The Meat City: urban space and provision in industrial Copenhagen, 1880–1914

This article investigates the emergence of the Copenhagen slaughterhouse, called the Meat City, during the late nineteenth century. This slaughterhouse was a product of a number of heterogeneous components: industrialization and new infrastructures were important, but hygiene and the significance of Danish bacon exports also played a key role. In the Meat City, this created a distinction between rising production and consumption on the one hand, and the isolation and closure of the slaughtering facility on the other. This friction mirrored an ambivalent attitude towards meat in the urban space: one where consumers demanded more meat than ever before, while animals were being removed from the public eye. These contradictions, it is argued, illustrate and underline the change of the city towards a ‘post-domestic’ culture. The article employs a variety of sources, but primarily the Copenhagen Municipal Archives for regulation of meat provision.