Urban History

The paper attempts to outline the urban visions and architectural ideas and vocabulary behind the formation of the large urban conglomeration in Japan, South Korea and China, and how the seeds of Western planning theories and architectural design practice have helped shaping and building the contemporary cites along the vast regions of Asia Pacific Region, and frame a local language in envisioning the city of the future.
Reflecting on the contributions from East Asia to the discourse of planning and design a city for the future as promoted by single actors, larger cultural movements and national elites fostering economic ambitions and political agendas of autocratic forces (e.g. from the experimental cities by the Metabolists in Japan, to the more “pragmatic” urban development projects fostered by local and national governments in South Korea and China), the paper tries to explain the key socio-economic factors and engines which have dramatically and radically transformed the skylines of the most dynamic and growing influential area of the world at the dawn of 21st century; it also aims at describe the origins of the various forms and elements of the modern built environments which have been shaped and molded by these same forces, and how/whether these urban forms embodies a true genuine East Asian vision of the city of the future, and what is the current trend in terms of new urban forms and architectural design research at the beginning of 21st century.

Promoting a better understanding of the phenomenon of colonization and its connection with environmental knowledge and technology, this article proposes a reframing of research agendas to take into account the municipal character of colonization in the Hispanic realm and to ask new questions. Questions should address what human– ecosystem relations, and the ways of knowing and techniques for transforming the physical realm, can tell us about colonization itself; who the historical agents involved were, and what these actors knew, learned, and did in their environments. Using the Basin of Mexico's drainage and the agency of commoners, this article proposes that colonization depends on the massive deployment and generation of tacit knowledge about how to harness matter, energy, and time for the reproduction of human societies; the quotidian appropriation and reworking of autochthonous knowledge, techniques, and technology by the colonizing groups; the collaboration of the local populations in whom these are vested; and the agency of commoners with practical skills, environmental knowledge, and technological savvy derived from and honed in the realm of material production. In the Ibero-American realm, these agents were primarily commoners with skills in agropastoral production and the building trades; race, ethnicity, language, and gender were secondary conditions.

From the foundation of the Order of St John in 11th century Syria as a community of lay brethren intent on providing shelter, care and assistance to pilgrims visiting the Holy Land, the destiny of the Hospitaller Knights was irremediably moulded for most of the next millennium. Geography, circumstance, religious ideology, and the pursuit of wealth all conspired to transform the future of the Hospitallers into a violent one, in keeping with the surrounding environment of the Middle East and the rest of the Mediterranean. The Order’s attitude to conflict changed, however, when the theatre of war shifted from the Mediterranean to mainland Europe. The acquisition of property in Latin Syria helped chart the course of the Order’s history, rendering the Hospitallers sensitive to events on the continent. Any land property in Europe was at risk of intrusion, occupation or exploitation by armies on the move, and the Hospital’s property was no exception. This study is an analysis of the Order of St John’s contrasting attitudes to violence, and the geographical, political, religious and historical situations that generated such an approach.

Early modern Amsterdam was an ultra-modern city, laid out conforming to the triple demand of functionality, beauty and profit; a city that takes a unique place in European urban history because of its location, design, and impressive scale. 'Metropolis in the Making' tells the story of Amsterdam becoming one of the largest cities in Europe in the seventeenth century. Amsterdam was one of the cradles of capitalism, but at the same time one of the most meticulously planned cities in the world.
After the Fall of Antwerp in 1585, Amsterdam took over its position as the main trade hub in northwestern Europe. The city grew rapidly to become the central harbour town – and one of the largest European cities. The boom in harbours and industry went hand in hand with an explosive population growth. This resulted in two huge city extensions in 1613 and 1663, multiplying the territory of Amsterdam by five. Around the old town, the now famous ring of canals was constructed. Beyond this residential zone mixed-use and industrial districts were laid out, with a series of harbour islands along the borders of the IJ. This book deals with the question how Amsterdam’s administration managed to realize these immense projects from the viewpoints of urban design, infrastructure, logistics, and finance.
The first part of this book is dedicated to the extension projects. A thorough analysis of all remaining administrative archives and a great many cartographic documents has enabled the author to reconstruct the decision process about the scale, design, and realization of the extensions. The second part contains chapters concerning land use, public space and water management. 'Metropolis in the Making' tells the story of one of the cradles of early modern capitalism and at the same time one of the most meticulously planned cities in the world.

