Case Study: Urbanization
A French author's description of Paris in 1848
"If you contemplate from the summit of the Montmartre or any other hill in the neighborhood, the congestion of houses piled up at every point of a vast horizon, what do you observe? Above, a sky that is always overcast, even on the finest day. Clouds of smoke, like a vast floating curtain, hide it from view. A forest of chimneys with black or yellowish chimneypots renders the sight singularly monotonous…. Looking at it one is tempted to wonder whether this is Paris; and, sized with sudden fear, one is reluctant to venture into this vast maze, in which a million beings jostle each other, where the air, vitiated by unhealthy effluvia, rising in a poisonous cloud, almost obscures the sun. |
Most of the streets in this wonderful Paris are nothing but filthy alleys forever damp from a reeking flood. Hemmed in between two rows of tall houses, they never get the sun; it reaches only the tops of the chimneys dominating them. To catch a glimpse of the sky you have to look straight up above your head. A haggard and sickly crowd perpetually throngs these streets, their feet in the gutter, their noses in infection, their eyes outraged by the most repulsive garbage at every street corner. The best-paid workmen live in these streets. There are alleys, too, in which two cannot walk abreast, sewers of ordure and mud, in which the stunted dwellers daily inhale death. These are the streets of old Paris, still intact."
Historical Context:
The 19th c. was a period of great change in Europe. Just as the Industrial Revolution transformed the Continent’s mode of production and its patterns of work, it also greatly accelerated the urbanization of the West. Individual cities grew rapidly as large numbers of immigrants from rural areas came in search of industrial jobs, and society was transformed as urban rather than rural life became the lifestyle of the majority.
Guiding Question:
- How were the cities of Paris and Vienna physically reshaped in response to early 19th-century problems?
- How did these physical transformations affect the lifestyle of urban dwellers?
Paris and Vienna 1850 - 1930
The Pre-Industrial City
|
|
Post 1850 City Redesigns
|
|
The Avenue de l'Opera
|
|
New Housing
|
|
New recreational areas
|
|
The new suburbs
|
|
New modes of transportation
|
|