Enlightenment in a Smart City: Edinburgh’s Civic Development, 1660-1750
Edinburgh's Enlightenment explained through its drains, its street plans, and the building regulations behind them.
Murray Pittock examines how Edinburgh physically remade itself between 1660 and 1750, and argues that the civic improvements, the building reforms and the resulting density of sociable space were preconditions for the intellectual flowering that followed. A material explanation for something usually treated as purely a history of ideas.
Recommended by 1 Person
Tyler Cowen
Murray Pittock, Enlightenment in a Smart City: Edinburgh’s Civic Development 1660-1750 is an excellent book on how the built environment of Edinburgh, and its building reforms and improvements, shaped the Scottish Enlightenment. Gives a better sense of the Edinburgh of the time than any other book I know.
Source · March 2023
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