GREGORIO NUÑEZ

This volume emerges from a series of meetings held over a number of years by different specialists from a variety of countries who are experts on the history of cities during the industrial age. Specifically, they worked on the set up and administration of the municipal services of these cities. It has been a long journey which significantly encouraged the growth and maturity of the subject. The original group of experts was, at one point, larger than the collection of authors whose work is reflected in these pages. There are varied reasons and a number of practical contingencies, which are not all strictly scientific, which have led to the final exclusion of some texts. However, the participation of those authors in the debates was useful and it confirms, from the very beginning, the idea that the panorama offered is wider and more articulate still than is manifested here. The aforementioned meetings took place during recent years with the aim of studying urban services and infrastructures from an historical perspective throughout the second industrial revolution. Therefore, the chronological framework starts in the mid-nineteenth century, when the explosive growth of industrial cities generated serious demographic and social problems on a scale previously unknown. This framework continues until the second half of the 20th century, which is when the advanced societies of Europe and America finally managed to establish the valid criteria and the necessary instruments to solve such challenges. Included in the great historical process that some specialists have labelled the "first globalization", the subject here presented offers a broad and very significant sample of the urban history of the world.