Modern municipal engineering finds its origins in the 19th-century
United Kingdom, following the
Industrial Revolution and the growth of large industrial cities. The threat to urban populations from epidemics of waterborne diseases such as
cholera and
typhus led to the development of a profession devoted to "sanitary science" that later became "municipal engineering". A key figure of the so-called "public health movement" was
Edwin Chadwick, author of the parliamentary report, published in 1842. Early British legislation included: •
Burgh Police Act 1833 - powers of paving, lighting, cleansing, watching, supplying with water and improving their communities. •
Municipal Corporations Act 1835 •
Public Health Act 1866 – formation of drainage boards •
Public Health Act 1875 (
38 & 39 Vict. c. 55) known at the time as the Great Public Health Act This legislation provided local authorities with powers to undertake municipal engineering projects and to appoint borough surveyors (later known as "municipal engineers"). In the U.K, the Association of Municipal Engineers, (subsequently named
Institution of Municipal Engineers), was established in 1874 under the encouragement of the Institution of Civil Engineers, to address the issue of the application of sanitary science. By the early 20th century, Municipal Engineering had become a broad discipline embracing many of the responsibilities undertaken by local authorities, including roads, drainage, flood control, coastal engineering, public health, waste management, street cleaning, water supply, sewers, waste water treatment, crematoria, public baths,
slum clearance, town planning, public housing, energy supply, parks, leisure facilities, libraries, town halls and other municipal buildings. In the UK, the development of different strands of knowledge necessary for the management of municipal infrastructure led to the emergence of separate specialised institutions, including: • For drainage: Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management, 1895 • For town planning: Town Planning Institute 1914 ... subsequently becoming the Royal Town Planning Institute • For street lighting: Association of Public Lighting Engineers, 1934...subsequently becoming the Institution of Lighting Engineers • For highway engineering: Institution of Highways and Transportation, 1930 • For public housing: Institute of Housing, 1931 In 1984 the Institution of Municipal Engineers merged with the Institution of Civil Engineers. Since the 1970s, there has been a global trend toward increasing privatisation and outsourcing of municipal engineering services. In the UK in the 1990s a change in management philosophy brought the demise of the traditional organisational structure of boroughs where the three functions of town clerk, borough treasurer and borough engineer were replaced by an administrative structure with a larger number of specialised departments. In the late 1990s and early 21st century there was increasing dissatisfaction over what was perceived to be fractured and dysfunctional public services designed along narrow specialties. A more holistic approach to urban engineering began to emerge as an alternative concept. Critics of the specialised approach included the
Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment that complained that the specialised approach to management of the public realm focussed too much on the on efficient movement of vehicles rather than the more general interests of local communities. ==Professional practice==