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Concept
Municipal or urban engineering
Summary
Municipal or urban engineering applies the tools of science, art and engineering in an urban environment.
Municipal engineering is concerned with municipal infrastructure. This involves specifying, designing, constructing, and maintaining streets, sidewalks, water supply networks, sewers, street lighting, municipal solid waste management and disposal, storage depots for various bulk materials used for maintenance and public works (salt, sand, etc.), public parks and cycling infrastructure.
In the case of underground utility networks, it may also include the civil portion (conduits and access chambers) of the local distribution networks of electrical and telecommunications services. It can also include the optimizing of garbage collection and bus service networks. Some of these disciplines overlap with other civil engineering specialties, however municipal engineering focuses on the coordination of these infrastructure networks and services, as they are often built simultaneously (for a given street or development project), and managed by the same municipal authority.
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 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").
Official source
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