The City and the Railway in Europe (review)

In Ashgate's series Historical Urban Studies, Ralf Roth and Marie-Noëlle Polino have brought together fourteen chapters that address the influence of railway construction on the development of cities and vice versa. The Europe of the title should not be interpreted too literally, as Siberia and the Levant are also covered. After a general introduction by the coeditors, Roth chooses Berlin, Frankfurt am Main, and Oberhausen as examples of different kinds of growth and reciprocal influence. Next comes Henk Schmal for the Netherlands, who restricts himself to the years 1830–60, when the Dutch railway network was still very small. Michel Tanase then relates interesting examples of railway construction in certain areas of Transylvania (Romania), while Vilma Hastaoglou-Martinides covers the development of ancient cities such as Smyrna and Salonika after the railway came through. Portugal is ably represented by Magda Pinheiro in her study of Lisbon and Porto, followed by Andrea Giuntini, who discusses factors that influenced the growth of Milan, Florence, and Rome.

After these general chapters, several capital cities are covered in more detail: Paris by François Caron, Prague by Alena Kubova, London by Neil McAlpine and Austin Smyth, Dublin by Hugh Campbell, and Helsinki by Anja Kervanto Nevanlinna. These five chapters, all very well researched and well written, follow more or less the same pattern, but a different approach is made by Pamela E. Swett, who discusses the relationship between urban transportation and the growth of radicalism—both right wing and left wing—in several neighborhoods of Berlin in the days of the Weimar Republic. Even more distinct from the general pattern is the last chapter, by Diane Drummond, who looks at the impact of railways on the lives of working women. Drummond concentrates on railway traffic in England and the growth of suburbanism brought on by the railway and its sequel for working women. She also describes the way that women were able to travel alone without male escort, something unheard-of before the coming of the railway.

The various chapters present evidence of a marked difference between old cities, where the railway was seen as an intruder and destroyer of urban areas, and new cities that sprang up or grew suddenly as a result of railway construction. In western Europe, most cities were indeed old and the building of stations could mean destruction of slum areas on a large scale, as was the case in London where construction of stations such as Liverpool Street and Saint Pancras necessitated the relocation of thousands of the poorer population. Many railway companies avoided this expensive procedure and located their stations just outside the built-up area of cities. Amsterdam, Berlin, and Paris come to mind, but many more instances can be found in this book. At the other end of the spectrum is Siberia, where the land was almost empty before the Trans-Siberian Railway came through; new cities sprang up along the line and the few existing towns on navigable rivers could develop only if the railway did not pass them by. Some smaller European cities showed a phenomenal growth as a result of the coming of the railway, as Roth explains in the case of Oberhausen.

Taken all together, this is an interesting volume on a subject that has been somewhat neglected by transportation and urban historians. Only in Great Britain, Germany, and France have historians thoroughly studied the impact of railways on cities; elsewhere there is still a notable lack of such work, and this book may well encourage further research. It is well-produced, with more than fifty illustrations and maps, several tables, complete bibliographies for every chapter, and a useful index.