Between 1945 and 2000, urban Britain was transformed almost beyond recognition from a place that was in many respects still ‘Victorian’ to one that was thoroughly modern, or even post-modern. It was reshaped by a complex set of processes from deindustrialization and decolonization to capitalist consumerism and automobility. The urban landscape was spatially reconfigured by modern architecture, motorway building and comprehensive redevelopment. New commercial and cultural anchors emerged, such as the shopping centre and the nightclub. Many older institutions, like the market and the port, survived but assumed new roles. Change was spearheaded by new elite actors, including planners and property developers, and shaped from below by new grassroots actors, from Black community organizers to women’s liberation activists and suburban community associations. In this ferment, new subjects surfaced, from the gentrifier to the hipster, and existing subjects, such as the student and the architect, obtained new meanings.
Until 2010, few of these changes were the focus of historical scholarship. The transformation of urban Britain since 1945 was primarily the domain of historians of architecture and planning. This began to change in the 2010s as historians of culture, politics and the economy in Britain since 1945 began to approach their research questions through an urban lens. Reflecting this historiographical shift, in 2014, a network of scholars from diverse backgrounds working on British cities in this period, named the Society for the Promotion of Urban Discussion (SPUD), was formed and met regularly over the next decade. The Modern British City stems from that network and the work its members undertook to cultivate a new, holistic approach to urban Britain since 1945.
This author attended some of the early meetings of SPUD and can attest to the quality of the discussion and to the refreshingly broad range of perspectives that were presented and brought into constructive dialogue. A particular strength of SPUD was to bring historians with a background in the history of design, planning and architecture into conversation with historians interested in political, economic and cultural change. The Modern British City embodies that approach with its contributors exploring not only how and why Britain changed culturally, economically and politically in this period, but also what that change looked like spatially and visually, and where change happened across Britain’s complex urban fabric.
The book’s editors have used their considerable expertise across urban, social and architectural history to assemble contributions from a formidable group of 27 historians. Indeed, the contributors’ list reads almost as a who’s who of contemporary scholars working on Britain since 1945, ranging from established figures to younger researchers. The editors acknowledge two sources of inspiration for the book: the two-volume edited collection by H.J. Dyos and Michael Wolff, The Victorian City: Images and Realities (1973), for the diversity and originality of its approach to urban history, and the three-volume Cambridge Urban History of Britain (2000) edited by Peter Clark, which extended up to 1950. Unlike the latter volume, the editors have consciously eschewed a survey approach: instead, they encouraged contributors to delve deeply into their own interests and most of the chapters are framed around case-studies.
While the editors recognize that the history of British cities might be ‘[d]iverse, complex or just plain messy’, the book helps to shed new light on a range of critical issues in modern British history. The shifting fortunes of urban modernism looms large. Owen Hatherley’s novel case-study of Southampton shows how the city maintained a municipal modernist tradition until the 1980s when it was supplanted by more suburban, car-orientated forms, while Holly Smith’s rich study of community architecture shows how establishment modernism came under attack from the left and right. The book reveals how the modern British city was reshaped by deindustrialization, which Christopher Lawson’s expansive contribution shows to be a driver of social changes like racial segregation and inter-urban commuting. Several contributors shed new light on the spatial impact of social democracy and neoliberalism, including Otto Saumarez Smith’s creative and lively account of the remaking of Ironbridge, Stoke and Middlesbrough. The effects of automobility are explored in an imaginative contribution by Erika Hanna, which explores how the security architecture of the Troubles affected personal mobility in Belfast.
The nature of urban change and its effect on people and place is a central theme. We encounter new urban figures in John Davis’ nuanced account of gentrifiers, Peter Mandler’s evocative exploration of joggers, muggers and hipsters and Laura Balderstone’s detailed study of the active suburban resident. The book takes us to overlooked sites, from David Edgerton’s sweeping analysis of the changing role of the port city to Sarah Mass’ captivating investigation of the evolution of the urban market. The British city is shown to be an effective lens for understanding how marginalized groups resisted oppression, from Matt Cook’s subtle exploration of queer communities in different settings to Saima Nasa’s striking analysis of Black British resistance to racism in Notting Hill and Krista Cowman’s compelling account of the impact of feminist activism on urban services. The city’s role as a cultural node is not neglected, from Lawrence Black’s vivid study of the sub-cultures of the King’s Road to Simon Gunn’s innovative examination of the period’s burgeoning urban nightlife. Attention is also given to how people thought about the modern British city: Guy Ortolano makes a compelling case that ideas about the Victorian city framed approaches to the modern city, while Divya Subramanian shows how ideas about the ‘compact city’ developed amid a growing environmental consciousness.
The Modern British City succeeds in illuminating urban Britain beyond London with smaller cities and towns receiving good coverage, though the capital is not neglected. The book also manages to balance contributions focused on formal public institutions with work centred on civil society groups and private sector actors. While the editors deliberately (and convincingly) reject the notion of a signal ‘meta-narrative’ for explaining changes in the British city in this period, they provide an introduction that helpfully highlights key overarching themes in the period and an afterword that skillfully draws out connections between the diverse contributions. The book has been produced to the high standard associated with hardback texts on architecture and design: every chapter is richly illustrated with pictures in a way that underscores the book’s commitment to emphasizing the importance of place and design.
The breadth, depth and originality of its insights, combined with the varied range of historiographical methods it showcases, make The Modern British City essential reading for historians working on twentieth-century Britain, especially those whose work has an urban focus. The work it does to expand and nuance our understanding of how cities changed in this period will also have considerable value to urban historians of the post-colonial British world, Europe and North America.
