The European city cultivates its dual heritage of urbs and civitas. However, in the last fifty years, doubts have increased regarding the utilization of this heritage. The hesitations do not refer to the position of the city, which tends to be strengthened by its new functions: management, ensuring solidarity among residents, and promoting urban planning.

The generalized restriction of the state's role, decentralization processes, and very restrained community policies have reinforced the political and localized role of cities. Because of this, one could particularly hope that the second half of the 20th century would transcend the two contradictory principles of modern Europe, which cost it many colonial adventures, wars, and totalitarian regimes: the universalist cosmopolitanism of the Enlightenment in the 18th century and the establishment of nations in the 19th century.

However, this almost Hanseatic, if not medieval, revival of the city raises a very topical, triple question: the territorial redefinition of the political competencies of the city, the constitutional shaping of a new urban governance, and the capacity for social assimilation and political inclusion.

This volume completes the two-volume work The Modern European City, which is part of the collective work Histoire de l'Europe urbaine, published under the direction of Jean-Luc Pinol (Seuil, Paris 2003). Together with Jean-Luc Pinol's book The World of Cities in the 19th Century, which is published by us, it covers two centuries of urban history and serves as an important tool for historians, urban planners, economists, as well as for those generally interested in social history.