Urban History

In 1899 the great exhibition devoted to Alessandro Volta was meant to open a new season of richness for Como and the Lake. Nonetheless, in 1927 the second exhibition organized for the centennial anniversary of Volta's death was promoted by city's institutions and local businessmen as moment of improvement in the fields of economics, culture and tourism. Around the 1927 exhibition new buildings and facilities were built redesigning the historical downtown and its surroundings, such as the Sinigaglia Stadium built in the 1899 exhibition site, the Faro Voltiano on the Brunate hill, in the place of an ephemeral tower. The paper aims to reconstruct some events in Como's urban history in the first three decades of 19 th century, following both stylistic and architectural issues and connections with municipal identity and then fascist propaganda.

This article examines the conception of the everyday city as presented in the work of architect Christopher Alexander and architectural theorist Bill Hillier: Both thinkers suggest that, in the past, lively urban places arose unself-consciousty through the routine daily behaviors of many individual users coming together in supportive space and place. In different ways. both thinkers ask whether, today, a similar manner of vital urban district can be made to happen self-conscioustv through explicit understanding transformed into design and policy principles. The aim for both Alexander and Hillier is place-based urban communities marked by lively streets, serendipitous public encounters, and informal sociability. The article begins by examining commonalities and differences in Alexander and Hillier's conceptions of environmental wholeness and urban place. Next. the article considers implications for urban design and, last, indicates the considerable value that the two thinkers' ideas offer environmental philosophy, particularly for understanding environmental wholes.

I review quantitative data for several major social and economic changes in central Mexico from the Classic Period through the Late Postclassic Period. Two kinds of trajectories through time can be identified. First, population and urbanization exhibited U-shaped curves of change: High values for Teotihuacan in the Classic, then lower values during the Epiclassic and Early Postclassic periods, followed by high values again in the Late Postclassic (Aztec) Period. On the other hand, economic measures (trade and commercialization) increased over this interval, while measures of well-being or standard of living declined. This is a preliminary study that points to the importance of quantitative archaeological data for research on the changes that took place in ancient Mesoamerica.

This book is the first of its kind to use historical studies and architectural research to outline Shanghai’s pragmatic developments dominated largely by its politics. Professor Reinhard Goethert from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) described it as “a well-thought-out perspective in understanding the amazing transformation of urban Shanghai” and “an excellent foundation for exploring contemporary city-building issues.” In praise of this book, Delft University of Technology Architecture Professor Gregory Bracken, who is also an expert on Shanghai urban studies, writes: “This book is a timely and intelligent examination of Shanghai’s recent urban transformations.” The book has been in circulation since 2009 and been used in architectural, urban and environmental studies courses at MIT, Harvard University and New York University.

L’opera, catalogo dell’omonima mostra organizzata dal CIRICE dell’Università di Napoli Federico II con la Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli (Palazzo Reale di Napoli, Appartamento Borbonico, 12 dicembre 2019-13 marzo 2020) sotto l’egida del Comitato Nazionale per le Celebrazioni del V Centenario della morte di Leonardo, è dedicata alla memoria dell’illustre studioso vinciano Carlo Pedretti, che ha ampiamente ispirato questi studi. La mostra ha voluto porre per la prima volta all’attenzione del grande pubblico le tracce della diffusione, diretta o indiretta, della lezione vinciana e rinascimentale post-vinciana nel contesto dell’architettura e dell’ingegneria del Mezzogiorno moderno, analizzate attraverso testimonianze manoscritte e a stampa sinora mai presentate al pubblico e, in molti casi, del tutto inedite. Introdotti da saggi generali a firma di autorevoli studiosi di Leonardo e del Rinascimento, i contributi specifici della prima parte del volume riguardano, tra le altre testimonianze, gli incunaboli della Biblioteca Nazionale relativi ai trattati un tempo presenti nella biblioteca di Leonardo e che ispirarono i suoi studi; il Codice Corazza, apografo vinciano seicentesco pubblicato per la prima volta da Buccaro sotto la guida di Pedretti, unitamente ai documenti del fondo Corazza della stessa Biblioteca; il Codice Fridericiano, apografo del XVI secolo dal Trattato della Pittura di Leonardo, acquisito nel 2016 su proposta di Buccaro e Vecce dal Centro per le Biblioteche dell’Ateneo di Napoli Federico II; il Foglietto del Belvedere dell’Archivio Pedretti, il cui studio è stato affrontato in dettaglio da Buccaro; infine i Vari disegni di Giovanni An-tonio Nigrone (BNN, Ms. XII.G.60-61, ca. 1598-1603), recanti un progetto di trattato di ingegneria meccanica e idraulica di ispirazione vinciana rimasto manoscritto. Nella seconda parte del volume vengono analizzati per la prima volta i grafici di architettura e urbanistica contenuti nei due album cinquecenteschi che compongono l’inedito Codice Tarsia (BNN, Mss. XII.D.1, XII.D.74), vero e proprio ‘Libro di disegni’ risalente al XVI secolo (ca. 1540-98) conservato nella Biblioteca Nazionale di Napoli e un tempo appartenente a quella del principe Spinelli di Tarsia. Questo ricco repertorio documentario diede vita, sul volgere del XVI secolo, al progetto editoriale di Nicola Antonio Stigliola, filosofo e ingegnere nolano: la raccolta contiene splendidi rilievi di antichità e progetti di edifici in gran parte di ambito vignolesco redatti per la committenza farnesiana, oltre a disegni di città fortificate italiane ed europee di estremo interesse e bellezza, in cui è evidente l’influenza degli studi di Leonardo in materia di inge¬gneria militare. Il Codice, oggetto di un attento studio e della catalogazio¬ne digitale per Manus Online da parte degli studiosi del Centro CIRICE dell’Ateneo Fridericiano e della Biblioteca Nazionale, rappresenta una preziosa testimonianza della diffusione del Rinascimento di matrice toscana e romana in ambito meridionale.

