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Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939
Faced with economic decline, unprecedented levels of unemployment and new forms of political extremism during Britain's last great economic crash, politicians and planners in Liverpool and Manchester responded by investing in dramatic and ambitious programmes of urban regeneration. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 is the first book to provide the hitherto unknown story of the innovative transformation of these cities.
Charlotte Wildman challenges academic scholarship in British history, which associates the post-1918 period with the emasculation of local government and the decline of civic culture. She shows that local politicians, planners, architects, businessmen and even religious leaders embraced innovative trends in creating distinct forms of urban modernities, which particularly changed the way women experienced the transformed city. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 offers a complex, interactive and multipolar interpretation of the ways cities develop, pointing to new methods and ways of understanding both interwar Britain and urban history more generally.
At a time of debate and discussion about devolution and decentralisation of government, this book makes an opportune contribution to debates about urban governance and regionalism in contemporary Britain.
Charlotte Wildman challenges academic scholarship in British history, which associates the post-1918 period with the emasculation of local government and the decline of civic culture. She shows that local politicians, planners, architects, businessmen and even religious leaders embraced innovative trends in creating distinct forms of urban modernities, which particularly changed the way women experienced the transformed city. Urban Redevelopment and Modernity in Liverpool and Manchester, 1918-1939 offers a complex, interactive and multipolar interpretation of the ways cities develop, pointing to new methods and ways of understanding both interwar Britain and urban history more generally.
At a time of debate and discussion about devolution and decentralisation of government, this book makes an opportune contribution to debates about urban governance and regionalism in contemporary Britain.
304 pages, Hardcover
Published September 22, 2016
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December 2, 2025
True to its title, this book is less about architecture than about the urbanity of Liverpool and Manchester in general. Not only about how both cities got the historic look you can still see today in some of their monumental buildings, but more about how they developed from 19th century industrial cities to something more modern.
I can only praise how this book describes the minutiae of how shopping windows and city festivals influenced the development of the rivaling Liverpool and Manchester during the inter-war period as well as their society.
With a certain pioneering spirit, Liverpool and Manchester, during this period, established many of the things we take for granted today in our urban structures. Especially those that not even young urbanists in 2025 begin to question most of the times.
So, if you’re reading this as an urbanism nerd before your next trip to those cities, be prepared to learn not that much about what historical backgrounds make Liverpool and Manchester special in 2025, but about how Liverpool and Manchester are symptomatic of many other Western urban structures until this day.
If anything though, this book should serve to differentiate your opinion of how bleak those Northern English industrial powerhouses were in the early 20th century. Because, contrasting their squalid reputation, there were lots of efforts for better quality of life during that time that would seem Utopian from our modern perspective ingrained by neoliberalism.
I can only praise how this book describes the minutiae of how shopping windows and city festivals influenced the development of the rivaling Liverpool and Manchester during the inter-war period as well as their society.
With a certain pioneering spirit, Liverpool and Manchester, during this period, established many of the things we take for granted today in our urban structures. Especially those that not even young urbanists in 2025 begin to question most of the times.
So, if you’re reading this as an urbanism nerd before your next trip to those cities, be prepared to learn not that much about what historical backgrounds make Liverpool and Manchester special in 2025, but about how Liverpool and Manchester are symptomatic of many other Western urban structures until this day.
If anything though, this book should serve to differentiate your opinion of how bleak those Northern English industrial powerhouses were in the early 20th century. Because, contrasting their squalid reputation, there were lots of efforts for better quality of life during that time that would seem Utopian from our modern perspective ingrained by neoliberalism.
Displaying 1 of 1 review