CFP: Session at the European Association for Urban History (EAUH) conference, Barcelona, from Wednesday September 2 to Saturday September 5, 2026. 

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Session 56

Magnus Linnarsson

Stockholm University, Stockholm

Greet De Block

University of Antwerp

public services, urban politics, citizenship, infrastructure, welfare services

In the second half of the nineteenth-century, cities across the continent and in the British Isles began to invest money and resources in various types of large-scale infrastructure systems. Local authorities and politicians gradually took greater responsibility in improving welfare and well-being of urban citizens by providing connections with new, efficient and healthy infrastructure networks, such as sewage systems, water supply systems, rail transportation and hospitals. Also, new forms of regulation and identification of citizens’ bodies and practices emerged in relation to these networks. In order to accomplish this feat, an increasing number of urban public services were instituted, particularly between 1840 and 1940. Municipal governments became providers of public goods, rather than mere administrators of social obligations.

These public services were the result of both political strife and a growing sense of social responsibility and control of city authorities. At the same time, the extension of public services and the access to the ‘welfare city’ opened new opportunities for bargaining and negotiating the right to the city. While an increasing number of urban residents were granted access to public provision, inaccessibility and the exclusion of population became more visible. This meant a change in the nature of politics and increased contestation and politization. Those who were connected and benefited from the new public services demanded a say in their organisation and management. Those who were not connected, were denied access to the city, and ‘infrastruggles’ became the battle ground to claim citizenship. Thus, problematisations of access to infrastructure was formative for the emerging features of citizenship

The period 1840–1940 encompasses a processual shift in what kind of public services were central to municipal authorities, from material infrastructures to more social, cultural and green services, and the session aims to discuss this shift. The session invites papers on various aspects of the expansion of urban public services in the period 1840–1940. We are particularly interested in papers dealing with both infrastructure and urban citizenship. Furthermore, we welcome papers addressing political conflicts about the expansion of public services, as well as papers addressing the topic of public or private administration of said services.