1. Introduction -- 2. modern city -- 3. Drama: eradicating plague from San Francisco, 1900-1909 -- 4. Indeterminacy: the Birmingham improvement scheme, 1875-1914 -- 5. Contingency: municipal slum clearance in Sydney, 1879-1900 -- 6. Showcase -- 7. Threshold -- 8. Slumland -- 9. Faces of degeneration -- 10. just war