This book, catalogue of the recent exhibition organized by CIRICE - University of Naples Federico II, with the National Library of Naples (Royal Palace of Naples, Bourbon Apartment, December 12th 2019-March 13th 2020) with the patronage of the National Committee for the Celebrations of V Centenary of Leonardo's death, is dedicated to the memory of the most illustrious scholar on Leonardo, Carlo Pedretti, who largely inspired these studies. The exhibition has brought to public attention, for the first time, the traces of the diffusion of Leonardo lesson and of post-Leonardo Renaissance lesson in the context of architecture and engineering in the modern Southern Italy, analyzed through never known manuscript or printed testimonies. Introduced by some general essays by important scholars on Leonardo and the Renaissance, the papers of the first part of the book, among other testimonies, deal with the incunabula of the National Library relating to the treaties once present in Leonardo's library that inspired his training; the Codice Corazza, a seventeenth-century apograph published by Buccaro with the advice of Pedretti in 2011, together with manuscript from Corazza collection in the same library; the Codice Fridericiano, a sixteenth-century apograph from Leonardo's Treatise on Painting, acquired in 2016 by the Center for Libraries of University of Naples Federico II on a proposal by Buccaro and Vecce; the Foglietto del Belvedere of the Foundation Pedretti Archive, studied in detail by Buccaro; lastly, the Vari disegni by Giovanni Antonio Nigrone (BNN, Ms. XII.G.60-61, ab. 1598-1603), containing an unpublished project for a mechanical and hydraulic engineering treatise inspired by Leonardo’s studies.
In the second part of the book, the architecture and urban planning graphics contained in the two sixteenth-century albums of the unpublished Codice Tarsia (BNN, Mss. XII.D.1, XII.D.74) have been analyzed for the first time. It a real ‘Book of drawings’ dating back to the 16th century (ab. 1540-98), once belonging to the Prince Spinelli of Tarsia library. This rich documentary repertoire inspired, at the end of that century, the editorial project by Nicola Antonio Stigliola, a philosopher and engineer from Nola: this collection contains some beautiful drawings of Antiquities and architectural projects largely related to Vignola’s works for the Farnese family, as well as very interesting drawings of Italian and European fortified cities, in which the influence of Leonardo's studies about military engineering is evident. This Codex, carefully studied and digitally cataloged for Manus Online by scholras of CIRICE and of the National Library, is a precious testimony of the spread of Tuscan and Roman Renaissance in the Southern Italy.

