working at the intersection of urban history, welfare state history and environmental history. More broadly, his research interests cover the cultural and social history of architecture, material culture studies, emotional history, cultural theory and critical geography. He obtained his PhD in History from Aarhus University in June 2019. During his time as a PhD fellow, he was a visiting fellow at the

This article explores the relations between everyday life, materiality and urban modernity on two Danish mass housing estates, the Gellerup Plan and Vollsmose, in the 1970s. Specifically, the article examines a series of conflicts concerning the residents’ use and misuse of seemingly mundane material devices, including shopping trolleys, waste disposal and laundry facilities. In doing so, the article argues that the residents’ daily engagements with everyday materialities and technologies constitute a privileged, yet overlooked, point of entry into the shifting relations between modernity, materiality and agency in the Danish welfare city in the 1970s.

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, the volume does not focus on global examples, even if it makes suggestions that are certainly applicable worldwide. Nevertheless, this is a thought-provoking set of essays. It also has a structure unusual to essay collections in that not only is it very clearly divided into four general topics, but each topic has its own introduction, which really draws the disparate pieces together. Furthermore, it includes something to close the volume for which I have long argued: a conclusion that takes the varied parts and makes even more sense of them. There is a conclusion to the essays, guidelines suggested for practical purposes though these are also worth contemplating by urban historiansand the volume also looks forward from where we are currently. Those interested in discussion of British reconstruction will not be disappointed, as there are two chapters devoted to Britain as well as a chapter on issues arising from fire disasters that focuses on British examples, including the very recent destruction of the Macintosh Library at the Glasgow School of Art. However, the range of further discussions includes some countries that are often overlooked and there are intriguing chapters here on Spanish, Italian, Dutch, Georgian and even Swedish exampleswhere the reconstructions have been due to voluntary destruction or relocation. For urban historians interested in the ideas around heritage and reconstruction as well as the practicalities, this is an extremely useful volume. Its organization means it will be helpful to scholars researching or teaching on certain geographical areas, while overall it integrates an impressive range of examples, suggestions, practical information and discussion points.

Taking its cue from the ‘material turn’ of recent years, this survey examines the connections between infrastructure, welfare and citizenship in north European cities in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries. It argues that connections between these different constructs were fundamental not only to how cities functioned but how citizens themselves were imagined. As such, the survey critiques histories of welfare and citizenship that foreground the national and neglect the urban origins of the modern state. It does so by examining infrastructure, welfare and citizenship in smaller European nation-states such as Belgium, Denmark and Ireland rather than in the more familiar cases of Germany, France and Britain. Asking questions about the inter-relationship of infrastructure, welfare and citizenship, the survey suggests, offers an important way to reinterpret what the ‘modern city’ meant in twentieth-century northern Europe.