Inverting Haussmannization

Reviews / Votes

This marvelous book provides critical insight into the relationships between technology, society, and the urban environment in a modernizing Paris. Peter S. Soppelsa lays bare the visible and invisible aspects of the infrastructure that shaped both the form and the human experience of the city's vertical, spatial, and subterranean geographies. The result is an essential portrait of the uneven reach of Paris's infrastructures of transportation, sanitation, and organization, which both reflected and reinforced novel inequalities. -- Richard C. Keller, University of Wisconsin-Madison Well-written and conceived, Paris After Haussmann presents an original perspective on the making of an iconic modern city, and will make an important contribution to historical studies of nineteenth-century Paris specifically, as well as the fields of French history, science and technology studies, and modern urban history more generally. -- Min Kyung Lee, Bryn Mawr College Paris after Haussmann offers key insight into the ideal and reality of living with urban modernity in the City of Light. Peter Soppelsa lays bare the entanglement of infrastructure, environment, health, and society. A groundbreaking analysis and a great read. -- Rosemary Wakeman, Fordham University