Urban Studies Concept Bank

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Sewers

Urban sewer systems are underground infrastructures designed to remove waste and wastewater from cities. During the 19th century industrial era, expanding sewer networks became essential to managing population growth, sanitation, and disease. In urban studies, sewers illustrate how infrastructure and public health reforms shaped modern cities, particularly during the rise of industrial urbanization.

Postcards

Postcards were widely circulated visual representations of cities in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They often presented idealized images of colonial cities, infrastructure, or monumental architecture. Urban scholars study postcards as cultural artifacts that construct narratives about urban modernity, colonial power, and civic identity.

Garden City Model

Developed by Ebenezer Howard in 1898, the Garden City model proposed a planned urban community combining the advantages of city and countryside. It featured limited population size, green belts, and organized zoning. In urban studies, it represents early planning efforts to solve industrial urban problems like overcrowding and pollution.

U.S. Public Housing Development

Public housing refers to government-funded housing projects built to provide affordable homes for low-income residents. Mid-20th century projects such as Techwood Homes or Cabrini-Green reflected modernist planning ideals but often led to segregation and concentrated poverty. In urban studies, public housing reveals the relationship between social policy, race, and urban spatial inequality.

Sinophobia

Sinophobia refers to fear or hostility toward Chinese people. In 19th-century Western cities, Chinese immigrants were often portrayed as unhygienic or diseased. Urban historians analyze this concept to understand how racial prejudice shaped urban policy, public health narratives, and immigrant neighborhoods.

The Condition of the Working Class in England

Written by Friedrich Engels in 1844, this text documents the harsh living conditions of industrial workers in cities like Manchester. Engels describes overcrowded housing, pollution, and exploitation. The work is foundational in urban studies because it exposes the social consequences of early industrial capitalism.

I Pulled a Rickshaw

This memoir describes the life of a rickshaw driver in colonial Asia. It reveals the labor exploitation and poverty experienced by urban workers. Urban scholars use the text to analyze colonial economies and everyday life in Asian colonial cities.

Embargo – U.S. Civil War

The Civil War embargo disrupted global cotton trade networks, which reshaped industrial economies in cities like Manchester. Urban historians study these shifts to understand how global trade and war influence urban development.

Photographer Felix “Nadar”

Nadar was a pioneering French photographer who documented Paris, including its underground sewer system. His images represent one of the earliest attempts to visually document urban infrastructure. In urban studies, his work highlights the technological and visual representation of modern cities.

Scientist Alexandre Yersin

Yersin discovered the bacterium responsible for the bubonic plague in 1894 while working in colonial Asia. His research connected disease outbreaks with urban environments. His work demonstrates how colonial medicine and urban public health were intertwined.

President Sukarno

Sukarno was Indonesia’s first president and a leader in postcolonial politics. His 1955 Bandung Conference speech promoted anti-colonial solidarity and Third World cooperation. In urban studies, Sukarno represents how postcolonial cities became political centers for global resistance movements.

Anti-Colonial Resistance

Anti-colonial resistance refers to political, social, and cultural actions taken by colonized populations against imperial powers. In cities, resistance often occurred through protests, labor movements, and intellectual networks. Urban spaces therefore become sites of political struggle and resistance.

“Salvation Factories”

This term refers to institutions like those proposed by the Salvation Army to rehabilitate the urban poor through work and moral reform. These institutions emerged during the Progressive Era. Urban scholars analyze them as social reform responses to industrial poverty.

“The Colony Across the Sea”

This phrase describes how imperial powers viewed overseas territories as extensions of their national power. Colonial cities were often designed to replicate European urban forms. Urban studies examines this concept to understand how imperial ideology shaped colonial urban planning.

How the Other Half Lives

Jacob Riis’s 1890 photojournalistic study exposed living conditions in New York City tenements. It used photography to advocate for housing reform. The work is crucial in urban studies because it demonstrates the role of media in urban reform movements.

Dual City

The “dual city” refers to the spatial and economic division between wealthy and poor urban populations. Industrial and colonial cities often exhibited stark inequalities between elite districts and working-class or indigenous neighborhoods.

Kitchen Debate

The Kitchen Debate was a 1959 ideological confrontation between U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev over consumer lifestyles and housing. In urban studies, it highlights how housing and domestic life became symbols of political ideology during the Cold War.

Third Worldism

Third Worldism refers to political solidarity among newly independent nations during the Cold War. It emphasized anti-colonial cooperation and economic independence. Urban studies examines how cities like Jakarta or Bandung became centers of international postcolonial politics.

Connections

• Sukarno
  

• Jakarta
  

• Bandung Conference

Constructivist Design – Soviet

Constructivism was a Soviet architectural movement emphasizing modern materials, geometric forms, and social functionality. It sought to reshape society through architecture. In urban studies it illustrates how ideology influences urban design.

Connections

• Cold War
  
  

• Housing debates
  
  

• Kitchen Debate

International Exposition in Hanoi (1902)

This exposition showcased French colonial power in Indochina and promoted economic and cultural exchange. Such exhibitions helped legitimize imperial rule and represent colonial cities as modern.