The Gold Coast is Australia’s most rapidly changing city – regularly compared to Miami and Las Vegas for its embrace of bad taste and the good life; and with Dubai for its sudden moments of high-rise assuredness and seeming lack of restraint in either the ambitions of building or their manifestations.
Beautifully illustrated throughout, this book offers the first comprehensive history of the city and its architecture, documenting its rise from a series of seaside villages in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to the present-day city, set to host the 2018 Commonwealth Games. Considering city plans, architectural works, landscape formations and modes of inhabitation over the time in which the Gold Coast has been peopled, it considers the role of architecture in carrying the city forward. Its main focus is on the contemporary city and the conditions that have given rise to its character - high rise, bad taste and skewed towards the beach edge.

Renier Acorre est un marchand et changeur florentin devenu seigneur dans la Brie, receveur de Champagne et panetier à la cour des Capétiens. Son cartulaire privé (Paris, BNF, ms. fr. 8593) est bien connu parce qu'il représente l'un des rares exemples aujourd'hui conservés de cartulaires laïcs privés médiévaux. Par l'étude de ce manuscrit, je mets en lumière dans cet article un phénomène de concentration urbaine à l'échelle d'un quartier de Provins délimité par trois rues : la rue de Jacy, la rue Evrard de Jouy et  la grande rue de Froimantel. En étudiant à la fois la présence au sein de ce patrimoine d'au moins une "grande meson de pierre", ainsi qu'en analysant le privilège comtal permettant au Florentin d'avoir des fontaines dans ses maisons, j'interroge le lien entre achats fonciers et distinction sociale.

Infrastructural practices, made by the manipulations of pumps, pipes and hydraulic expertise, play a critical role in managing urban populations. Drawing on two years of ethnographic research in Mumbai, in this article I show how Muslim settlers in a northern suburb are being rendered abject residents of the city. Abjection isn’t not a lack of social and political entitlements, but a denial of them. As Muslim settlers are being pushed down to claim less desirable water through the deliberate inaction of city engineers and technocrats, this article shows the iterative process through which abjection is made through tenuous and contentious infrastructural connections between the government and the governed.

In the second half of the 16th century, Girolamo Righettino, a brilliant draughtsman and theologian (a member of the Order of the Canons Lateran), produced city views with ornamental frames characterised by their rich allegorical programme. The drawings earned him widespread fame and were handsomely rewarded. A recently discovered autograph manuscript by Righettino sheds precious light on his only surviving view-an elaborate plan of Turin (1583). This article offers an introductory portrait of a personality forgotten to history and presents new research that allows us to situate his unique output-at the intersection of art and science, theology and politics, topography and allegory-in the wider context of Counter-Reformation Italy, when the ambitions of absolutist rulers were stoked by the fear of Turkish advances in the Mediterranean.

Every year magazines, within the design community and from without, publish top ten (or bottom ten) lists of cities to live in. Invariably, they’re bracketed as the “best” or the “worst.” For the former, Metropolis magazine based its criteria for its list of top ten international cities on the magazine’s “core” values:  “housing, transportation, sustainability, and culture.” Copenhagen topped their list while Portland, Oregon (the only US city) finished at number 10.  Singapore came in at number 4, that doesn’t really seem fair as it’s a city-state like San Marino, but with an even higher per capita income.

The worst cities, by comparison, are typically judged by such things as the likelihood of your car being where you left it after dinner and a movie, the wait time for being mugged at a bus stop, or the number of people mortally wounded while celebrating their home team winning a national championship. In the recent past Manchester, England, Detroit, Accra (Ghana), and Port Said (Egypt) have vied for the top of this bottom spot.

That said, the one thing going for Metropolis’s list, is that their criteria centers on what makes a city not just livable, but “the best.” And, they put their values (or metrics) out front for all to see. I’m here this evening, in part because both questions mean much to me: livable and great.

