Urban Individuality and Urban Governance in Twentieth-Century Europe 1

Abstract

At first glance governance represents the softer side of power in twentiethcentury European cities-certainly compared with air raids, military invasions or politically motivated street battles. Yet the activities of urban planners and municipal agencies are often identified with top-down disciplinary power and consequently seen as the opposite of bottom-up rebellion. Leif Jerram in his survey of twentieth-century urban Europe treats dictatorial intervention in stark narrative contrast to popular politics. 2 Other urban historians have extended this view to democratic systems, and criticised reformist as well as conservative forces for their use of disciplinary power. Helmut Gruber has faulted Social Democratic councillors and planners with coercing working-class families on the new housing estates of 1920s Vienna into a narrowly prescriptive behavioural model. 3 Rosemary Wakeman has explored the vibrant left-wing culture of post-war Paris with its street demonstrations, popular songs and café intellectuals-before arguing that this culture was ultimately sidelined and submerged by the technocratic urban policies of the 1960s. 4 Without wishing to detract from the merits of these important studies the present chapter proposes a different reading of how urban governance worked in twentieth-century Europe. Loosely defined as 'a set of institutions, rules and procedures by which an area is governed' the concept has served to broaden the picture of decision-making and social control in modern cities beyond the realm of municipal government proper. 5 Governance means that a wide range of 'social actors', including private ones such as associations and companies, can determine 'the formulation and pursuit of collective goals at the local level of the political system'. 6 This chapter branches out further to include city dwellers' needs and ambitions, whose complexity made it difficult to define collective goals in the first place. Foregrounding the interplay between urban individuality and urban governance brings into sharp relief that residents were not merely the objects of various policies but put municipal governments under pressure by making all sorts of demands upon them. Conversely it expands on the classic view of the modern city as a site of both personal freedom and impersonal anonymity.