Ladd describes the struggle of German leaders to bring order to their rapidly growing cities during the age of industrial expansion before World War I, setting the emerging theory and practice of city planning in the context of debates about the nature of the modern city and the possibility of improving society by regulating physical environments.
This unique contribution to social and urban history describes the struggle of prosperous German bourgeois leaders to bring order to their rapidly growing cities during the tumultuous age of industrial expansion in the decades before World War I. Brian Ladd sets the emerging theory and practice of city planning in the context of debates about the nature of the modern city and the possibility of improving society by regulating its physical environment. In so doing, he reveals the extent to which modern city planning is a product of the aspirations, prejudices, and frustrations of the German burghers who created it.