Abstract:  This paper presents an argument for considering issues of class in analyses of communicative planning projects. In these projects, class interests tend to be obscured by the contemporary preoccupation with the class-ambiguous category of “community”. Through a case study of a project of urban redevelopment at King's Cross in London, we conceptualize and map class interests in an urban redevelopment project. Three aspects of the planning process that contain clear class effects are looked at: the amount of office space, the flexibility of plans, and the appropriation of the urban environment as exchange or use value. These aspects structure the urban redevelopment but are external to the communicative planning process. The opposition to the redevelopment has in the planning discourse been articulated as “community”-based rather than in class-sensitive terms. We finally present three strategies for reinserting issues of class into planning theory and practice.

The Pacific War permanently transformed the political ecology of excrement in the Greater Tokyo area. Since the Edo period (1603–1868), a network of commercial night soil collectors had operated in the city, emptying its latrines for use as fertilizer. Although increasingly subject to strain in the interwar period, the system adapted enough to obviate significant municipal investment in sewer construction. Wartime mobilization and fuel shortages, however, pushed these night soil distribution networks to the breaking point, leading to an ''attack by excrement.'' The municipal government responded to the crisis by mobilizing residents' associations and suburban commuter trains, sidelining commercial collectors in the process. The immediate postwar period further destabilized the old political ecology: a black market in excrement briefly flourished, only to subside with the rapid proliferation of commercial fertilizer. Finally, Occupation government personnel, upon encountering the chaotic postwar night soil trade, expressed contempt for what they viewed as a backward, inherently unhygienic custom. The Tokyo metropolitan government internalized this

This descriptive-analytical study attempted to investigate the quality of life in urban areas of Iran. Sonqor City of Kermanshah Province was selected as a case. Field and documentary data collection methods were used. To collect the field data, researcher-designed questionnaires were used, of which the validity was confirmed by expert judgment and the reliability was confirmed using Cronbach’s alpha (0.893). The population comprised all the residents of Sonqor City (n=46181). Using Cochran formula, 382 individuals were selected as sample and questionnaires were randomly distributed among them. Results demonstrated that among the 9 aspects of quality of life investigated in Sonqor City, satisfaction with the three aspects of housing, transportation and education, which have coefficients of variation of 0.319, 0.331, and 0.412 respectively, are the most important aspects. Moreover, general results of quality of life of Sonqor residents revealed that 75 percent of the respondents had ...

This volume brings together research on retailing and shopping and their embeddedness in urban space, themes that have attracted wide interest in recent decades. Addressing these themes over an era that bridges the early modern and modern period, the authors argue that the 'modernity' of the nineteenth century is often overemphasised, at the expense of recognising the continuities with the earlier period and the degree of innovation that took place before the onset of 'modernity'. This collection compares long-term developments in retail locations, retailing formats, regulation of shopping streets, and the cult of shopping for pleasure across a number of neighbouring countries and regions (Britain, France, Germany, Belgium and The Netherlands), and offers surprising new insights into the processes of cultural transfer, appropriation and exchange.

The article presents the development of Planty Dietlowskie (named after the professor of Jagiellonian University, Józef Dietl) on the part of the old Vistula River that was reclaimed. Th e Vistula cut-off  formed a natural frontier between the city centre and the Kazimierz district, inhabited by Jews, which had earlier been an independent suburban Jewish town. In the eyes of hygienists and modernizers, the old Vistula presented a signifi cant problem: it was becoming less and less passable, and people on its two banks used it to dispose of waste and sewage. Th e fi lling up of this part of the old Vistula was at the top of the list of objectives postulated by the municipal government. Th e project was implemented with fi nancial support from the National Department, and squares were arranged. As a result, the Christian and Jewish quarters found themselves next to each other. Th e author questions whether this physical closeness had any impact on the social integration of Kraków’s inhabitants.

