Unlike in continents such as Asia, America or Africa where large cities are normal and accepted phenomena, in Europe anti-urban sentiment is still very dominant. This sentiment has had a long history. Whenever cities became too large or powerful, European rulers yielded to the temptation to destroy them or to establish new cities in order to undermine the power of existing cities. The French historian Fernand Braudel describes how the latter was a tried and tested means of maintaining the precarious balance of power especially in Middle Francia, which after the death of Charlemagne was sandwiched between France and Germany and also included the Low Countries. Cities in Europe are consequently on the small side.

Anti-urban sentiment

This European state practice of curtailing and splitting up cities took on a whole new meaning during the industrialisation period. In many parts of Europe, the early stage of industrialisation coincided with rapid urban development as an impoverished population was drawn en masse to the city. This mass movement alarmed the powers that be who feared that it could lead to revolutions, anarchy and socialism. In the beginning, this unprecedented process of urbanisation was countered with utopian ideas of garden cities, especially in the nation-states of France, Germany and England. The idea was that the people had to return to the countryside. The first examples of garden cities were soon followed up with notions of regional decentralised urban designs that were interconnected by a thick web of railway infrastructure and harmoniously interwoven with nature and the untouched landscape of villages and farmland. According to the utopians and the elite, London and Paris in particular had to take the lead because these metropolises were seen as inhumane monsters that had to be tamed using all means possible given their size. But also in the coalfields of Wallonia, Silesia, the Ruhr region and the Midlands, the spreading urbanisation was viewed with great suspicion. At the end of the 19th century, this modern planning project culminated in the acclaimed regional plan of Ebenezer Howard, who enjoyed great success from 1913 with his foundation, the International Federation for Housing and Planning, which focused on spatial decentralisation. In the 20th century – and certainly after the Second World War – the core focus of spatial planning in many European countries was determined (largely by the winners) to be controlling the size of cities by the state.