Formation of Fin de Siècle Vienna project funded

The Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago has funded a project on the formation of Fin de Siècle Vienna, analyzing the city's administrative reports using computational text analysis. The city's rapid expansion around 1900 offers compelling lessons about the bureaucratic dynamics that gave rise to a proactive city during a politically unimaginative and contentious reign—decades before social democrats turned the city into a bright spot of progressive politics. Martin Kornberger, John Boyer, John Padgett, Renate Meyer, Luís Bettencourt, and I will organize a workshop to present first results and discuss implications for understanding the ebbs and flows of autonomous urban governance in 2021.