In the spring of 1959 the City of Winnipeg ordered the removal of fourteen families, mostly Métis, from land needed for the construction of a new high school in south Winnipeg. For at least a decade, the presence of Rooster Town, as the squatters’ shantytown was known, had drawn complaints from residents of the new middle-class suburbs who objected to the proximity of families of mixed ancestry who seemed indolent, immoral, and irresponsible and whose children brought contagious diseases into the elementary school. Suburban anxieties gave expression to a much deeper municipal colonialism that since the incorporation of Winnipeg had denied Aboriginal people a place in the city. Various agencies of municipal governance and the processes of urban development dispossessed indigenous peoples and pushed them farther onto the edges of the city until no space remained for them. The removal of Rooster Town erased the last visible evidence of a continuing Métis community that had survived in ...

This slideshow introduces the third unit of my Victorian America class on the city. Because not all my students have a knowledge of Philadelphia history, I give this general overview before we look at the city during the late-19th and early-20th centuries.

The stories told by our nation's cemeteries are as diverse as the people buried in them. These plots of earth marked by rock, stone, and marble are more than just memorials to the dead, they are collections of our cultural histories; helping us to tell our stories and to plant our feet firmly into the narrative of history. Unfortunately however, the rich history that is buried within our cemeteries is often forgotten due to negligence or sometimes in the name of progress. As Father Time slowly erodes our memories, human strife takes a physical toll on our heritage in the form of wars fought on battlefields and within communities. All of these things degrade the history we would leave behind for our children.

The Tietê River Floodplain is a territory under transformation in Sao Paulo´s west zone. Defined by the railroad in its northern part, and the river in its southern part, the historic occupation of the area represents the historic occupation of the city.

La base « Toulouse 1 Capitole Publications » est l’archive institutionnelle de l’université Toulouse 1. Elle a pour objectif la valorisation de la recherche de l’établissement en favorisant la diffusion libre et gratuite des travaux de ses chercheurs.

Elle contient tous types de publications : articles, livres, chapitres de livre, documents issus d’une conférence, working papers, pré-publications, thèses, notes de jurisprudence, etc. produits par les chercheurs et enseignants de l’université.

Selon l’autorisation donnée par son auteur, vous trouverez sur l’archive les références bibliographiques accompagnées ou non d’un résumé du document ou le texte intégral du document.

La ville d’Utrecht, aux Pays-Bas, siège épiscopal jusqu’à la Réforme, devint au XVIIe siècle un bastion à la fois de l’orthodoxie réformée et du catholicisme, quand bien même l’Église réformée y disposait d’un statut privilégié comme dans l’ensemble des Provinces-Unies. C’est à cette étonnante survie du catholicisme, y compris dans les lieux de culte et dans des institutions politiques, qu’est consacré cet ouvrage, ainsi qu’à la coexistence confessionnelle qui se développa entre confessions concurrentes. L’analyse met en lumière la cristallisation des identités confessionnelles au cours de la seconde moitié du siècle et l’impact des relations internationales sur les tensions confessionnelles, mais aussi l’intégration entre membres de confessions différentes et la convivialité de la vie quotidienne, qui renvoie à la pluralité des identités sociales. Cet ouvrage apporte ainsi une contribution originale à l’étude de la coexistence religieuse dans l’Europe moderne, une thématique riche en enseignements pour le présent.

The city of Utrecht, in the Low Countries, was a diocesan see until the Reformation. In the seventeenth century, it became a bulwark of Reformed orthodoxy and of Catholicism, despite the priviledged status enjoyed by the Reformed Church in Utrecht as well in the whole United Provinces. This book investigates the surprising survival of Catholicism, as well as the coexistence that developed between competing denominations.

Este artículo revisa y conecta diferentes eventos, construcciones urbanas y cartografías históricas de Nueva York en el marco cronológico definido por 1783, año de la firma del Tratado de París –que acabó con la guerra de la independencia americana–, y 1811, cuando el Plan de los Comisionados estableció el modelo urbanístico para hacer de la ciudad una metrópolis a la par de las grandes capitales europeas. Durante este breve pero intenso período –no tan estudiado como a veces se piensa– se sentaron las bases materiales e inmateriales (físicas e identitarias) del Nueva York actual. Este trabajo se centra en la activa e importante contribución que dos disciplinas, la arquitectura y la cartografía, hicieron al mencionado proceso.

This essay reviews and connects different events, urban constructions and historical cartographies concerning New York in the chronological framework defined by 1783, the year of the signing of the Treaty of Paris –ending the War of the American Revolution–, and 1811, when the Commissioners’ Plan established the urban planning model to make the city a metropolis on a par with the great European capitals. During this brief but intense period –not as studied as it is sometimes thought– the material and immaterial (the physical and identity) foundations of the current New York were laid. This work focuses on the active and important contribution that two disciplines, architecture and cartography, made to the mentioned process.

