ABSTRACT
For the survival of urban dwellers as individuals, as well as for the maintenance and development of cities as complex systems, access to sufficient and increasingly diversified sources of energy were essential. In this respect the nineteenth and twentieth centuries witnessed a series of major transformations for which cities were both the stage and in many instances also the actors. The fundamental shift in the energy base of European cities from solar to fossil sources occurred over a relatively wide time span, between the seventeenth century in London and the second half of the nineteenth century in large parts of continental Europe. This shift was paralleled as well as advanced through a series of transitions from low tech to higher tech and more diversified systems of energy provision and distribution. The most important urban energy source in most parts of Europe before industrialization was wood. In this field overall regulation was usually determined by the city but the task of transporting, distributing and processing energy sources was a personal and/or commercial responsibility. This system was first complemented and eventually replaced by networked systems of producing refined forms of energy (coal, gas, electricity), which were distributed through technical networks and progressively encompassed all parts of the urban territory. This ‘networking of the city’ engendered several far-reaching changes in urban life and culture, for instance, the rise of ‘night-life’ following on gaslighting or the emergence of efficient and ubiquitous means of urban transport which exploded in urban areas from the late nineteenth century on. This chapter will trace major developments in the energy provisioning of cities and ask what role urban agency played in this secular transformation.
