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The article discusses the historical patterns of reaction to urbanism in Great Britain. The article is based on two assumptions. The first is that modern industrialism, as an economic and technological system based on inanimate sources of energy has, or had, an inherent spatial logic, and this logic is expressed in the existence of the industrial city and large-scale urbanization. Second, whilst modern industrialism, as an economic and technological system, results in similar and comparable urban forms, the extent to which the social, physical or spatial forms of such cities differ results from two variables--culture and power. The first part of this article deals with the historical patterns of reaction to urbanism in Britain at the height of the urbanization process in Europe. In the second part, the phenomenon of "temporary escape" from the city and its expression in the institution of the "vacation home," "residence secondaire," "wochenend haus" or "country cottage", a research topic previously monopolized by geographers and conceptualized by one of them as "seasonal suburbanization" is being highlighted.

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Much of the recent literature about local governance of Britain’s cities has examined the power of a newly evolving ‘business elite’. However, in trying to understand changing governance forms, these analyses have generally lacked sensitivity to the role of actors (businesspeople) and their representative organizations. Analytical categories drawn from social movement theory (SMT) are introduced to develop a more actor-centred approach to the role of business interests in urban management. While not attempting to claim that business represents a social movement within Britain’s cities, it does illuminate how effectively or otherwise businesspeople develop an identity based around their representative organizations and specific business agendas, define non-business actors as opponents, and deploy and implement the agendas they create. We then use these SMT categories to examine the creation of business agendas in three English towns – Barnsley, Mansfield and Accrington. Dernièrement, la plupart des textes parus sur la gouvernance locale des villes britanniques ont étudié le pouvoir d’une ‘élite économique’ qui s’est récemment dégagée. Cependant, dans leurs tentatives de comprendre les formes évolutives de gouvernance, ces analyses ont généralement ignoré le rôle des acteurs (dirigeants d’entreprise) et celui de leurs organismes représentatifs. Les catégories analytiques tirées de la théorie des mouvements sociaux sont appliquées ici afin d’aborder le rôle des intérêts économiques dans la gestion urbaine en s’attachant davantage aux acteurs. Sans conclure que les milieux d’affaires représentent un mouvement social au sein des villes de Grande-Bretagne, l’article explique à la fois comment les dirigeants d’entreprise mettent plus ou moins... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]