The development of modern transport networks inherited and implemented from the North has almost single-handedly shaped and informed the urban fabric of South African cities. This, in relation with a tumultuous socio-political past, has resulted in a plethora of urban coherency problems and challenges. This paper explores how the physical layout of paths and routes, and dominant modes of inter-city transport, has affected the morphology of Port Elizabeth, South Africa, in comparison with international cities which have been developing their morphologies for centuries longer.

This paper examines the writing of a little-known, but prolific interwar immigrant Eastern European Parisian Yiddish writer, Aron Beckerman, to demonstrate how Yiddish journalism played a pivotal role in defining Paris as a simultaneously French and Jewish space to immigrant Jews living in the city. Engaging urban historical theory on the communal-building effect that public space can have, this article argues that within Beckerman’s writings on Paris-its history and specific places within the city-we see a Paris emerge that details a universalist Republican identity, which, when read through a Jewish lens, leads simultaneously to a particular immigrant, Yiddish-speaking, leftist Jewish understanding of what it means to be "French."

La produzione architettonica del primo Neoclassicismo “funzionalista”, introdotta negli Stati romani dal genio del Vanvitelli, con le sue opere giovanili nelle Marche aveva definito un nuovo linguaggio compositivo ed un particolare gusto semplificato del decoro architettonico giocato sull’uso del laterizio arricchito da essenziali sottolineature lapidee, che influenzerà la produzione edilizia delle Marche fi n oltre il XVIII secolo. L’invasione napoleonica (1797) scuoterà le arretratezze dello Stato papalino introducendo nuovi moderni criteri di gestione del territorio e dell’urbanistica, nuovi strumenti cartografi ci e catastali, nuove tipologie architettoniche legate ai servizi, nuovi ruoli assegnati agli ingegneri ed architetti pubblici. Linearità, proporzione e buon gusto furono i suoi presupposti teorici; correttezza costruttiva e rispondenza razionale tra funzioni e planimetrie il metro di giudizio; una serena semplificazione delle forme costantemente collegata al programma economico si sposava col recupero dei modelli classici e vitruviani riletti attraverso la mediazione trattatistica del Vignola e soprattutto del Palladio. Tutte novità in buona parte recepite dopo la Restaurazione dello Stato Pontificio, dove la figura professionale di Antonio Mollari, dopo il suo exploit della Borsa a Trieste, si inserisce nel filone del Purismo architettonico. Si trattava di “un superamento più che una elusione dell’esperienza neoclassica”, della declinazione finale del più ampio movimento culturale europeo neoclassico, oramai esausto, collocato in pochi decenni, sino al papato di Pio IX, e prima del successivo eclettico florilegio sperimentalistico dei revival storici.

Based on church and state records from the burgh of Aberdeen, this study explores the deeper social meaning behind petty crime during the Reformation. Falconer argues that an analysis of both criminal behaviour and law enforcement provides a unique view into the workings of an early modern urban Scottish community. Examining the motivation behind these acts of violence reveals power struggles, social and familial hierarchies and the concept of belonging.

El texto busca contextualizar y poner el relieve algunas de las principales experiencias y problemáticas que ha experimentado la Historia del Transporte en Chile, campo subdisciplinar de creciente interés en la narrativa historiográfica local. Partiendo de una revisión a sus principales antecedentes globales y regionales, se profundiza en diversos textos que, a partir de una mirada interdisciplinaria, han conformado un corpus bibliográfico con diversos enfoques, temáticas y proyecciones.

Cet article a pour but de montrer que le mobilier urbain peut être utile à l'histoire des villes et plus largement aux études urbaines en général : la manière dont il est considéré par les divers acteurs qui le conçoivent et le pratiquent, des usagers des rues aux aménageurs, peut être vue comme un révélateur des conceptions de la ville de chacun de ces acteurs. Tout d'abord, la difficulté pour l'historien de saisir ces objets ordinaires dans les archives est caractéristique du désintérêt des pouvoirs publics et de l'implication d'acteurs privés dans la conception et l'implantation de bon nombre de ces dispositifs. Par ailleurs, le mobilier urbain constitue un élément des jeux de pouvoir entre les différents usagers de la rue, qu'il est intéressant de comprendre par les mobilisations sociales autour de ces objets en apparence insignifiants.

