‘For the honour of the town’: comparison, competition and civic identity in eighteenth-century England

This article forms a contribution to the ongoing debate about the nature of an English urban renaissance. We draw on Schwarz's designation of residential leisure towns to explore the spread of leisure and luxury through a broad range of towns. Our analysis reveals that leisure facilities and luxury service and retail provision were widespread, but that residential leisure towns appear as qualitatively different places, the status of which was contingent upon social profile and cultural-economy, rather than demographic, political or socio-economic make up. We conclude by arguing that urban typologies based on specialization should be tempered with older-established and more subjective categorizations based on the status of the town.From hence we came . . . to Shrewsbury. This is indeed a beautiful, large, pleasant, populous and rich town; full of gentry and yet full of trade too; for here too, is a great manufacture . . . which enriches the country round it. 1 1 D. Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain (1724-26; Penguin edition: Harmondsworth, 1971), 397. 2 This tradition can be traced back to P. Clark and P. Slack, English Towns in Transition 1500 -1700 (Oxford, 1976, and has been seen most recently in P. Clark (ed.) Cambridge Urban

Leisure, luxury and urban specialization in the eighteenth century

Stobart

Schwarz

2008

Meeting places: the scientific congress and the host town in the south-west of England, 1836–1877

Miskell

2012

ABSTRACT:This article presents a case-study of ‘parliaments of science’ and their impact on towns in the south-west of England in the second half of the nineteenth century. These were the week-long annual meetings of the British Association for the Advancement of Science and other national associations for different branches of knowledge which became a much publicized feature of the social and intellectual calendar of Victorian Britain. With particular reference to Exeter, it is argued that these events were used by towns and cities to assert their status and reputation and to compete with rival urban centres, and it is contended that they should be viewed, along with other cultural initiatives, as an important instrument in the shaping of urban and civic identity in mid-Victorian Britain. The study demonstrates the role of towns as scientific locations in the nineteenth century and suggests that they deserve attention in place-centred studies of Victorian science.

Civic pride and redevelopment in the post-war British city

Shapely

2012

ABSTRACT:This article is concerned with civic pride in post-war urban Britain. While many of the development projects during 1945–79 proved to be design failures, suggesting the demise of civic pride, the ambitions of local authorities, planners and developers have largely been ignored or dismissed. Nevertheless, the development plans which emerged during this period reveal a desire to rebuild new, modern and vibrant cities. Moreover, the planning and financing of these new projects highlights the structure of local governance in post-war Britain, with a shift towards new partnerships consisting of the council, the technocrat and the developer. As such, civic pride continued to be evident in the post-war period, both as an aspiration for urban development and as a symbolic form of power.