parts of the world.
6
Moreover, represen-
tations and meanings of space, both residential and non-residential, are funda-
mentally structured by class, ethnicity and gender.
7
The same space may be
viewed and used in contrasting ways by different urban residents. This section
outlines some of the more influential approaches to the study of urban spatial
structure and highlights some issues of particular relevance to the study of British
cities from the mid-nineteenth century.
Colin G. Pooley
5
P. Howell, ‘Public space and the public sphere: political theory and the historical geography of
modernity’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (), –; A. Madanipour,
‘Urban design and dilemmas of space’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (),
–; A. Madanipour, Design of Urban Space (Chichester, ).
6
M. Harrison, ‘Symbolism, ritualism and the location of crowds in early-nineteenth century
English towns’, in D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels, eds., The Iconography of Landscape (Cambridge,
), pp. –; J. Lawrence, ‘Geographical space, social space and the realm of the depart-
ment store’, UH, (), –; P. Goheen, ‘The ritual of the street in mid-nineteenth century
Toronto’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, (), –; P. Goheen,
‘Negotiating access to public space in mid-nineteenth century Toronto’, Journal of Historical
Geography, (), –; A. Brown-May, ‘A charitable indulgence: street stalls and the trans-
formation of public space in Melbourne, c –’, UH, (), –.
7
G. Pratt and S. Hanson, ‘Gender, class and space’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
(), –; M. Huxley and H. Winchester, ‘Residential differentiation and social reproduction:
the inter-relations of class, gender and space’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space,
(), –.
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Early ecological work focused on the ways in which distinctive groups of the
population associated themselves with particular areas of the city, and developed
biological analogies of the way in which urban society functioned. These were
based on ‘natural’processes of competition and dominance through which urban
society was divided into separate biotic and cultural levels, with the spatial order
of the city primarily resulting from competition at the biotic level.
8
Although
such deterministic arguments have been rejected by most authors, the broad
principles have been influential in much later work. Thus much of the debate
about the nature and extent of residential segregation in nineteenth-century
towns, and the degree of ‘modernity’ achieved by such cities, draws its inspira-
tion from the Chicago School of urban ecology.
9
Criticism of ecological approaches has led researchers to embrace a wider
range of social theory in the examination of social and spatial structure. In the
s behavioural approaches were common, based on analysis of the decision-
making process in residential location but, given the difficulty of researching
decisions in the past, such models have been applied only to a limited extent in
historical studies.
10
Much more influential has been the development of Marxian
analysis, not least because of the obvious relevance of the writings of Marx and
Engels to the process of urbanisation and the development of a class-based urban
society.
Application of Marxian analysis to the study of spatial structure starts from the
assumption that one of the main functions of the city is to meet the needs of
capitalism. This can be achieved through a number of processes.
11
First, the seg-
regated industrial city is structured in such a way that it facilitates the circulation
and accumulation of capital through the reduction of production and exchange
costs for entrepreneurs. Second, the spatial structure of the city encourages
the reproduction of established relationships between labour and capital. The
Patterns on the ground
18
G.Theodorson, ed., Studies in Human Ecology (New York, ); P. Knox, Urban Social Geography,
rd edn (Harlow, ), pp. –; D. W. G. Timms, The Urban Mosaic (London, ); R. Park
and E. Burgess, eds., The City (Chicago, ); R. Sennett, ed., Classic Essays on the Culture of
Cities (New York, ).
19
D. Ward, ‘Victorian cities: how modern?’, Journal of Historical Geography, (), –; D.
Ward, ‘Environs and neighbours in the “Two Nations”: residential differentiation in mid-
nineteenth century Leeds’, Journal of Historical Geography, (), –; J. H. Johnson and C.
G. Pooley, eds., The Structure of Nineteenth-Century Cities (London, ), pp. –; R. Dennis,
English Industrial Cities of the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, ), pp. –.
10
J. Wolpert, ‘Behavioural aspects of the decision to migrate’, Papers and Proceedings of the Regional
Science Association, (), –; L. Brown and E. Moore, ‘The intra-urban migration
process: a perspective’, Geografiska Annaler, B (), –; R. Golledge, ‘A behavioural view
of mobility and migration research’, Professional Geographer, (), –; C. G. Pooley,
‘Choice and constraint in the nineteenth-century city: a basis for residential differentiation’, in
Johnson and Pooley, eds., The Structure, pp. –.
11
D. Harvey, ‘Class structure in a capitalist society and the theory of residential differentiation’, in
R. Peel et al., eds., Processes in Physical and Human Geography (London, ), pp. –; D.
Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital (Oxford, ); D. Harvey, Consiousness and the Urban
Experience (Oxford, ); I. Katznelson, Marxism and the City (Oxford, ).