SOROCA URBAN DEVELOPMENT IN THE INTER-WAR PERIOD.
Vitalie Iațiuc.
From 1918 until 1944, the town of Soroca was a part of the Kingdom of Romania, except the period from July 1940 to July 1941, when it was part of the Soviet Union. The population of the city reached up to 22,450 people, and an area of 650 ha. During the difficult economic situation after the First World War, the Romanian state and society reacted with caution and wisdom to the problems existing in the newly adhered to the Romanian state, Bessarabia. In the 1920s, many publications related the economic problems of Bessarabia. The analysis of the situation in Soroca was mandatorily present in these papers.
Changes in the city center landscaping began on October 10, 1921, when the monument of General Poetaș, who fell in battle in January 1919, was built in the center of the commercial market, between the "old" and "new" cities. The place was renamed Union Square. Until 1930, all shops were moved to another new commercial market. Union Square was set up as a park and planted with trees.
The construction of the new cathedral in neo Romanian architectural style - St. Paraskeva Pious, designed possibly by architect Valentin A. Voițehovski, began in this park in 1936. Building dimensions were approximately 32.5 х 22.0 m. The spacious interior could accommodate from 700 to 900 parishioners. The construction was interrupted by the Second World War, when the walls were built up to the dome. In such unfinished state, without dome, the cathedral existed for 20 years, and in 1962 it was blown up.
In the second half of the 1930s, it was decided to allocate special funds to create a modern engineering urban infrastructure: new power electrical network and city water supply system. Along the bank of the Dniester, the dam was built with a boardwalk and a well-arranged public beach, and special funds were allocated from the budget for its maintenance. For „A. D. Xenopol” Lyceum a new 2-storey building was constructed in 1934-1936. Civil architecture of new apartments buildings, from that period, is represented by 2-storey residential buildings in the constructivist style. Several public buildings were built the city center in eclectic style with elements of Art Nouveau.
The Romanian city administration actively began the reconstruction of the whole locality, upon their return in July,1941. A detailed report regarding the reconstruction and development of the city for a period of 25-30 years with a budget of 114.225 million lei was sent to the governor of Bessarabia on April 18, 1942. The City Hall's budget allocated for the reconstruction of Soroca for the period 1942-1943 was estimated at 11,803 million lei. Unfortunately, the Second World War, stopped the achievement of these plans.
Keywords: Bessarabia, Soroca, Poetaș, Voițehovski, St. Paraskeva Pious, A. D. Xenopol, interwar period.

The story of modern Chinese architecture is abundant in motions of temporalities, professionals, schools of design thoughts and globally circulating ideologies. The tales of the emergence of modern Chinese architecture are oftentimes told from the perspective of treaty ports, international architects, Euro-American trained Chinese professionals and the styles that they had practiced in the Chinese context. These narratives have been so far focusing on the grand plans and monumental works in Chinese cities but fall short to illuminate how modernism has established itself in the private and public daily life, for instance, in terms of housing design. This paper aims to balance the picture by case study Leon Hoa’s ideas and practice of housing design. Focusing on Hoa, a French trained engineer and architect with Chinese heritage, who worked as chief-architect in Beijing municipal government from the 1950s to the 1970s, this paper investigates not only how he approached modern housing but also how he as a representative of his cohort interacted with competing discourses of modernism. Through analyzing his publications and designs in Beijing, this paper argues that the pragmatism on cost, resources, environment and user’s experience set Hoa apart from his Beaux-Arts influenced counterparts and the Soviet socialist realism. His pursuit of modulization and standardization connects him to the international discussion of mass housing in the reconstruction after the Second World War. On the other hand, Hoa’s pursuit suggests a path to a third world modernism that is particular to China’s socialist subjectivity in making, the people.

