Urban History Research Articles

Károly Kós in Istanbul

AbstractKároly Kós, a pioneering master of 20th century Hungarian architecture, spent two years in Istanbul as a fellow of the newly established Hungarian Institute for Science in Constantinople between 1916 and 1917 to pursue research on the architecture of the Ottoman Empire. During this period, he created a whole series of drawings of numerous Byzantine and Ottoman historical buildings and street sections. A volume entitled Istanbul - Urban History and Architecture was published as a summary of his research. However, this historical event and the resulting publication have a far-reaching significance beyond themselves in many ways. Firstly, the aforementioned period was a significant turning point in Ottoman-Turkish architectural history. On the other hand, Kós's work is more than just an analysis of architectural and urban history.This paper aims to provide an insight into the period and the turning point between the late Ottoman and the early Republican era of Turkey's history; the local context of Kós's activities in Istanbul and, at also to analyse the architectural-historical achievements of the Hungarian master's work in the location which he himself described as ‘The City”.

Urban internationalism: Coventry, Kiel, reconstruction and the role of cities in British–German reconciliation, 1945–1949

AbstractThis article addresses the beginnings of the twinning relationship between Coventry and Kiel to introduce and exemplify the idea of ‘urban internationalism’ as a new lens onto urban histories of town twinning initiatives and a contribution to the historiography of British town twinning. Focusing on paradiplomatic initiatives by municipal officials, religious dignitaries and other citizens in Coventry and Kiel, the article examines the role that cities played in British–German reconstruction and reconciliation in the period from the end of World War II until the formation of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1949.

The Nature and Production of Urban Space in Latin America: A Historical Review of the Case of Ibagué (Colombia)

The production of urban space in Latin America turns out to be a social product resulting from a historical process in which natural space undergoes significant transformations. This paper analyses how the urban history of Ibagué (Colombia) is related to three historical processes crossed by nature, identifying common aspects with other Latin American cities: nature as a limit to urban growth (conquest and colony), nature as an artifice of urban space (modern city), and nature as a transition zone between the city and the countryside (metropolitan edge). Methodologically, the article is approached from the historical perspective proposed by Fernand Braudel as the longue durée. To this end, an analysis of primary sources was carried out. These sources allowed us to see how urban space was constructed and planned throughout history. The primary sources emphasized written sources: chronicles of the Indies, royal ordinances, municipal decrees, pilot plans for urban growth, and urban development plans. Visual sources were also used: maps, sketches, engravings, and photographs to construct an image of the city and its relationship with nature. The results showed the importance of urban planning by considering the relationship between urban space and nature as two inseparable elements and providing elements for reflecting on contemporary environmental problems.

Marilyn Monroe’s mystery house: reappraising Fifth Helena Drive

ABSTRACT Since Marilyn Monroe’s death in 1962, her final home has endured in popular culture as both a symbol of personal tragedy and a forensically analysed physical location. As the site of her passing, 12305 Fifth Helena Drive has attracted generations of tourists and has provided the backdrop for numerous theories related to her untimely end. This emphasis on Monroe’s death has, however, overshadowed the star’s experience of homemaking and habitation; so too has a strand of posthumous commentary from those close to Monroe set out that the very structure and décor of the house prefigured her demise. This article challenges the received wisdom around the house to assert its significance as a site of interrupted potential rather than existential failure. Bringing together urban history and environmental psychology, the article argues that a more comprehensive understanding of Fifth Helena’s place in an entire legacy of Los Angeles domesticity illuminates what Monroe – a native of the city – was actively seeking in a home in her final months. This, in turn, restores agency to the star in a period of her life long defined by fatalistic and pathologising rhetoric.

Analysis of Urban Planning Methods for Urban Villages: A Case Study of Liede Village in Guangzhou

Urban sprawl in China has become a common trend in urban history, thus, urban villages form during the process which contains both urban and rural characteristics. Among all the urban village management cases in China, Liede Village, Guangzhou, seems to be typically outstanding. It experienced regeneration from a poor urban village with chaos to a prosperous financial and retailing center in Pearl River New Town. The government followed ne-oliberal urbanism by decentralizing the central power and letting the market determine the urban plans. Public, private firms, and the village committee all played an important role in decision-making, helping Liede Village to build a new success in the 21st century. However, these approaches also had disadvantages in terms of tokenism of public participation and postponing information from mainstream media. Overall, some parts of the urban village management methods are acceptable, but they can never be copied without further consideration.

Runaway Serfs in 17th-Century Estland and Livland

ABSTRACT Adscripti glebae is a condition where peasants legally belong to a particular landholding. Its purpose was to maintain a stable labour force at the disposal of the landholder. Peasants who did not abide by this immobility requirement were termed runaways. Runaways have been episodically mentioned in medieval and early modern social history, particularly in demographic history, urban history, and histories of serfdom. Yet they have rarely been the central focus of historical studies. This paper examines the runaway on the background of the particular conditions of serfdom in the provinces of Estland and Livland. The paper describes how serfdom was practiced in these provinces, proceeds to peasant agency by considering the numerous diverse reasons for running away and outlines the reasoning behind the efforts of both nobility and government aimed at maintaining the status quo. The court records of a few extradition cases are highlighted to illustrate aspects of the issue of keeping serfs bound to the land.

