The City as a Work of Art: London, Paris, Vienna [Hardcover]

 

 

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This is a review of the first edition.

Winner of the 1987 British Council Prize in the Humanities, this is a superb book for those interested in nineteenth and twentieth-century cities, as well as those with an interest in the built environment of three of the greatest, most beautiful, most-historically-laden cities on earth. In the preface, the author introduces us to his theme by explaining that "we can regard cities as complex but legible documents that can tell us something about the values and aspirations of their rulers, designers, builders, owners, and inhabitants."

The book is split into five parts: the city seen, respectively, as luxury, as monument, as home, as playground, and as document. Each of the three cities often has a chapter or section to itself within these parts, but there is also plenty of insightful comparisons and contrasts. The creation of the Ringstrasse in Vienna; the impact of Haussmann's reforms in Paris; and the move by the bourgeoisie out of the centre of London are all central topics for discussion and elucidation. For example, the author relates how in Vienna "mere comfort was willingly sacrificed to the appearance of aristocratic grandeur"; how paradoxically it is "to the policies of the Third Republic ... that we owe the preservation of the Paris of Napoleon III"; or how "in the 1860s many a London artisan enjoyed a degree of separateness, spaciousness and privacy in his dwelling that a middle-class Parisian or a Viennese might have envied."

The opening short chapter is titled "Urban Virtue and Urban Beauty". It is not often these days that we see the word `virtue'. With London, Paris, and Vienna as the largest cities in nineteenth-century Europe, to look at them as works of art means to abandon much of our post-modern sensibilities. In the nineteenth-century art was not morally neutral. The author apologises for his focus on what may appear to be the high end of architectural display, but "the stress on the superficial land luxurious does not arise from a spirit of frivolity, but from the conviction that societies better reveal themselves at play than at work." And "to grasp the meaning of such self-indulgence, such display, the techniques of the economic historian are useless, those of the social historian inadequate. The art historian and the intellectual historian are better qualified ..."

In the second part, he points out how all three cities "had long contained monuments. Only in the nineteenth century did they try to become monuments." London was transformed from a city that in late-Georgian times was likely to please, to one that was more likely to astonish the visitor. Haussmann's reforms in Paris and the construction of the Ringstrasse in Vienna on the line of its city wall similarly transformed these cities into monuments to their own civic and imperial glories.

In the section on the city as home, he concentrates on the dwellings of their inhabitants, for these "illuminate the respective attitudes of the three societies toward domesticity, familial affection, privacy and individuality." All of these aspects are explored as he contrasts in turn the London house, the Paris flat, and the Viennese Wohnung. It is a pity that he does not explore this further to look at how the differences are expressed in and by the personalities of the citizens, but this is strictly not within the purview of the book. This is not the place to rehearse each and every issue raised in the book, but I found the section on social geography especially illuminating. Being a regular visitor to all three cities, much was consciously clarified that had been only latently understandable before.

The social angle is again to the fore in the section on the city as playground. For example, the "contrast between social harmony in [nineteenth-century] France and social division in England raises questions. For it was the Parisian working classes who were to throw up barricades ..., not the Chartists."

In the final part, the city as a document, the author looks at contemporary aesthetics, and at the lack of an underlying unity in styles. He has much to say too about the late-twentieth-century city: "Rightly or wrongly, they [nineteenth-century architects] believed that their knowledge of history had liberated them from its constraints ... The anti-historical practice of contemporary [i.e. late-twentieth-century] architects is based on philosophically historicist assumptions. They are the slaves of history - or rather a view of history - not its masters."

The book is replete with illustrations, whether they be evocative photographs or contemporary house-plans. There is also a short selection of colour plates. The book benefits from direct references to illustrations being given in the text. The one thing that is missing is maps. For those not especially au fait with, for example, the position of Belgravia vis-à-vis the City, or with the layout of the Ringstrasse, much of the text may appear confusing.

References are given in endnotes; there is a full bibliography and an index.

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