When the German version of the present book was published I had not yet come across
the slightly earlier Stadterweiterungen 1800–1875: Von den Anfängen des modernen
Städtebaues in Deutschland (1983) edited by Gerhard Fehl and Juan Rodriguez-Lores. If
I have understood the main thesis of their book correctly, it is that an earlier planning
tradition stemming from the royal courts and imbued with a sense of social responsibility
and high aesthetic standards, was losing ground at the beginning of the nineteenth
century. It was to be followed by a period of speculation and chaos, in which weak
authorities were content to try to impose a superficial veil of order over a chaotic real
world. Only towards the end of the century did a type of planning evolve which was once
again capable of producing order of a more solid kind. All through this process, the
conditions of land ownership had played a decisive part. By and large this is also my ownpicture of developments in the same period. This first book was followed by another, in
two volumes, in 1985, namely Städtebaureform 1865–1900: Von Licht, Luft und
Ordnung in der Stadt der Gründerzeit which also up to a point addresses the same issues
as are taken up here, albeit mainly during the period after the major capital city projects.8
Not until the English version of my own book was virtually finished did I become
aware of Walter Kieß’s Urbanismus im Industriezeitalter: Von der klassizistischen Stadt
zur Garden City (1991). This book—which provides the most exhaustive documentation
and analysis hitherto of nineteenth-century urban development, including capital city
planning—would have supplied me with valuable reference material. Recently Gerhard
Fehl and Juan Rodriguez-Lores have published Stadt-Umbau: Die planmäβige
Erneuerung europäischer Groβstädte zwischen Wiener Kongreβ und Weimarer Republik
(1995) in their impressive Stadt Planung Geschichte series, covering in part the same
material as I do here. Whereas their earlier volumes primarily address urban extensions,
the focus this time is on improvement and redevelopment projects.