Gwybodaeth Modiwlau

The essential aim of this case study is to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the historical experience of urbanization, employing a rich literature derived from sociology and human geography, as well as the work of historians. The process will be considered in relation to the changing functions of the city resulting in large part from improved communications and the concentration of political, cultural and economic activity. This had substantial effects on socio-professional structures, on social relationships, and the use of space within the city. Migration and the concentration of population caused problems similar in many respects to those faced by contemporary third world cities, including overcrowding, impoverished diet, declining standards of public hygiene and mortality, underemployment, and high levels of crime. Rising social tension, epidemic and revolution, provoked a growing fear, increased social segregation, and a search for means of alleviating the situation.

In the more expansive economic conditions prevailing from the 1850s, investment in the city was encouraged by the potential for profit and by political decisions in favour of large-scale slum clearance, and subsidies for the construction of new boulevards and public buildings. Particularly significant for the improvement of public and personal hygiene was the construction of sewer networks and increased supply of less polluted water. Moral order was to be restored through the provision of churches and schools. The provision of low cost accommodation was neglected both by the state and private investors, although rising real incomes gradually improved living standards.

Every effort will be made to capture the experience of living in a city undergoing rapid transformation, from a gender perspective, as well as that of various social groups ? wealthy elites, professionals, small business people, skilled and unskilled workers, those of the primary schoolteacher and priest. How did the transformation of the physical environment, the experience of revolution or cholera, changes in the job market, rising levels of literacy, the development of the mass media influence perceptions of the city?

A wide range of evidence is readily available in English including that produced by censuses and social surveys, by economic enquiries, in diaries and memoirs, by novelists, painters and photographers, and by the administration and police. This will provide the material for project work and for source criticism.