Arnold, D., 2016.

Making London's Modernity: Capital, Memory and Nature

I want to argue that the juncture between urban and rural is the basis of modernity in the metropolis. The complex dynamic between landscape and nature associated with pre-industrial societies, and rational planning as an indicator of capitalistic urban environments, comes to the fore in London during the opening decades of the nineteenth century. This is evident in the mixture of public and private enterprise and the importance placed on open spaces and well-being in the evolution of the metropolis at this time. My focus here is on the confluence and antipathy between architecture and landscape, tradition and modernity, in London. I am particularly interested in how the nuts and bolts issues of estate development were in fact a blueprint for the modern city in the latter's concern with issues such as hygiene, public open spaces and rational plans. My intention is to show that the beginnings of the modernity, so readily attributed to cities such as Paris and Berlin and theorized in the texts of thinkers such as Ebenezer Howard and Camillo Sitte, can in fact also be found in London in the early nineteenth century.1 Moreover, London was an important example for the rest of Europe - not least Paris.