Miriam R. Levin et al. Urban Modernity: Cultural Innovation in the Second Industrial Revolution . Cambridge: MIT Press. 2010. Pp. x, 272. $30.00.

Abstract

This work of insightful comparative scope explores the rise of a modern civic culture between 1851 and 1930. The role of new metropolitan institutions, ambitious corporate elites, expanding municipal infrastructures, and especially the prominence of international expositions as both cultural and industrial emporia form the basis of this eclectic collection of essays, which will be of interest to scholars assessing the relationship of urban history and the structures of modernity. The essays also will appeal to students of international expositions, themselves an expression of the very phenomena the authors describe. The book is comprised of six chapters highlighting five urban centers in an era of deep change and transformation: London, Paris, Chicago, Berlin, and Tokyo. In a thoughtful opening chapter devoted to the place of expositions, museums, universities, and other institutions in the emerging new urban landscape, Miriam R. Levin defines modernity as “a condition of existence whose major feature is acceptance of historical change as a given” (p. 8). This sense of “living in the future” (p. 9), we are told, contributed to a new consciousness that is reflected in each of the cities under consideration. Enlightenment notions of human progress and forward motion shaped an understanding of the emerging milieu and the triumph of novel social, political, and economic institutions. Each of these essays explores aspects of the general trend, as well as a “new civic ideology” (p. 160) that lent credence to the sharp break with traditional modes of existence.