European Urbanities since 1945: A Commentary

Europe's history since 1945 has most commonly been seen through the prism of international politics and economic change, from post-war reconstruction to late twentieth-century deindustrialisation. Urban history has been tangential to these accounts. Hence Leif Jerram's call to arms in his book Streetlife, published in 2011: ‘it is time to put the where into the what and why of history’. The history of Europe's twentieth century, Jerram declared, happened ‘in the streets and factories, cinemas and nightclubs, housing estates and suburbs, offices and living rooms, shops and swimming baths of Europe's booming cities’.