این کتاب پژوهشی در باب تاریخ معماری و شهرسازی تهران در زمان ناصرالدین شاه قاجار است. در اواخر سدۀ سیزدهم هجری، گسترش تهران و شکل‌گیری محله‌های مسکونی جدید در دارالخلافۀ ناصری فرصتی تازه به بانیان معماری و عاملان شهرسازی داد تا نیازها و خواست‌های نوظهور جامعۀ در حال دگرگونی ایران را در کالبد و نوع زندگی تازه در محله‌های جدید شهر محقق کنند. محلۀ دولت یکی از مهم‌ترین بخش‌های شهر جدید بود که عناصر ضروری زندگی مدرن را در خود جای داد و با نوع معماری و بافت شهری متفاوت پاسخی به نیازهای جامعه بود.
در مقام نخستین پژوهش متمرکز بر تاریخ محلۀ دولت و گسترش تهران بر اساس منابع دست‌اول نوشتاری و شواهد تصویری، شامل اسناد تاریخی، روزنامه‌ها، خاطرات شخصی، عکس‌ها، نقشه‌ها و آمار دارالخلافۀ ناصری، این کتاب در پی ارائۀ روایتی تاریخی از فرایند تحولات تهران در این دوره و شیوۀ سکونت ساکنان در این محله است. تاریخ شکل‌گیری محلۀ دولت مثال بارزی است از چگونگی تطابق محیط مصنوع با تحولات فرهنگی و اجتماعی تهران در دورۀ گذار تاریخ معماری و شهرسازی ایران.

"A obra que o leitor tem entre mãos pretende ser uma recolha completa de todos os trabalhos escritos de Armindo de Sousa, publicados além dos seus livros ou capítulos de livros. Porque este historiador já partiu de entre nós há cerca de quinze anos, porque os seus trabalhos estão dispersos e são, quase todos, de difícil acesso, porque uma obra reunida ganha em unidade, em coerência e em inteligibilidade. Mas, acima de tudo, porque Armindo de Sousa foi um historiador de excepção; e se, em qualquer país, seria obrigatória a disponibilização da sua obra a um público alargado, do limitado e algo pobre panorama historiográfico português é quase um crime de lesa-inteligência que as páginas que ele nos deixou andem perdidas." (Luís Miguel Duarte)

Este libro describe el trabajo realizado en el sitio arqueológico que se ubica detrás de la Casa de Gobierno, en donde funcionó entre los años 1857 y 1894 la Aduana Nueva, más conocida como Aduana Taylor, la cual constituyó el primer edificio público de gran envergadura y de características monumentales que tuvo la ciudad de Buenos Aires.
Una investigación histórica y documental exhaustiva al inicio del texto permite conocer que sucedió en el lugar donde primeramente funcionó el Fuerte de Buenos Aires y parte del cual fue reutilizado en la construcción de esta Aduana del siglo XIX, cuya estructura aún puede observarse hoy día.
Toda  su construcción, funcionamiento y demolición llegando hasta el momento actual en el que se erige allí el Museo de Casa Rosada, está narrado con la finalidad de contextualizar y poder comprender el trabajo arqueológico efectuado en el lugar entre los años 2009 y 2011, así como los hallazgos arqueológicos descubiertos. El piso original que tenía el patio de maniobras, los restos de un sistema de movilidad de mercaderías - desconocido por las fuentes históricas de la época y posteriores - junto con fragmentos y objetos de diferentes materiales, que son descriptos y analizados particularmente (lozas, gres, vidrio, metal, piedras para chispas, restos óseos, entre otros) constituyen solo algunos de los restos arqueológicos recuperados.
Estas páginas muestran asimismo como profesionales de la arqueología trabajan dentro de una obra de construcción moderna, de forma multidisciplinaria, teniendo un carácter de rescate pero con un fuerte componente de investigación. Dentro de la Arqueología Urbana Argentina se espera constituya un trabajo de referencia para todos aquellos que se abocan a esta especialidad, así como también para el público en general interesado en este tipo de información y relato.

