In this study, the author examines the forces that led to the emergence of the large industrial city, with its characteristic features of air and water pollution, crowded and unsanitary living conditions, and the utilitarian ugliness of the environment. It is François Vigier's hope that a better understanding of local government's response to the technological, social, and economic transformation of Lancashire during the period 1750-1850 may enable modern industrial cities to avoid repeating some of the errors of the past.
The author describes how the transformation of Liverpool and Manchester during the industrial revolution challenged the tradition of local government in the two cities. Vigier's analysis of their organizational structures—how they were archaic and how they were able to respond to conditions created by rapid demographic and economic change—forms the basis for a general theory of the preconditions necessary for municipal planning in a period of widespread social upheaval.
The port of Liverpool, gateway for the Irish, American, and West Indian trade, had an established tradition of self-government with the power to legislate locally, and, when necessary, to adapt existing institutions to new circumstances. Its dock estate, for example, was a large revenue-producing authority created to serve the general interest. Manchester, marketing center for the Lancashire textile trade, remained without self-government until 1838 and was forced to develop a series of ad hoc institutions to deal with urban problems: the police commission's special committees, which competed and often collided with the anachronistic Court Leet and the parish vestry. Vigier concludes that the failure of both types of institutions to provide for the general welfare of a growing working-class population cannot be attributed to ignorance of conditions, or to financial or administrative inability to take appropriate action. Rather, this failure was due to a lack of communication between local government and the citizenry, and to the new middle-class's apathy toward problems that did not threaten their prerogatives. The institutional resources of Liverpool and Manchester were used to advance and defend the two towns' economic standing and to clamp down on political disturbances generated by appalling living conditions.
A large number of charts and illustrations supplement this provocative analogy to contemporary planning dilemmas.
