Topic 3A: Transport and its Impact on Cities - Lucas Wells

I felt that this week’s readings concentrated on two main topics. How transport can shape and reshape the urban and the rural environment and how transport planning/design/construction is carried out and implemented between state and non-state actors.

Mukerji discusses the history of the Canal du Midi. At the time a massive engineering undertaking that exceeded the knowledge required at the time for many of the issues raised. However the most enduring feature of this canal was how it reshaped the rural environment and economy. The construction of a canal from the Atlantic to the Mediterranean was seen as a double security for the French state. The ability to route trade though its own territory instead of through the Straits of Gibraltar and the imposition of the power of the state over “dissident regions to create a permanent state presence” – in this case, Languedoc.

The idea for the canal was from an entrepreneur who leveraged this desire by France for the above goals to further his own power and wealth. The partnership between the state and private enterprise was not new. However the infrastructure was therefore built with an eye on benefitting both the state and the entrepreneur –with the entrepreneur probably benefitting most as the limits of state power and reach were much more limited in the 17^th century.

The ability to build the canal was hindered by the sciences and knowledge of the time. Adequate maps of the area were predominantly military in nature, but their shortcomings were bolstered by ethnography that was undertaken to incorporate local understanding and knowledge of the areas. Ethnography therefore helped to balance a little the needs and desires of both the state and the private industry in deciding some aspects of the canal. However even this was unable to guarantee the success of the canal. Which while finished, failed to live up to the hype.

This balance and the consequences are also discussed in the Kellett reading. Even though there is a 150-200 year difference between the construction of the Canal du Midi and the construction of train lines within urban areas of England, the limitations or restrictions on state/private partnerships to build transport infrastructure is even starker. Kellett talks about the impact and effect the “driving of the railway into the city” had on the urban infrastructure and social fabric. The viaducts needed for the rail lines saw the wholesale demolition of large tracks of existing housing and created impermeable barriers amongst neighbourhoods.  Such changes also saw the flight of capital to improve residential areas close to such railways as “they were frozen as far as renovation or improvement was concerned, as completely as if time had stopped in 1830. Capital sunk into replacing residential housing in such an environment with a more up-to-date equivalent was obviously considered capital wasted”.

It is hardly surprising when you consider the environment around railways as Charles Dickens describes, “Everything around is blackened. There are dark pools of water, muddy lanes, and miserable habitations far below. There are jagged walls and filthy houses close at hand, and through the battered roofs and broken windows, wretched rooms are seen…”.

This passage gives an indication of not only the environmentally effects of coal-burning trains but the height at which they dominated low rise neighbourhoods and the close proximity they had to residential areas.

The desire to build railways was based on economic factors that were impressed upon governments as a way to improve the economy of cities.  And while railways did activate and cluster economic and manufacturing close to them, they could be described as compressing these cities rather an assisting them to expand. By demolishing so much housing to build railways without replacement or improving the existing housing stock, workers were forced into substandard housing to remain within easy commute distance to work opportunities. It would seem that the ideal of a house with a garden in the outer suburbs or satellite towns was enabled by the very infrastructure that seemed to accentuate and propagate all that was wrong with the urban.

Both the readings touch on the rapidly changing and advancing nature of the state, technology and science. However they also highlight the fascination with building and reducing risk more than the consequences or impact such infrastructure might have. The Canal du Midi, though it was able to overcome many of the seemingly insurmountable challenges of building a canal over mountains without adequately understanding the watershed areas needed to power it; was eventually limited by the inability to build an adequate Mediterranean port that would not continually silt up. However its construction reshaped the environment physically, socially and economically even though it was not as successful as envisaged.

The reshaping of the Victorian cities was even more pronounced due to the larger populations involved and the more concentrated nature of the cities. The railways, while viable, used and successful; had a major impact on the layout and functioning of the cities they penetrated.  They functioned to expand the economic reach of cities while also enabling a geographic disconnected between industrial inner cities and residential outer cities. Little heed was initially paid to the disruptive effects railway viaducts would have on the urban fabric as private enterprise was less affected by the consequence of this than the state.

While not covered by the readings, eventually the state took over the planning, construction and control of transport infrastructure. I can only surmise that the ad-hoc nature of much of this infrastructure, which had narrow economic and financial foci and were not always required to take into account existing or future problems and needs, had an impact on the state acquiring more and more of these rights. The current debates over public/private partnerships with governments shows that many of the lessons learnt in the past have now been forgotten. However the balance between the private, the state and the general public has evened out much more than during the histories exampled in the readings.