The Physical and Environmental Boundaries of 'Townlife' in Nineteenth-Century Edinburgh

Elizabeth Ewan introduced the academy to the concept of “townlife” in her first single authored monograph, Townlife in Fourteenth-century Scotland. Sourced from a mix of archaeological and archival research, Ewan pieced together the structures that underpinned the social history of the nation’s burghs, sketching out the managed environment within which ordinary people transitioned into townspeople. By juxtaposing “town” and “life,” she drew attention to the construction, governance, and maintenance of community life revealed within, and marked by, the administrative boundaries of the burgh. This process of intervention, negotiation, and compromise, in shape and intent, continued during the decades when Scotland’s towns and cities experienced exceptional population and territorial growth, with all the concomitant pressures that brought to bear upon their infrastructure and public health. By transporting Ewan’s conceptual innovation forward in time, this chapter examines local governance and management of the physical and natural environment of Edinburgh at the point when townlife transitioned into citylife. It was a period when the independence of local government grew against a background of administrative centralisation in London, and the independence of action maintained by those who governed Edinburgh—a capital city in a stateless nation—shows local government and associational activity to be key drivers in the creation of modern urban life.