The way the Victorians did things more than a century ago could be making a comeback - not in the way Margaret Thatcher intended, but in the way we live modern urban life.

When you hear the words Victorian city, what image comes to mind? Dark grey Dickensian streets beneath smog-filled skies? Children with blackened faces working for a pittance as chimney sweeps - or worse - in factories that choke fumes into the city air?

Overcrowded slum housing where working-class families forced into the new cities by relentless industrialisation share not only their dwellings, but their diseases and misery too?

In his new book Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City, historian Tristram Hunt sets out to challenge these perceptions by showcasing the positive, visionary side to British city-building in the Victorian era.

Hunt celebrates the architects, sewer-constructors and local politicians who transformed Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham, Leeds, Bradford and Glasgow into "Venices of the north" in the 19th Century.

Indeed, he thinks these Victorian characters can teach us a thing or two about civic pride, city life and intellectual creativity.

"The shadow of Coke Town from Dickens's Hard Times continues to determine our thinking about Victorian cities," says Hunt.

"And part of the reason is that a lot of it is true. The early industrial city, the early Victorian city, was a terrible and terrifying place. Glasgow and Liverpool in the 1820s and 1830s - these were horrendous, unforgiving places."

Hunt pins some of the blame for the persistent negative image of the Victorian city on "vicarious, popular history interest in children up chimneys, sewage in the streets and all the rest of it."

"So for a long time we have lost sight of the great civic achievements, the municipal achievements, the civic pride and all the good things about the Victorian city."

Proud monuments

Many of these "good things" are around us still, says Hunt, in the architectural monuments that stand as testaments to the Victorian era's spirit of progress and grandeur.

There are the Houses of Parliament in London, St George's Hall in Liverpool - indeed, says Hunt, every time we walk through our city streets ,we effectively "go back in time to the Victorian age. In the architecture it is everywhere you look, if you look."

Hunt doesn't only pay tribute to the architects who left permanent marks on our cityscapes, but also to the unsung developers of the Victorian age.

He hails engineer Sir Joseph Bazalgette, who developed a scheme to build an underground network linking together London's 1,000 miles of street-level sewers.

Bazalgette's sewage system took 12 years to complete and it totally transformed London, doing a great deal to combat the spread of disease and allowing Londoners to breathe easier. In 1861, The Observer described it as "the most extensive and wonderful work of modern times".

As Hunt says, developing and building sewers may not be as glamorous as erecting a Gothic-style cathedral, but cities cannot function well without an efficient waste disposal system.

His book explores many of these things that "cities need" and which were first developed by the Victorians - facilities that we sometimes take for granted today: art galleries, public libraries, railways, sewage systems, flushing lavatories.

But the Victorians did more than simply construct these amazing new cities to rival the likes of Athens and Rome - they also gave the cities a sense of spirit and identity.

"Initially you had this middle-class elite, who were often Non-Conformist and based around chapels. They really took hold of cities, such as Leeds or Birmingham or Liverpool, and developed an ethic about the meaning of the city.

"They propagated that meaning through architecture, galleries, discussion societies, philosophical societies and so on. The buildings and sewers made the cities work, but there were other characters who made these cities mean something more than that."

Renew and rejuvenate

What about city life today? What remains of the Victorian spirit of building wonderful cities for people to live and work in, spaces that can give our lives a sense of meaning and purpose?

Hunt notes that some of the great Victorian cities have become shadows of their former selves over the past 50 years. "Certainly during the latter half of the 20th Century, both Liverpool and Manchester really declined in importance.

"Liverpool was a trading city, and Manchester was an industrial city, a manufacturing city. With the collapse of the Empire and the growth of mass imports in Europe, Liverpool really took a hit. And with the collapse of our staple industries - cotton, textile, all the rest of it - Manchester suffered too."

Yet Hunt says Liverpool and Manchester are making a comeback. Old factories are being transformed into new flats for young professionals or into arts centres, and these old, great cities are being reoriented around the themes of culture and lifestyle. But can that really compare to the Victorian ideal of cities built around work, industry and production?

"I don't think we should be dismissive of making cities into cultural spaces, of the new focus on providing public spaces and a nice environment," says Hunt. "Those cities are not going to go back to an industrial age - that really is history."

Relocation, relocation

Hunt says there's one thing we should try to retain from history: the Victorians' positive attitude towards city life.

Where Victorian developers saw cities as representing the future, today we tend to view city life as a potential threat to our health and wellbeing. We fret about crime and pollution, and fantasise about moving out to the suburbs or the countryside.

"In popular culture we have tended to revere the countryside and the idea of escaping to the country - there's Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and all that. But, as the Victorians showed us, cities can be wonderful places."

Hunt notes a certain paradox - while we live in much cleaner and safer cities than our Victorian counterparts, we worry about city life much more.

"Consider our fears about air pollution," he says. "It's nowhere near as bad as it was in the past, in the Victorian age or just 50 years ago when there was the Great Smog.

"We should remember that the city which is calm is not a proper city. City life should always retain its edginess."