Los tres textos que componen el libro buscan abordar, desde una perspectiva multidisciplinaria, la conformación de un imaginario urbano de la ciudad de Corrientes, tomando como punto de partida para la reflexión las fotografías y pinturas realizadas por Enrique Piñeyro en la década de 1960. Esas imágenes respondían a los últimos vestigios de arquitectura colonial de Corrientes. El texto de Ángela Sánchez Negrette aborda la construcción histórica de una imagen de Corrientes desde la historia urbana. Por su parte, el texto de Mariana Giordano aborda los modos en que la fotografía, desde el siglo XIX, construyó un imaginario progresista de la ciudad. A la vez, el texto de Gabriel Romero aborda la producción de Enrique Piñeyro en la década de 1960. EL libro se completa con un catálogo de las obras de Piñeyro que dieron origen a las reflexiones

In this paper, I wish to explore the way in which ideas about water and land, swamps and wetlands have been played out in the town planning of one of the driest continents.
From the very beginning of settlement in 1829, the swamps and marshes around Perth, Western Australia, were viewed as a resource, either because of the water within them, or because of their value as garden land, if only the water were drained away. The first mill in the townsite was established on a water race, based on the rate of flow of water through the sand on which the town was built. However, the fear of miasmas and later, mosquitoes, saw the majority of the swamps filled or drained. In the 1870s, Frederick Aloysius Weld, Governor of the colony, became so concerned about the lack of fresh water for the townsite that he established a number of water reserves. In the 20th century, only a small proportion of the original swamps remained, and the memory of the original wetlands was lost, so much so that the pumps required in major buildings to keep the water at bay had almost acquired the status of myth. The remaining swamps were redeveloped as lakes.
More recently, the swamps have enjoyed a resurgence as wetlands, evidence of an environmental awareness and sensitivity missing in the past. Or is it? Dropping water tables, and an extended drought, have seen the 'lakes' become once more 'shallow depressions' and much debate has been expended on retaining the water through establishment of clay bases, recirculating pumps and the like.
Keywords: environmental history, urban history, town planning, swamps, lakes.

This article enquires how notions of national identities are still topical in recent scholarship at a time when processes of globalisation appear to be undermining the nation-state and its territorial power. The so-called spatial turn within the social sciences and humanities has exposed transnational, postcolonial and global aspects of identity constructions beyond the narrow borders of the nation and all things national. Stimulating historical and geographical research into nations and identities, this journal is informed by the same epistemology, tentatively located in postmodern thinking. Despite the prophecies of doom of postmodern enthusiasts, this study testifies to the continued relevance of borders and national attachments, albeit in terms of self-reflexivity.

Evoking the painful failure of overcoming the fallout of centuries of slavery in the United States and conjuring up the specter of state-enforced apartheid in South Africa, “segregation” nowadays appears to be almost ubiquitously condemned, but at the same time seemingly impossible to eradicate. Looking at (primarily urban, spatial, ethnic) segregation from a global angle, this seminar will reveal that the phenomenon has indeed plagued a great many societies since 1500, albeit in varying degrees and changing forms. Starting from recent arguments by historians (esp. Nightingale 2012) that segregation was primarily the result of state action, this seminar looks beyond the classic cases of the U.S. and South Africa in order to ask to what extent we should understand segregation as a side effect of the history of increasing global connectedness. Moving from rarely studied examples, such as 17th-century Ayutthaya, to better-known cases of late 19th-century Atlantic immigration cities, such as Buenos Aires, the seminar thus seeks to tease out the reasons and consequences of urban ethnic unmixing through wide-ranging comparisons.

The object of the present paper is to try and insert into discussions about the rich bibliography on the Ottoman municipal institutions some nuances, pertaining both to recent reflections on the circulation of reform models and to new researches on the historical roots of the ottoman urban old regime. The aim is then to reconsider the interpretation of the Ottoman urban reforms of the second half of Nineteenth century in this new interpretative scheme, which takes into account with a different perspective both the heritage of previous forms of urban governance and the meaning of the circulation of reformative models. The intent is also, once the general frame has been submitted to an effort of complexity, to confront some other arguments on modernity in an Ottoman context. If modernisation came in a different way that it has often been assessed, what does it mean for the content of the concept of modernity? This is why I will also try in this paper to discuss the limits of the Ottoman urban modernity and their causes.
The present research relies on various case studies, taken in the Arab Provinces of the Ottoman Empire, from the Maghreb to the Middle-East, but does in no way pretend to cover the whole geographical field. The intent is rather to use case studies often taken on the margins of the Empire to discuss some commonly accepted assertions about the functioning of the Empire as a whole and about its relationship to administrative modernity. The aim is to try and go further the “importation” paradigm which often sums up the process of modernisation of the Ottoman bureaucratic apparel. The stake is, from a study of the evolution of the forms of urban government, to discuss and challenge the excessive importance of a vision of an only imported modernity into what is often implicitly or explicitly considered as the empty space of pre-reform urban government. Through a study of what I call the urban Ottoman old regime (the use of this term being based upon a comparative method with Western European historiographies –not the importation of a content, but the use of a concept), my intent is to try and propose some revisions into the interpretation of the reforms themselves. The purpose is also to discuss the thesis presenting municipalities as essentially extraneous to the urban Ottoman situation before the reforms. There were in my opinion forms of urban government shaping a system of old regime urban government, based upon the prerogatives of the merchants and their assemblies, sometimes some forms of urban nobility, and the administrative role of guilds in the urban order. These forms served as a base for reforms which cannot thus be read as extraneous anymore to the previously existing urban society and have to be interpreted differently. But this assertion is not intended to close debates. Instead, I conceive it as a methodological proposal, and as a way to bring new elements into debates about the relationship between Ottoman societies and modernity. It is also a way to shift discussion towards other fields. If modernity came as a reform of an old regime (and not as a mere creation), many questions do remain about the factors that sometimes blocked its implementation: communal caesurae, colonial influence, nationalisms.

