Bringing Order to the Cities

European cities became the backdrop for displays of state power and accomplishment. Governments focused on improving capital cities such as Vienna and Rome with handsome parks, widened streets, stately museums, and massive city halls. In 1857, Austrian emperor Francis Joseph ordered that the old Viennese city walls be replaced with boulevards lined with major public buildings such as the opera house and government offices. These buildings were concrete evidence of national wealth and power, and the broad boulevards allowed crowds to observe royal pageantry. The wide roads were also easier for troops to navigate than the twisted, narrow medieval streets that in 1848 had concealed insurrectionists in cities like Paris and Vienna. Impressive parks and public gardens showed the state’s control of nature, ordered people’s leisure time, and inspired respect for the nation-state’s achievements.

Construction first required destruction: buildings and entire neighborhoods that had intermingled rich and poor disappeared, and thousands of city dwellers were dislocated. Newly built expensive housing was separated from the poor sections of the city. In Paris, the process of urban change was called Haussmannization, named for the prefect Georges-Eugène Haussmann, who implemented a grand design that included eighty-five miles of new streets, many lined with showy dwellings for the wealthy. In London, the many new banks and insurance companies, one architect believed, “help[ed] the impression of stability.” There was an expectation that the civic pride resulting from urban rebuilding would replace rebelliousness and disunity.

Amid redevelopment, serious problems menaced the urban population. Repeated epidemics of diseases such as cholera killed alarming numbers of city dwellers and gave the strong impression of social decay, not national power. Poor sanitation allowed typhoid bacteria to spread through sewage and into water supplies, infecting rich and poor alike. In 1861, Britain’s Prince Albert—the beloved husband of Queen Victoria—reputedly died of typhoid fever, commonly known as a “filth disease.” Heaps of animal excrement in chicken coops, pigsties, and stables; unregulated urban slaughterhouses; and piles of human waste were breeding grounds for disease, making sanitation a top priority.

Scientific research, increasingly undertaken in publicly financed laboratories and hospitals, provided the means to promote public health and control disease. France’s Louis Pasteur, three of whose young daughters had also died of typhoid, advanced the germ theory of disease. He suggested that bacteria and parasites might be responsible for human and animal diseases. Pasteur demonstrated that heating foods such as wine and milk to a certain temperature, a process that soon became known as pasteurization, killed these organisms and made food safe. English surgeon Joseph Lister applied Pasteur’s germ theory of disease to infection and developed antiseptics for treating wounds and preventing puerperal fever, a condition caused by the dirty hands of physicians and midwives that killed innumerable women after childbirth.

Governments undertook projects to modernize sewer and other sanitary systems and to straighten rivers. Citizens often prized such improvements as signs of national superiority. In Paris, sewage flowed into newly built, watertight underground collectors. In addition, Haussmann piped in water from uncontaminated sources in the countryside to provide each household with a secure supply. To prevent devastating floods and to eliminate disease-ridden marshlands, governments rerouted and straightened rivers such as the Rhine and built canals. Improved sanitation testified to the activist state’s ability to bring about progress.

Citizens responded positively to improvements in everyday life. When sanitary public toilets for men became a feature of modern cities, women petitioned governments for similar facilities. More aware of dirt, disease, and smells, the middle classes bathed more regularly, sometimes even once a week. People’s concerns for refinement and health mirrored governments’ pursuit of order.