Around 1900 cities in Southern and Eastern Europe were labelled "backward" and allegedly had to follow the model of London, Paris or Vienna. The volume shows that cities such as Barcelona, Lviv, Milan, Moscow or Zagreb pursued their agendas of modernization through interurban knowledge exchange.

Introduction: Searching for Best Practices in Interurban Networks Part I: Building a Modern City: Networks in Urban Planning 1. The Ghetto and the Castle: Modern Urban Design and Knowledge Transfer in Historic Prague Before and After 1918 2. In Search of Best Practices Within the Confines of the Russian Empire: The Port City of Berdyansk 3. Travelling Architecture: Géza Maróti's Art Between the Regional and the Global 4. The Exchange of Urban Planning Theory and Practice Along the Austro-Hungarian Periphery: Zagreb as a Case Study Part II: Aiming at the Healthy City: Experiments with Best Practices 5. Learning from Smaller Towns: Moscow in the International Urban Networks, 1870-1910 6. Best Practices from a Polish Perspective: Improving Health Conditions in Lviv Around 1900 7. Improving Health in a Mediterranean City: Barcelona and the European Network (1931-1937) Part III: The New Urban Space: Experiences and Institutions 8. A Discourse of Modernity?: Warsaw's Press on Urban Poverty (1880s-1910s) 9. Going East: Gustave Loisel and the Networks of Exchange Between Zoological Gardens Before 1914 10. Architectural Conversations Across Europe's Borderlands: Transnational Exchanges Between Barcelona and Bucharest in the 1920s 11. In the Driver's Seat of Modern Urbanization: A Case Study of Automotive Development in the Emerging City of Barcelona, c.1900-1950 12. Crossing the Iron Curtain: Milan's Museum of Technology and Transnational Exchanges Before and After World War II. Afterword: Goodbye to Center and Periphery