‘The car indispensable’: the hidden influence of the car in inter-war suburban London

Histories of suburban London underplay the importance of the car to inter-war mobilities; an emphasis on public transport has occluded our understanding of the role of motoring in the transformation of suburban life. This is in marked contrast to work on American suburbia that affords the car a prime role in suburban formation. This article uses information from dealer's sales records, motoring magazines and commentary on suburbia to examine the extent to which motoring was adopted by London's wider suburban middle classes in the inter-war years. It concludes that by the end of the 1930s, suburban motoring had highly heterogeneous levels of adoption, but, where it was popular, it changed mobility in a dramatic manner that prefigured wider developments of the late 1950s.     

Revisiting the structuring effect of transportation infrastructure: An empirical approach with the French railway network from 1860 to 1910

The development of the French railway network was mostly planned in a centralized manner. Despite the multiplication of travel opportunities, the local impact on the demographics is often given as an indirect effect of this spatial transformation. However, this “structuring effect” is still subject to controversies within the academia.

In this paper, we construct a historical geographic information system describing the evolution of the French network. We use it to compute accessibility measures based on network access and travel durations. We first observe that the network growth indeed achieved the various planning goals in terms of functional accessibility. We then present further evidences that the “structuring effect” of the train network on cities demographics is very limited if not null.     

Density and dispersion: the co-development of land use and rail in London

This article examines the changes that occurred in the railnetwork and density of population in London during the 19thand 20th centuries. It aims to disentangle the ‘chickenand egg’ problem of which came first, network or landdevelopment, through a set of statistical analyses clearly distinguishingevents by order. Using panel data representing the 33 boroughsof London over each decade from 1871 to 2001, the research findsthat there is a positive feedback effect between populationdensity and network density. Additional rail stations (eitherUnderground or surface) are positive factors leading to subsequentincreases in population in the suburbs of London, while additionalpopulation density is a factor in subsequently deploying morerail. These effects differ in central London, where the additionalaccessibility produced by rail led to commercial developmentand concomitant depopulation. There are also differences inthe effects associated with surface rail stations and Undergroundstations, as the Underground was able to get into central Londonin a way that surface rail could not. However, the two networkswere weak (and statistically insignificant) substitutes foreach other in the suburbs, while the density of surface railstations was a complement to the Underground in the center,though not vice versa.     

Political Ideas and Audiences: The Case of Arthur Bryant and the Illustrated London News, 1936–1945

Political leaders rely upon particular individuals or party organisations to reach potential constituencies, but they can only guess at the probable effect any agent has on those electors. For politicians anxious to seize and hold power, it is very good news when one of their partisans establishes and maintains a faithful following. The complexities of understanding influence, especially in the 20th century, are compounded by the difficulties of identifying the myriad interests expressed in a variety of contending forums as well as at the polls. While archives of printed, spoken, and viewed materials allow us to recover what political figures said to various audiences, it is very difficult to demonstrate that expressed ideas actually affected political thinking or political conduct. It is a further speculative leap to imagine what audiences actually heard, what they wanted to hear, and what they made of what they believed they heard. In a written or spoken or pictorial effort to transmit ideas, the intention and purpose may be stated explicitly but the contents of the ideas may still be equivocal. Different kinds of audiences and different members of the same audience will find a variety of meanings, often contradictory, in what they read, hear, or see. Arthur Bryant, a popular historian, journalist, and polemicist was remarkably successful in proclaiming the merits of a pragmatic and ideological conservatism to a multiplicity of large, loyal audiences through the end of the Second World War. This essay examines Bryant's remarkable audience in the Illustrated London News and the ways in which he engaged and retained them for nearly 50 years.     

中国的成功之路

中国这个人口众多、贫穷落后的东方大国正在迅速崛起。人们争相探究中国成功的奥秘,做出种种判断。中国人民则从切身经验中体认到:中国特色社会主义是我们的成功之路。中国特色社会主义的探索经历了漫长的历程,走过曲折的道路。毛泽东第一个提出,要找出在中国建设社会主义的具体道路,并为此进行了艰辛探索,奠定了中国特色社会主义的基础。经历了“文化大革命”内乱之后,以邓小平为代表的中国共产党人在接受教训、总结经验的基础上,成功地开辟了一条中国特色社会主义新道路,创立了马克思主义与当代中国实践和时代特征相结合的中国特色社会主义理论。以江泽民为核心的第三代领导集体坚定不移地沿着建设中国特色社会主义道路与时俱进,开拓创新,改革开放和社会主义现代化事业不断前进,中国特色社会主义理论不断发展,逐步形成了“三个代表”重要思想这一系统的科学理论。中共十六大以后,以胡锦涛为总书记的党中央在新阶段伟大实践的基础上,总结新经验,作出新概括,进一步提出了科学发展观和构建社会主义和谐社会的任务,丰富、发展了邓小平理论和“三个代表”重要思想。中国的成功之路是中国共产党三代领导集体领导中国人民经过艰辛探索走出来的。从认识论、方法论来看,取得成功的重要原因是:遵循实事求是的思想路线;从错误中学习;在打压中自强;在反倾向斗争中前进;尊重群众的首创精神;抓住机遇,迎接挑战。     