Railroads – Southeast Asia

Railroads built during colonial rule facilitated resource extraction and economic integration. They transformed urban geography by connecting ports, plantations, and administrative centers.

Connections

• Colonial urbanism
  

• Hanoi
  

• Industrial economy

Railroads – U.K. and U.S.

Railroads were central to 19th-century industrial urban growth. They shaped commuting patterns, industrial zones, and metropolitan expansion.

• Connections

• Manchester

• Industrial Epochexpanded commuting

• connected markets

shaped city geography

Progressive-Era Reformism

This reform movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries aimed to address urban problems such as poverty, housing, sanitation, and labor exploitation.

Reformers advocated:

• sanitation

• housing laws

• public health systems
  
  

Connections

• How the Other Half Lives

• Sewers

• Garden City

• Engles & slavation army

• NB: Liberal reformism in teh industrial era- a response to the level of degeneration in low income housing

  • PROGRESSIVE ERA- looking at making social and civilization progress, reforming institutions like policing, stock market, housing, electricity “state___ intsututions”

Industrial Epoch

The Industrial Epoch refers to the period of rapid industrialization beginning in the late 18th century. Urban populations exploded as factories concentrated labor and capital in cities.

Cities transformed through:

• factories

• mass labor migration

• infrastructure expansion

Connections

• Manchester

• Railroads

• Sewers

Public Health

Public health refers to organized efforts to prevent disease and improve population health. In cities, public health reforms included sanitation systems, housing regulation, and disease control.

Connections

• Sewers

• Yersin

• Manchester

• Hanoi

Manchester

Manchester became the archetypal industrial city of the 19th century. It symbolized the social consequences of industrial capitalism.

Example of the industrial city.

Features:

• factories

• worker slums

• pollution

• class segregation

Connected to:

• Engels

• Industrial Epoch

Dual City

Bombay (Mumbai)

Bombay developed into a major colonial port city under British rule. Its urban landscape reflected both imperial power and indigenous resistance.

Southwood (California)

Southwood represents suburban residential development, reflecting mid-20th-century American urban expansion.

Shows:

• racial housing conflicts

• anti-Chinese discrimination

• suburban segregation
  
  

Connected to:

• Sinophobia

• Dual City

Jakarta

Jakarta is Indonesia’s capital and an important site for postcolonial urban politics and development.

Under Sukarno:

• modernization projects

• national monuments

Connected to:

• Third Worldism

• Anti-colonial resistance

Hanoi

Hanoi was a major colonial administrative center in French Indochina and later a hub of nationalist resistance.

MEMO- rat hunt

Through the story of Hanoi, specifically colonial France’s imperative to rid the capital of plague-riddled rats, the authors show how Vietnamese, French, and Chinese cultures co-existed in the nation's capital at the time. The graphic novel shows France's Enlightenment influences as well as the more predominant brutal and destructive imperialist tactics being met by Vietnamese culture and resistance. The novel starts by detailing various early influences in the construction of Hanoi by Frenchmen such as Paul Bert, Paul Doumer, and others. Then it goes into how new construction was at the expense and destruction of Vietnamese communities and urban developments, such as sewer systems by Paul Bert, which only worked to benefit the French. Then it goes into how white populations in Hanoi started to care about the Plague outbreak once it affected settlers and Doumer and Yersin’s efforts to prevent the spread, leading to Dr. Serez’s “Deratsitation.” At first, colonial leaders attempted to house Vietnamese civil workers; however, they did not easily concede to the stigma and manipulation so the French government put up bounties for each rat killed to incentivize their work. Amid the plague outbreak Public health was prioritized over individual lives, and Vietnamese people were being tested on without informed consent. Additionally, the rat incentivization system was taken advantage of by using rat farms and faking dead rats, so in the end, it didn’t really help in the prevention of disease spread. The author also puts emphasis on how people interpret and learn about history and makes an effort to have the reader reflect on their own learning, and includes their primary sources to help the reader’s own reflection. 

RICKSHAW- 

Tam Lang, a journalist originally from an elite Vietnamese family, disguised himself as a rickshaw driver and recounted his experiences. At first, he notes the intensity of starting the job and the waves of embarrassment and hyper awareness he felt as being perceived as a second-class citizen. Throughout his recounting of the story, he does not gain much sympathy for the predominantly Vietnamese people carrying the rickshaws, calling them “horses,” “coolies,” and “wretched people”. His experience being underpaid and then beaten in the middle of the street makes him reflect on past experiences, realizing how hard rickshaw drivers work, most probably leading to their deaths. By talking to other drivers, specifically Tu, Lang learned about how impossible it was to make a living wage and how Supervisors would take advantage of drivers by taking their ID. He learned how Rickshaw drivers have essentially used market psychology to maximize profits by making different types of passengers happy. In the end Lang appeals to the reader’s morals, saying that the upper classes have mistreated the rickshaw drivers for too long and that they deserve dignity and a living wage.

Cairo

Cairo represents a postcolonial megacity where informal settlements and modern development coexist.