Richard Rodger is Professor of Urban History at Leicester University and Director of the Centre for Urban History. He teaches courses in economic and social history and is interested in the application of computing to historical analysis. He has written or edited ten books on the economic, social and business history of cities, including Scottish Housing in the Twentieth Century (1989), European Urban History (1993) and Housing in Urban Britain 1780–1914 (1995). Since 1987 Richard Rodger has been Editor of Urban History (published by Cambridge University Press).

• Part I. Urban Frameworks: 1. Introduction; 2. Institutional power and landownership: the nineteenth-century inheritance; 3. Victorian feudalism; 4. Building capital: Trusts, loans and the kirk; 5. The building industry and instability; Part II. Building Enterprise and Housing Management: 6. The search for stability; 7. Industrial suburb: developing Dalry; 8. The genesis of a property owning democracy?; 9. Landlord and tenant; 10. Post-script: 'Firmiter et Durabile': the construction of legitimacy; Part III. Complementary Visions of Society: 11. Co-operation and mutuality: 'the colonies' and the Edinburgh Co-operative Building Company; 12. Civic consciousness, social consciences and the built environment; 13. Adornment, ego and image: the decoration of the tenement; 14. Conclusion: Re-inventing the city.

'A unique undertaking … by any standards a remarkable piece of scholarship.' Stana Nenadic, H-Urban