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ABSTRACTUsing case studies of city halls in Copenhagen, Stockholm and Oslo, this article contributes towards the creation of an iconographic reading of this building type. This article argues that the symbolic aim of the city hall was to express the burgher's pride and values, and to symbolize the local and national history. To understand the multifaceted architecture of a city hall in a capital city, one must also understand the ideas behind nation-building in Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The second part of the article analyses how European, national and local narratives were used in the city halls.

The comparative presentation of the birth of metropolises like St. Petersburg, Helsinki, Kiev, Belgrade, or Athens confirms the importance of the Western model as well as the influence of international experts on city planning at the periphery of Europe. In addition, this volume presents an alternative perspective that aims to understand the genesis of Eastern European cities with a metropolitan character or metropolitan aspirations as a process sui generis. The rapid expansion of metropolitan cities such as London and Paris began in the 17th and 18th centuries. Large parts of Central and Eastern Europe underwent urbanization and industrialization with considerable delay. Nevertheless beginning in the second half of the 19th century, the towns in the Romanov and Habsburg empires, as well as in the Balkans grew into cities and metropolitan areas. They changed at an astonishing pace. This transformation has long been interpreted as an attempt to overcome the economic and cultural backwardness of the region and to catch up to Western Europe

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Do You Know Alex Oreille -- MARCH -- Cannon Fodder -- There's a Sickness Outside -- Medicine's Innovation Problem -- March 11 -- The Lice -- Spring -- APRIL -- Memories of West Fourth Street -- The Law of Salus Populi -- Pandemic Inequality -- The Pandemic in Inupiaq -- A Nurse Comes to Brooklyn -- Sirenland -- The White String -- MAY -- Trading Riffs to Slay Monsters -- Leaving Yale for the Coronavirus Epicenter -- Welcome to Zoom University -- Reading The Decameron through the Lens of COVID-19 -- A Commencement Deferred -- History Is Another Word for Trauma -- The Children Know -- Prelude -- Get the Shovel -- Two Poems: Provision, The Hour between Dog and Wolf -- The Jail Crisis -- Coronavirus and the Danger of Disbelief -- Invisible Kingdoms -- JUNE -- The Trees Witness Everything -- How I Became a Prophetess -- Lives or Livelihoods -- Thucydides in Times of Trouble -- Safe -- I Can't Sleep -- Giving Up the Ghost -- The Crisis of Asylum at Trump's Border Wall -- The Dancing Drum -- Notes and Sources -- Acknowledgments -- Contributors