Observers of 19th-century cities frequently wrote about ‘urban types’, the new kinds of human beings they found in these new conurbations, with their own distinctive physiognomies and folkways. This habit has not gone away and in this talk I will discuss some characteristic ‘urban types’ of the late 20th century.
The jogger, the mugger and the hipster were all seen at points between the 1960s and the 2000s as distinctive features of the urban landscape that required identification and analysis. They all tended to be global in nature but also to have some distinctive British variations. They were used by the mass media to talk about new urban problems deemed to be specific to the late 20th century. And they also represented different phases in the decline and revival of the big city, beset by deindustrialization but also by gentrification. An account of these urban types can therefore tell us about how cities were argued over, objects of anxiety and desire, in a period of rapid cultural and social change.
Professor Peter Mandler is the President of the national Historical Association, and has previously been President of the Royal Historical Association. He is the Professor of Cultural History in the University of Cambridge History Department, specialising in Intellectual History since 1800, with particular research devoted to the history of the humanities and social sciences with their impact in English speaking countries since 1945. His latest book is The Crisis of the Meritocracy:Britain’s Transition to Mass Education since the Second World War. Published 2020.
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