If you want to scope out all of modern history from a single vantage point,
you can do a heck of a lot worse than London. The capital of England got itself an involuntary fresh
start in 1666 when the old medieval city burned to the dust. So with a blank canvas and a hefty
allowance from the ever-expanding British Empire, London rolled out a flurry of shiny new buildings,
fancy church spires, and the Neoclassical Colossus that is St Paul’s Cathedral.
that’s a good dome. As the empire grew and London became even more prosperous, public mega-works
continued with a new seat for the British Parliament at the Neogothic Westminster Palace.
In the 1800s, London was sporting some of Europe’s hottest architecture, but soon came the industrial
revolution, which literally upended the entire city: coal-burning factories blew
smoke into the sky, railway stations the size of cathedrals transported people goods and materials,
the world’s first subway system carved tunnels underneath the city, and the population swelled
by a factor of seven with newcomers from the isles and across the worldwide empire. Such vast
and rapid transformation gives London a fair claim to being the first Modern City. And all the while,
London was the driving engine of the world’s biggest empire — heck of a vantage point indeed.
When Scotland signed the Act of Union with England in 1707, their old capital city of Edinburgh was
in rough shape. The hilltop castle was a scenic reminder of Scotland’s famously combative medieval
history, but the city around it was small, dark, cramped, and unimaginably filthy. The one ace up
Scotland’s sleeve were the Scots themselves, who took the Protestant Reformation as an excuse to
whip up one of the most free-thinking and robust education systems you’d find anywhere. This kicked
up an intellectual whirlwind in the 1700s, as Scottish philosophers, economists, historians,
poets, and scientists made Edinburgh the cerebral capital of Enlightenment Europe.
Before too long, Scots were relived and probably a bit impressed to see their city finally catch up
with their heads. Starting in 1767, Edinburgh drained the Nor Loch and built a gridded,
orderly, and oh-so-NeoClassical New Town on the other side. Not to be outdone,
Victorian architects in the late 1800s remodeled the Old Town in a gorgeous NeoGothic, so I see
this as an absolute win. Edinburgh prospered off of a ballooning British Empire, but it
largely sidestepped the Industrial Revolution, instead remaining the academic, architectural,
and administrative heart of Scotland: a city shaped by the very ideas it represents.
Not only did Wales play Second-Fiddle to England for the millennium since
its conquest by the Normans, but Wales had never been one for big urban centers. Architecturally,
it was better known for the absolute ass-ton of castles the Normans built to keep Wales in line,
such as Cardiff Castle, set on top of an old Roman fort from a thousand years earlier.
But in the 1800s, Cardiff suddenly became an integral link in the chain of British
cities because of a little old thing called coal. During the Industrial Revolution,
this precious rock let all the trains go choo choo and made all of Britain’s fancy new machines
actually do anything, and southern Wales happened to be loaded with the stuff.
After some initial upgrades to the dockyards in the early 1800s, Cardiff became one of the busiest
ports in the world by the middle of the century, with all Welsh coal flowing through their docks
and railyards to reach the rest of Britain and beyond. In the Victorian period, Brits poured
into Wales in general and Cardiff in particular, ratcheting up the city’s population from 2,000 to
over Eighty times that (170k) by 1900. While the city took new shape, it also polished up Cardiff
Castle and other original structures. At the turn of the millennium, Cardiff became the seat of the
new Welsh Senedd, and built itself a lovely parliament building. From one castle to the
capital is quite the glow-up.
Dublin is the city that dragged Ireland kicking and screaming through its history. It was first
founded in the 800s by Viking traders (raiders), and after the initial Norman conquests of 1169,
nice, it was the main English foothold in Ireland for the next 5 centuries. Holding the
dubious distinction of being England’s first colony, Dublin was the biggest urban center
on the island. And it would receive quite the makeover following its hammering in the British
Civil Wars. Replanned basically from scratch, the new Dublin was packed with enlightenment ideals:
wide streets, classical designs, and splendid public buildings. Built by
and for British protestants with boatloads of Empire Money, the native Catholic Irish
population was distinctly among the lower of Dublin’s classes, and this caused some tension.
In 1798 the Irish rebelled (again), tried to capture Dublin, but succeeded only in antagonizing
the British for another straight century. Don’t worry, they kept on rebelling, culminating in the
Easter Rising in 1916, Ireland’s three-year war for independence in 1919, and a brief civil war
ending in ‘23 — all of them fought in the streets of Dublin, which became the capital of the Irish
Republic. Buildings like its post office capture the city’s history: a grand Georgian edifice,
riddled with bullet holes from the Easter Rising. A beautiful city… kicking and screaming.
As British architects throughout history have bragged, the monument to their empire
is the cities they left behind. The numerous faults of the British Empire notwithstanding,
those architects had a point. These cities didn't just find cool new ways to stack up stone,
but they set the model for how modern cities interacted and meaningfully reinforced each other,
both ideologically and industrially. With any of these pieces missing,
Britain wouldn’t have been nearly as successful as it was. But what might be most impressive is
how rapidly they all redefined themselves, basically from scratch, inside of only a
century or two. But critically, they kept the castles! Are they practically useful?
Mostly not. Are they sick as hell? Yes. Credit to the Brits, they make some damn fine cities.
Thank you so much for watching! I have really been enjoying making this city minutes series,
and I already have so, SO many ideas for where to go next. But I’m still rather new at these,
so please let me know your thoughts on how I can improve the series.
Thanks as always to our patrons, and I’ll see you in the next video!