Starting with Englander's denial (Urban History, 21, 2 (1994)), that ‘slums are … real only in words, … rather than being rooted in the material conditions of everyday life’, the article draws a distinction between historical analyses of slums, which entail an examination of words, signs and symbols, and analyses of inner-city neighbourhoods which have been overshadowed by slumland representations. It is claimed that this latter task entails a nuanced materialist historicism, attuned to the surviving material and oral culture of actual neighbourhoods, in place of Englander's faith in an older style of historical materialism.

Call me old-fashioned. I don't mind. Call me a sentimental Leftie. I don't mind that either. I do mind, though, when I am told in a book-length study that claims to be a serious work of history that its focus is upon urban society and its manifestations as a text rather than a state of affairs. I object, too, when a debatable proposition is advanced as an unchallengeable axiom. Mayne claims that his book is a defence of the post-structural ‘linguistic left’ against the charge of historians that it has ‘muddied historical analysis by introducing a spurious disconnection between language and culture on the one hand, and the material world and practical politics on the other’ (p. 4). But is it such a defence? Am I foolish to take exception to claims which raise fundamental questions about how we know the world? Mayne, if I have understood him properly – and his language is not always easy to follow – is a proponent of a particular epistemological standpoint which underpins a theory of language as a self-subsisting social entity from which there is no referent in the extralinguistic world. Language as a significatory rather than a representational phenomenon is thus assigned a very considerable autonomy in relation to other social phenomena and one which is much greater than historians and social scientists had previously allowed. The alleged superiority of texts over sources is derived from a tradition of philosophical enquiry that stands outside and at odds with the empirical character of historical and social science.

This paper looks at Joseph Chamberlain's Birmingham and claims that George Dawson's famous ‘civic gospel’ which laid the ground for the municipal reforms was permeated by a consensus view of the moral and civic role of art. It suggests that it was this combination of philosophy in action through art which created the special Birmingham context for a vibrant civic culture which led to the political and artistic achievements of the 1870s and 1880s. For a few brief years, this combination enabled Birmingham to stand above other British cities and lay claim to the titles of ‘the best-governed city in the world’ and ‘perhaps the most artistic town in England’.

The case for art in urban regeneration is widely promoted. Some local authorities and development corporations see it as a means of access to an international cultural map; others see it as enabling the construction of identities for communities. The case remains speculative. The model of post-Enlightenment cities is one of exclusion and confinement, whereby ‘awkward’ aspects of the city, such as the insane or vagrant, are excluded from view and confined in institutions. This compartmentalization of the city extends into policies for single use zoning and a general retreat from public space. If there is a role for art in urban renewal, it is in reclaiming the decorative as an aspect of public space, not in replicating monuments which affirm the dominant, divisive culture.