Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City considers the roles played by local institutions and particular processes that shaped the urban fabric. It rediscovers from models and maps the constituent dynamics of cities since the beginning of the nineteenth century, and demonstrates how patterns evolved in the way services and locations were organized; how urban transformation was underpinned by structural development, and how the municipal workforce became an integral part of the agencies of change. Municipal Services and Employees in the Modern City suggests that municipal experiences are central to the development of urban studies. Its focus of analysis ranges across Europe and the Americas from high-ranking bureaucrats to firefighters, engineers to accountants, and town clerks to public servants. Each essay provides detailed information on how change was formulated or resisted within the administrative apparatus, offering insight into a sector of the 'white-collar' class and the degree of commitment to public values often at times of social and political upheaval. They explore the course of relationships between local and central government, and the shifting bounds of municipal interventionism over a broad period; whilst incorporating a social history approach to interpret the day-to-day responsibilities and routine of administration.
General Editors Preface; Chapter 1 Tales of The Periphery: An Outline Survey of Municipal Employees and Services in The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Michèle Dagenais, Pierre-Yves Saunier; Chapter 2 Nineteenth-Century Municipal Engineers in Turin: Technical Bureaucracies in The Networks of Local Power, Filippo De Pieri; Chapter 3 The Origins of The American Municipal Fire DePart ment: Nineteenth-Century Change from an International Perspective, Amy S. Greenberg; Chapter 4 The Formation of a Bureaucratic Group Between Centre and Periphery: Engineers and Local Government in Italy from The Liberal Period to Fascism (1861–1939), Roberto Ferretti; Chapter 5 Municipal Innovations Versus National Wait-And-See Attitudes: Unemployment Policies in Kaiserreich Germany (1871–1918), Bénédicte Zimmermann; Chapter 6 Town clerks in the Paris region: the design of a professional identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Emmanuel Bellanger; Chapter 7 A model for the emerging welfare state? Municipal management in Montreal during the 1930s, Michèle Dagenais; Chapter 8 Municipal employees and the construction of social identity in São Paulo, Brazil, in the 1930s, Cristina Mehrtens; Chapter 9 The ‘iron triangle’ of municipal government: trade unions, bureaucracy and political Part ies in a French town (Toulouse, 1910–1970), Jean-Yves Nevers; Chapter 10 A (North) British end-view: the comparative experience of municipal employees and services in Glasgow (1800–1950), Irene Maver;
'This welcome collection of 10 essays by distinguished international academics fills a yawning gap in the literature on the role of municipal institutions and employees in administering public services during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries... The inclusion of an extensive bibliography further strengthens its contribution to municipal research.' Urban History