"當代的中國大陸已成為全球的消費大國，各個大城市裡名牌店林立。然而早在三、四百年前江南的大城市裡，已經可以看到休閑消費的繁榮現象。休閑消費如何改變了城市的空間？店舖為因應消費需求如何改造其空間配置？休閑的空間如何擴大與分化？私人性質的休閑空間為何走向公共化？男性與女性在消費空間上有何差異？本書嘗試將「空間」的觀念帶入到消費研究的領域，探討明清城市內休閑消費活動如何改變了空間結構，進而分析現象背後所反映的社會關係與權力糾結。
本書分成三篇，各篇有兩章，分別從六個面向來探析。上篇從休閑與購物兩方面來探討明清城市的消費性格與消費的動力。中篇兩章則是以城市休閑消費所反映的社會空間為主題，分別以蘇州的園林與旅遊為例。下篇的兩章主要是關於兩性購物消費的議題。透過上述各章的分析與討論，作者在結論裡分析明清城市消費空間變遷所具有的三層意義。作者總結指出「消費」就是城市性格的重要特徵，同時也以休閑消費的吸引力來解釋明清鄉紳逐漸城居化的原因，並說明十八世紀江南官紳對休閑消費的觀念有去道德化與去政治化的可能性。
My previous monograph, Luxurious Taste: Consumer Society and Literati during the Late Ming (2007) discussed the formation of a so-called consumer society during the Ming Dynasty, a society that had its foundations in urban environments.  My new work, Urban Pleasures: Leisure Consumption and Spatial Transformation in Jiangnan Cities during the Ming-Qing Period, focuses on the diversity of leisure and shopping activities and spaces that marked lifestyles and life experiences in cities from the mid-Ming to the mid-Qing period. I consider the concept of “space” in the field of consumption research, argue for the effects of consumption on changing spatial configurations, and explore the social relations and political negotiations behind the changes in the major cities of the Ming and the Qing.

Urban Pleasures is divided into three sections, each consisting of two chapters, which collectively explore the subject from six aspects. Part One focuses on the characteristics and incentives of consumption in Ming and Qing cities through aspects of leisure and shopping. The two chapters in Part Two explore mainly the social space reflected in urban leisure consumption. These two chapters use Suzhou as a case study to show how urban gardens were converted from private leisure spaces to public spaces and explore the evolution of tourism space from the Ming to Qing periods. The two chapters in the last part of the book center on the issue of gender and consumption. Based on the analysis and discussion throughout these chapters, the conclusion explores the significance of variations in urban consumer space in the Ming and Qing on three levels, namely: the spatial practice of consumption, the social production of consumer space, and the political negotiation of urban spaces.  “Consumerism” was an integral part of the characteristics of “urbanity” during the Ming and Qing dynasties. The appeal of leisure consumption helps explain why the gentry often moved their residences from the country to the city from the mid-Ming period on. As well, the literati conception of leisure consumption was potentially de-moralized and de-politicized during the eighteenth century.

The Hungarian Historical Review invites submissions for its third issue in 2022, the theme of which will be Economy, the Connecting Force in Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages The deadline for the submission of abstracts: January 31, 2022.

A chronology of all measures introduced by the National Socialist municipal administration and other perpetrator agencies against the Berlin Jews. The day by day chronicle, based on many hitherto unknown sources, provides the reader with a detailed and graphic picture of how the exclusion of the Jews from all spheres of public life unfolded over time and who was responsible for it. The introduction discusses the overlooked importance of local institutions for the radicalization of the persecution in the capital of the Third Reich, yet also touches upon the reactions and resistance of the Jews.

This dissertation examines Istanbul as a geographical and historical totality and focuses on four different and integral parts of this totality: its Ottoman past, its dalliances with modern planning attempts, the city’s death throes in the face of rabid industrialization efforts, and its first true real estate boom. These divergent parts are scrutinized through the relationship between the state and space.
This work investigates the different modes a city takes under different configurations of a state composed of, but not limited to, cultural, ethnic, religious, class-based, formal, and spatial elements. By studying Istanbul alone, it is possible to gauge divergent trajectories of the production of space that the city takes.
The changes in Istanbul’s state-spaces are studied in five stages: the first involves the urban theory that engendered my critical stance on Istanbul and the production of space and how revolutionary urbanism can be harnessed to a re-evaluation of a semiperipheral metropolis.
The second part is related to an attempt in unraveling the early modern historical characteristics of the city and its overdetermining role in the formation of state mechanisms.
The third part unearths the rupture that modernity instigated in the urban fabric and conjoining state institutions and mentalities that shaped the city.
The fourth part focuses on the industrialization and population boom of the second part of the 20th century and locates the consequence of social developments in the urban space: the squatter settlements, the gecekondus.
The fifth part grasps the cycles of boom and bust in the real estate investments in Istanbul and is concerned in the concrete production of space of the five decades since 1965. Amidst the interplay of various elements, the emergent middle class in Istanbul and its social and historical moorings in the urban built environment are revealed to be rooted in the erstwhile squatters, in the gecekondu areas.

