Towns go public : Urban services and the broadening ofurban communities in Scandinavia 1850–1920

From the mid-nineteenth century and onwards, debates on urban public services became an integral part of municipal politics in Nordic towns. The industrial revolution came late in Nordic countries and the problem of how to integrate immigrants and factory workers into existing networks became paramount at the end of the century. This paper will discuss how municipal bodies tackled the problem of making the city accessible to new groups in the urban landscape. New forms of infrastructure had been introduced by private initiative: water, gas, electricity, tramways etc. In city councils and popular press, proponents of equal access argued that such services should be controlled and provided by municipal bodies. Their adversaries claimed that business operations were better run by private companies, and that municipal takeovers would only mean a larger burden for the tax-payers. The debates on how to improve and extend the reach of public services articulated new notions of community. The daily lives of women, children and the urban poor became a contested issue, and a new field for political solutions. Eventually, a future-oriented discourse became dominant where the solutions for today were expected to solve the problems of tomorrow as well.Egenintresset och det gemensamma bäst