Young, poor men and women migrated from the countryside and swelled the ranks of the unemployed and underemployed in Mexico City during the eighteenth century. With this rapid growth in population came an increase in street crime--thefts, assaults, and murders--along with moral crimes--prostitution, adultery, and vagrancy. These transgressions provided a steady flow of inmates to the city's six jails. This pioneering social history of crime and punishment in late colonial Latin America plunges us directly into the daily life and experiences of its lawbreakers. Women typically represented 30 percent of all criminals, and by the eighteenth century concern for their welfare resulted in Mexico City's first attempts at rehabilitation. This Enlightenment-era experiment in social re-education took the form of placing women in separate facilities or in private homes to serve as maids to "respectable" families, which often amounted to little more than exploitation of unpaid laborers. For men, jail was a way-station followed by severe corporal punishment and then years of forced labor. Many male criminals were assigned to clean rubbish-filled streets and open canals of Mexico City. Others went into factories, mines, or military service. All were expendable and frequently died before completing their term of confinement. "A superior work of scholarship."--Colin MacLachlin, Tulane University

Durante el siglo XX en México, dos tipos de producir la ciudad estuvieron en constante tensión: la ciudad racionalista y la ciudad popular. La primera de ellas, configuró instituciones desde las primeras décadas del siglo XX. Paralelamente, también se desarrollaba la "ciudad informal", la cual creció más rápido y proporcionalmente a partir de los años cuarenta. La tensión de estas dos visiones de ciudad o culturas urbanísticas se puede rastrear a partir de los proyectos, testimonios e ideologías de sus diferentes actores. En este trabajo se propone analizar algunos discursos e ideas clave de estas dos formas de hacer ciudad entre 1952 y 1976, para evidenciar un punto álgido de la tensión existente entre las culturas urbanísticas racionalista y popular, durante un período en el que el urbanismo moderno se convirtió en un urbanismo estatal y la ciudad popular configuró la Zona Metropolitana de la Ciudad de México. Asimismo, se busca reivindicar a la cultura urbanística popular como una categoría de análisis perteneciente a la historia de los urbanismos en México.

In the more recent past, property tax reform in the City of Toronto has been thwarted by suggestions of "progressive elements" in the single residential tax base, that hold out prospects of regressive shifts in the residential tax burden in the wake of a reassessment. Study of the evolution of the tax base in five city neighbourhoods since the early 1920s indicates that these progressive elements are largely an unintended consequence of historical changes in neighbourhood real estate markets. Moreover, what potential there is for regressive tax shifts could be offset significantly by some updated form of a partial graded dwelling house exemption in the City's traditional property tax system. The urban history of the Toronto property tax, however, does illustrate the political and technical challenges of property tax reform through market value assessment.

Beyond Preservation is a reflection on established models of urban regeneration, their dependence on financial incentives and investment from outside leading to gentrification, and the rebranding of inner city neighbourhoods as historic districts dominated by leisure and tourism functions.
Whereas Hurley applauds the beneficial effects of this process in the refurbishment of individual buildings, he questions the measurement of success according to economic criteria at the expense of a shared civic vision. He highlights the potential of heritage-led regeneration to contribute to social cohesion and sustainable communities, while stating: ‘at its worst, it operates as a mechanism of capitalist opportunism and aggravates social tensions by pricing the poor out of their own neighbourhoods’.