Limits of incremental growth in seasonality studies: The example of the clariid pectoral spines from the Byzantino-Islamic site of Apamea (Syria; sixth to seventh century AD)

An evaluation is given of the value for seasonality studies of incremental growth in the pectoral spines of the Nile catfish Clarias gariepinus. The subfossil spines used for this study are from a Byzantino-Islamic site in Syria, and probably all derive from animals captured on the floodplain during the yearly inundation of the nearby Orontes river, although only 45 per cent of the spines could be recognized as deriving from fish captured during that period. It is believed that the inability to date accurately the season of capture of the other specimens is due to disadvantages inherent in the growth cycle of the fish. For the moment it is possible to determine the season of death only of individuals that were taken during a period of rapid growth.     

Ripping the Heart out of Ancoats: Collective Action to Defend Infrastructures of Social Reproduction against Gentrification

The article exposes attacks on infrastructures of social reproduction as a prime gentrification strategy, but also as an effective focal point for community resistance. We exemplify this through the conflict over Ancoats Dispensary, a Victorian hospital at the heart of one of the UK's most deprived communities in East Manchester, which faced demolition following the 2000 New Islington Regeneration Plan. Using ethnographic and archival data we show how 200 years of community struggles for healthcare became catalytic for establishing Ancoats’ working class identity and how Ancoats Dispensary became the spatial/material and symbolic infrastructure for community continuity. The building's socially embedded history became key for articulating anti‐gentrification struggles as its planned demolition was seen as a symbolic demolition of the community itself. Local citizens formed the Ancoats Dispensary Trust and utilised tactics from historical struggles and entrepreneurial strategies to envision an alternative future in the defence of social reproduction infrastructures.     

Local employment growth patterns and the Great Recession: The case of Spain

The 2008 financial and economic crisis has led to widespread destruction of employment in Spain. Using municipality data, I examine employment growth differences between urban cores, urban hinterlands, and rural areas during the pre‐crisis period and the recession period. The data show that patterns of growth and decline have been very uneven across different types of areas. While in the boom years, hinterlands and rural areas experienced higher growth, urban core areas have done better during the recession years. I then test three strands of explanations for local growth differences: (i) the role of the local sectoral composition, (ii) the role of human capital, and (iii) the role of access to urban core areas. Estimations for employment growth in the two periods show that the crisis has altered some of the drivers of local employment growth and that human capital has been a key determinant of local resilience during the Great Recession.     

The relationship of bone mineral density and other growth parameters to stress indicators in a medieval juvenile population

In this study the radii of 34 juveniles from Wharram Percy, a British medieval site, were measured for bone mineral density (BMD) using dual energy X‐ray absorptiometry (DXA) in order to investigate evidence of stress including Harris lines, cribra orbitalia and deficient cortical index, which is usually attributed to poor nutrition. BMD measurements are used in modern children to assess growth and development and generally correlate with linear growth. Only rare chronic illnesses affect bone mineral accrual in children. Radiographs of the radii were examined to assess cortical index and of the femora and radii for Harris lines. The results indicate that BMD is well correlated with dental age and linear growth, but is poorly correlated with cortical index. The variability in cortical index indicates the influence of environmental factors. There is no relationship between BMD and the presence or absence of Harris lines or cribra orbitalia. Thus, despite obvious evidence of skeletal stress in this juvenile population, bone was not under‐mineralised and bone mineral accrual proceeded normally with growth. This reinforces the conclusion that cortical index is a more sensitive indicator of environmental stress than either Harris lines or cribra orbitalia, and may be compared with BMD measurements to assess the effect of stress on growth. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reading menageries: using eighteenth-century print sources to historicise the sensorium of menagerie spectators and their encounters with exotic animals

Histories of exotic animal collection and display in Britain during the long eighteenth century have not been conventionally concerned with the sensory or bodily experiences of menagerie spectators. Olfactory, haptic and aural impressions – as well as the affective responses of laughter, disgust, anger and sympathy, are conspicuously absent in attempts to historicise animal collections. This paper principally argues that these often historically intangible and transient sensory experiences with animals were culturally significant acts or readings that produced meaning. To understand how spectators utilised their senses as an interpretive tool in reading menageries the article draws upon eighteenth-century understandings of the senses and bodily comfort. The manipulation of exotic animal bodies in menageries during the long eighteenth century had significant implications for British spectators. It is argued that their specific notions of Britishness in relationship to these captive animals from foreign climes articulated elite cultural notions of gender, climate and national character. In writing a sensory history of exotic animals in eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Britain the author contextualises the reading of contemporary print material with the concomitant experience of the material animals to which this print matter referred. What emerges is a reminder that the act of reading should not be isolated from the production of knowledge through other embodied experiences since such a dichotomy is arguably problematic for historians.