During the 1990s, a long historical cycle of Bucharest came to an end. From the mid-19th century on, industry became an important economic and cultural presence in Bucharest's landscape. During the last 10-15 years it began to contract. Along with other urban processes such as urbanization, gentrification and emergence of ghettos, deindustrialization represents a major trend in Bucharest's recent history. Deindustrialization is both an economic and a cultural transformation. This volume uses insights from urban geography, heritage studies and urban history in order to understand the landscape of deindustrialization, situated between the fetish of gated communities and post-industrial wasteland.

Contents:

Chapter 1. Dezindustrialization and changes of urban landscape
Chapter 2. Postindustrial nostalgia, industrial heritage and refunctionalization
Chapter 3. The geography, history and the memory of Bucharest's industrialization
Chapter 4. Current usage of industrial spaces and the new urban landscape
Chapter 5. The social life of industrial ruins: The cultural reinsertion of industrial spaces

The concept of authenticity, as defined in international circles between the 1960s and the 1994 Nara Conference on Heritage, has been one of the main instruments used to define policies aiming at heritage protection during the last few decades. The concept also became more than an instrument: it shaped entire approaches to the question of the built heritage and to the process – social and political – aiming at its conservation and restoration. For this reason, it has been the object of intense discussions, with scholars and activists denouncing some of its founding ambiguities as being tied to static and sometimes culturalist conceptions of history, to colonial visions, and to policies of social segregation. The object of this chapter is to reflect on such debates around the case of the city of Aleppo, and particularly around the way its medieval and Ottoman built heritage was dealt with in the period of the Ottoman reforms of the second half of the 19th century, the period of French colonial occupation, and the various phases of independence up to its present- day tragic destruction.

Alice Davis Hitchcock Award for 1992, Society of Architectural Historians.
Most Outstanding Book in Architecture and Urban Planning, Professional and Scholarly Publishing Division, Association of American Publishers, Inc., 1991.
International Architecture Book Award, American Institute of Architects, 1992: "This is magisterial history with a grand sweep, an eye for detail and a determination not to simplify.  If Modern architecture in Italy over five generations was complex, paradoxical and full of counter-tendencies in any one architect, then these are lovingly pulled apart and exposed.""

"Cos’era Udine agli occhi di un cividalese del Quattrocento, se non una ‘neonata’ irriverente? Partendo da questa domanda provocatoria, il saggio delinea lo sviluppo e la storia di Cividale durante il Medioevo da un’angolatura diversa: quella del conflitto latente che la contrappose a Udine per la maggior parte del tempo.

Come sottolinea il titolo del saggio, si tratta di un percorso che inizia in età tardo antica, quando ‘Forum Iulii’ strappò ad Aquileia la palma di capitale, e si conclude al tramonto del Medioevo, quando quella che ormai si chiamava ‘Civitas Austriae’ cedette il primato a Udine.

Dapprima come ‘forum’ romano, quindi come ducato longobardo, e più oltre, in età carolingia, quando è attestata l’esistenza di una scuola capitolare, nei secoli centrali del Medioevo Cividale del Friuli crebbe fino a divenire la sede prediletta dei patriarchi aquileiesi. E fu proprio il rapporto con alcuni presuli – in particolare da Bertoldo di Andechs Merania in poi – a contrapporre l’antica ‘città ducale’ alla nuova ‘terra’ di Udine. Un continuo rivaleggiare che non si esaurì nemmeno con la sottomissione a Venezia (1419-21) e che, anzi, inseguì i primati già nella decorazione delle insegne che celebravano la Serenissima."

This paper engages with the involvement of Jewish Diaspora organizations, and the ramifications of their role with regard to both the rebuilding plan of the burnt zone created by the big fire that devastated Salonika in August 1917  , and the rehabilitation of those left homeless by the fire. This study sheds further light on the subject, yielding a fascinating portrait of a broader issue, namely, the response of diasporas in general when one of their communities is in distress. Accordingly, this paper can serve as a case study of the motivations and actions of diasporas in such situations: At what point do they become involved on behalf of their injured kin? How far do they take this involvement? And does such intervention always prove worthwhile?