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
segregation of working-class neighbourhoods and the mobility constraints
placed on the poor, which affect all aspects of their daily life, are factors which
perpetuate capitalist structures in the relationship between classes. Third, the city
encapsulates many of the contradictions of a capitalist society as urban areas
undergo change and groups with different stakes in the capitalist system compete
with each other for urban space and resources. Thus in conflicts over city-centre
redevelopment, small business men and women often lose out to larger enter-
prises. Fourth, the city is the major arena in which the state acts as a legitimat-
ing agent to support capitalist structures and diffuse discontent through schemes
such as social housing and welfare payments. The ways in which these are allo-
cated frequently lead to further segregation between groups and can have long-
term effects on the spatial structure of the city. Marxian analysis has been
extensively criticised for its determinism, but the application of Marxian social
theory can still provide a powerful and relevant framework for historical research
on urban social and spatial structures.
More recently developed post-structural or post-modern approaches to the
study of urban spatial structure have often attempted to retain some elements of
Marxian analysis, but have combined this with a stronger element of human
agency. Central to much of this analysis is the concept of power: urban space is
a resource which is contested and control over space conveys advantages to some
and disbenefits to others. Structuration theory attempts to combine the analysis
of structure and human agency and, as such, it is well suited to the analysis of
urban spatial structure.
12
In this context, structuration theory argues that urban
space is produced by human actors who operate within the constraints imposed
by societal structures. The key focus of action is the intersection of structure and
agency, often mediated through institutional structures where, through everyday
social practices, people both adapt to the constraints of structures and, in some
cases, influence and change structures over time. Some of these processes can be
clearly illustrated through a study of the struggle for control over public space in
the West End of London as residents sought to reinforce the exclusivity of their
residential environment and associated public spaces. Peter Atkins argues that
the West End was a gilded cage of privilege, the limits of which were constituted
not only in the informal and subtle manipulation of the ‘quality’ of its residential
neighbourhoods and communities, but also more crudely through the blockading
of streets to keep out undesirables and to restrict or ban access to traffic. In the
second half of the nineteenth century there was a shift in public opinion about the
balance between public and private rights in the street, symbolic of the wider
Colin G. Pooley
12
A. Giddens, The Constitution of Society (Cambridge, ). See also N. Gregson, ‘Structuration
theory: some thoughts on the possibilities of empirical research’, Environment and Planning D:
Society and Space, (), –; C. Bryant and D. Jary, eds., Giddens’ Theory of Structuration
(London, ); A. Pred, Making Histories and Constructing Human Geographies (Boulder, ); D.
Gregory, Regional Transformation and Industrial Revolution (London, ).
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changes in society which gradually eroded elite power. The eventual freeing of the
streets in the s marked the conclusion of a period of struggle and debate about
the penetration of privatized space by the public realm, the balance having shifted
from the exclusive to the inclusive.
13
Structuration theory has been criticised for its relative neglect of unforeseen,
unintended and unconscious actions, and for its failure to embrace issues of eth-
nicity and gender,
14
but in its focus on the socio-spatial dialectic of the relation-
ship between people and places it can clearly highlight the processes through
which spaces were contested between individuals, vested interests and institutions.
Structuration theory draws heavily on the notion of time-geography devel-
oped by Torsten Hagerstrand.
15
His basic model examines the constraints of
space and time on individual social practices, and may be used to illustrate the
ways in which groups of people facing similar constraints can be thrown
together in their time-space activities, thus creating distinctive patterns of social
activity and forming the basis of everyday social segregation. These ideas have
been elaborated by David Harvey in his ‘grid of spatial practices’
16
which links
social and cultural theories in the context of space and time. According to Paul
Knox, this framework provides ‘one way of accommodating a broader, richer
array of issues in addressing the ways in which places are constructed and expe-
rienced as material artefacts, how they are represented, and how they become
used as symbolic spaces in contemporary culture’.
17
Harvey’s work thus links the
concepts of space and time developed in social theory, to contemporary cultu-
ral theory and, whilst retaining some elements of Marxian analysis, demonstrates
the ways in which social geography has embraced cultural studies. Analyses of
the ways in which urban space were contested also draw heavily on the work of
Henri Lefebvre who identified three dimensions of space – mental, physical and
social – which he argued should create a unity in the production of the urban
environment. He identified three key elements: spatial practice, or the ways in
which space is organised and used; representations of space, conceived mainly
by architects, planners and those in control of urban environments; and repre-
sentational space, or the images and meanings associated with space by those
Patterns on the ground
13
P. J. Atkins, ‘How the West End was won: the struggle to remove street barriers in Victorian
London’, Journal of Historical Geography, (), .
14
Gregson, ‘Structuration theory’; Bryant and Jary, Giddens’Theory; N. Thrift, ‘The arts of living,
the beauty of the dead: anxieties of being in the work of Anthony Giddens’, Progress in Human
Geography, (), –.
15
T. Hagerstrand, ‘What about people in Regional Science?’, Papers and Proceedings of the Regional
Science Association, (), –; T. Hagerstrand, ‘Survival and arena: on the life history of indi-
viduals in relation to their geographic environment’, in T. Carlstein, D. Parkes and N. Thrift, eds.,
Timing Space and Spacing Time (London, ), pp. –. On time see B. Adams, Timewatch
(London, ); B. Adams, Time and Social Theory (London, ).
16
Harvey, The Condition, pp. ‒.
17
P. Knox, Urban Social Geography, rd edn (Harlow, ), p. .
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