Overview
- Presents a historical perspective on the transformation of Western European cities following the Second World War
- Focuses on the long 1970s, a period in which grassroots mobilisation rocked urban politics
- Highlights the role of local inhabitants in collective action in European cities
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements (PSHSM)
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Keywords
- post-war Europe
- Urban activism
- Western Europe
- Cities
- Gentrification
- Urban democracy
- Social movements
- local histories
- collective action
- Mobilisation
- Industrialisation
- Welfare
- Protest
- Labour
- Social justice
- Urban change
- Social sciences
- Class
- Democratization
- Long 1970s
About this book
Bringing together contributions from social, political, and urban historians, this collection examines social movements in Western European cities from the 1950s to the 1980s. Since their post-war recovery and reconstruction, cities in this part of the world underwent far-reaching societal transitions such as deindustrialisation and the rise of the service economy, the rise and decline of local welfare regimes, suburbanisation and urban redevelopment, and the democratisation of urban politics. Indeed, the sources for urban activism have been manifold and the rehistoricization of this era through an urban lens is therefore valuable. The authors of this volume seek to provide a comprehensive and multifaceted understanding of how structural socio-economic, political, and cultural changes; ideological shifts; and urban spaces were intertwined in various place-dependent ways. By doing so, they offer fresh comparative and conceptual perspectives on urban activism. The book focuses on the ‘long 1970s’ – a structural break in time across the industrial West, which corresponded with the emergence of new social movements and an urban crisis that left a wasteland of abandoned factories, dilapidated workers’ housing, and stalling redevelopment schemes in its wake. Addressing how the post-industrial revolution socially, ideologically, and physically manifested itself in the urban environment, this book provides useful insights for those researching urban history, social history, political history, and social movement studies.
Editors and Affiliations
About the editors
Tim Verlaan is Assistant Professor of Urban History at the Amsterdam Centre for Urban History in the Netherlands. He is an Associate Editor at Urban History and a founding member of Failed Architecture.
Christian Wicke is Assistant Professor of Political History at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. He is founding chair of the working group ‘Memory & Deindustrialisation’ within the European Labour History Network. Christian has published several academic books, including Deindustrialisation in Twentieth-Century Europe (Palgrave, 2022).
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Urban Activism in Western Europe from the 1950s to 1980s
Editors: Tim Verlaan, Christian Wicke
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in the History of Social Movements
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: History, History (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-57641-6Due: 26 July 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-57644-7Due: 26 July 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-57642-3Due: 26 July 2024
Series ISSN: 2634-6559
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6567
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 205