A COMPARATIVE HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY OF STREETCAR SUBURBS IN BOSTON, MASSACHUSETTS AND LEEDS, ENGLAND: 1850–19201

OME of the most striking contrasts in the appearance of British and American cities are inherited from regional differences in the type and scale of urban growth in the sixty years before the outbreak of World War I 2 This period was characterized by the construction of improved dwellings in new suburban locations which were linked to the industrial and business sections of the city, at first by horse-drawn and later by electrically powered streetcars. Today these streetcar suburbs are surrounded by the more extensive, and often morphologically quite distinct, residential developments associated with the period after World War I when the internal combustion engine provided more flexible means of local transportation. Innovations in local transport, however, were introduced more rapidly in North America than they were in Britain, and the streetcar tracks and services were also much more extensive. Accordingly the streetcar exerted a much greater influence upon the growth and upon the social and economic life of American cities. In considerations of nineteenthcentury urbanism, regional variations in the effects of local transportation upon the growth and characteristics of cities have received only limited attention and it is proposed in this paper to explore some of the contrasts exhibited by the streetcar suburbs of Boston and Leeds and, further, to relate these contrasts to the different developmental experiences of British and American cities between 1870 and 1914.