Publication Review

摘要

Capital cities seem to be a natural phenomenon: a state, especially a nation state, needs a central city from which it is governed and administered. However, in history this has not always been the case, and how much capital cities are cultural constructions driven by specific political agendas is impressively demonstrated in Capital Cities in the Aftermath of Empires which deals with the planning of capital cities for the new states which emerged gradually from the declining Habsburg and Ottoman Empires in Central and Southeastern Europe between c. 1830 and 1940. Bringing those cases of ambitious urban planning together for the first time, this book, which had been compiled by the two architectural historians Emily Gunzburger Makas and Tanja Damljanovic Conley, not only closes an important gap in European planning history - usually overlooked by a more Western European centred historiography - but also offers a special European facet of postcolonial studies.