This essay positions the rebuilding of London Bridge within the framework of the emerging early

nineteenth-century metropolis. Improvements in planning, the definition of the city’s perimeters

and entrance points and the erection of monuments to nation and state were all part of the
creation of an urban identity in which London Bridge played a significant and distinctive role.
The balance of power between a national government interested in urban development and an
established authority within the City of London creates a dialectic around the issues of civic and
national pride. The discrete identity of London Bridge as the entranceway into the City was
appropriated and revised to help to create an image of a modern metropolis which
encompassed not just the City but also the City of Westminster and the Borough of Southwark.
As such, London Bridge became part of the infrastructure which attempted to give coherence to
the fractured streetplan of the capital but its dis-location from the Metropolitan Improvements
also expressed its local significance. A consideration of London Bridge in these contexts
establishes its symbolic identity in Regency London. But it also raises interesting questions
about the relationship between the symbolic and functional roles of buildings. A bridge can be a
monument, a signifier of social or political preeminence, a national symbol or just a stretch of
road that happens to pass over water. In this way London Bridge can be.