An Atlas of Rare City Maps: Comparative Urban Design 1830-1842 (review)

This collection of 40 maps was originally published in the mid 19th century by the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge in a series of 60. The Society had the then-revolutionary goal of making information about the world accessible to anyone who was curious (rather than just those who could afford it), as well as those who regardless of their economic means needed to have their curiosities piqued, those, as the book puts it,

whose minds are listless or engrossed with other pursuits—debauched by pleasures, occupied with business, enervated by indolent habits—and who regard the effort of gaining knowledge as a toil, the pain of which is inadequately recompensed by the acquisition.

In this vein the Society also published The Household Almanac, The Penny Cyclopaedia, The Library for the Young, The Working-Man's Companion, The Gallery of Portraits, The Map of the Heavens, The Statistics of Great Britain and various mathematical tables and treatises.

Maps provide snapshots of mid-19th-century Alexandria, Amsterdam, Calcutta, Constantinople, Copenhagen, Dublin, Edinburgh, Geneva, Madrid, Stockholm and Vienna, as well as eight cities in Italy, five in Germany, four in France, three apiece in England and the United States and two each in Belgium, Portugal and Russia.

Not so much a detriment as a point of curiosity is the missing third of the original series of 60 that was left out of this collection. It would have been interesting to see Mexico City and Havana, Edo and Manila, Johannesburg and Timbuktu, all thriving cities at this time, included. Even a reference that listed the maps originally published in the series but left out of this collection would have been instructive and more complete.

This series of publications hails from the same period that gave birth to deductive theories of geography and economics such as Von Thunen's theory of land use and Cristaller's modeling of central place theory in Germany. Did the publication of these maps inform this ideological movement? Probably not, since these models generalized from idealized places rather than drawing conclusions from observations of and comparisons based upon broad sources. Their publication is more akin to the adventurous spirit that roamed the world collecting orchids and artifacts of earlier cultures, solving mysteries and not coincidentally advancing empire. Sherlock Holmes probably found these maps invaluable.

For the contemporary urban planner these reproductions of the original high-quality engravings are a rich resource. Beyond being very fine examples of the craft of cartography, they serve as a time capsule or transport vehicle and expose a world view that identified these as the Great Cities of the time. This perspective is not one limited to the information required to trace a pedigree to "classic" roots or to substantiate the pride of colonialism, but rather it supports a notion of the common good promoted by personal improvement based on exposure to facts for their own sake.

As planners work to improve upon the early foundational models of urban studies, these plates can help to answer questions framed today by drawing upon comparisons and similarities observed within complex city systems, perhaps avoiding previous mistakes that might have been made through oversimplification. Any practical application as a planning tool aside, this atlas nourishes the imagination with lovely detail from a time just out of reach yet still clearly influencing the way we live now.