Post-Occupancy Evaluation of Brownfield Reuse Based on Sustainable Development: The Case of Beijing Shougang Park

Industrial heritage parks, an effective form of urban brownfield reuse, effectively mitigate pollution, improve the human living environment, and achieve sustainable development; industrial heritage parks, which add blue and green space to a city, also play an important role in presenting urban history and culture, promoting regional economic growth, and achieving human well-being. Exploring the user behavior use of industrial heritage parks and conducting post-occupancy evaluation of projects based on subjective human perceptions from the users’ perspective can contribute to improve the sustainable management, maintenance, and design of projects in the future. However, previous studies on post-occupancy evaluation have not been sufficiently studied for urban industrial heritage parks. This study takes Beijing Shougang Park, a representative industrial heritage park in China, as the research object, and distributes and collects nearly 150 questionnaires about user behavior and four significant evaluation items after the preliminary field research, analyzes the importance and satisfaction evaluation of the park design elements (place characteristics, natural environment characteristics, usability characteristics, and management characteristics), and uses a frequency analysis, an IPA analysis, an independent t-test, an analysis of variance, and a multiple regression analysis, and other methods are used, to quantitatively analyze the content of the questionnaire. The results of the study include the following: (1) The park is mainly used by people in their twenties to thirties and forties, and the usage rate of the sports plaza, which is the main facility, is the highest, while the usage rate of the renovation facility, the machine room, is the lowest. (2) While Shougang Park users were more satisfied with the natural environment features, Shougang Park users were found to be relatively less satisfied with the place and usability features. (3) The natural environment characteristics of Shougang Park had a positive effect on both overall satisfaction and recommendation intention. Finally, based on the questions and suggestions from users, a park renewal optimization strategy is proposed, hoping to provide suggestions for the renovation and design of similar industrial heritage parks in Chinese cities.

A Transnational Perspective in Biographical Research: The Case of Stanisław Lem

In this essay, the author presents biography as a genre of historical writing and argues that it is entangled in the methodological challenges of contemporary historiographical discourses, including methodological nationalism. Placing Stanisław Lem’s biography at the center of her interest, the author analyzes national, ethnic, and class relations in Lviv since the late nineteenth century, and considers the turning points in the history of this city, presenting them from a transnational perspective. In this context, she shows how Lviv’s Center for Urban History of East Central Europe has been transformed and the role it is currently playing in documenting Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.

Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization ed. by Kent Blansett, Cathleen D. Cahill, and Andrew Needham (review)

Indian Cities: Histories of Indigenous Urbanization ed. by Kent Blansett, Cathleen D. Cahill, and Andrew Needham (review)

Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State, by Claire Dunning

Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State, by Claire Dunning

Anicinabe Aki—Invisible No More: Indigenous Urban History in the Abitibi Region

This article explores the Indigenous historiography of the town of Senneterre and the Abitibi region in Quebec. As the centre of ancestral and contemporary social and spatial organization of three Indigenous nations—Anicinabe, Iiyiuu/Iinuu (Cree), and Atikamekw Nehirowisiw—the specificity of Senneterre allows for a more nuanced analysis that centres Indigenous epistemological traditions of kinship, responsibility, and care. We thus focus on the ways in which the Senneterre Native Friendship Centre (and, more broadly, the national and provincial friendship centre movement), through a politics of care, has consistently delinked from settler-colonial tenets to build and embody a vision of making home and weave a sense of belonging for the Indigenous families that have been excluded from the town’s imaginary. The authors show how the Friendship Centre and its members have contributed to the reexamination of analytical and conceptual underpinnings of Indigenous urbanization, from a process of acculturation, cultural and territorial dispossession, and assimilation to that of strengthening contemporary Indigenous identities and the flourishing of a civic society in a place where urban space cannot be disassociated from a complex and overlapping Indigenous sovereign presence.

Imagining the Settler-Colonial City: Introducing Urban Indigeneities and the Settler-Colonial City, a Special Issue of the Urban History Review

This article introduces the essays collected in this special issue of the Urban History Review and sketches the urban imagination of settler-colonial political traditions. It focuses on the way settler cities are imagined, argues that the settler-colonial city may be seen as distinct from other urban formations, and suggests that the urban form is a constitutive component of settler-colonial formations and their imaginaries. Settlers, the founders of political orders in distant locales, have cities on their minds precisely because they are heading in the opposite direction. They focus on the city they will build and on the cities they are escaping. They are especially concerned with the ways in which the former is going to differ from the latter. This imagination should be considered when appraising the settler colonial city, an endeavour to which this special issue contributes.

The city memory Construction for the renewal of historic and cultural City: Taking the Design of Anyang culture and sports Center

With the rapid expansion of cities, many famous historical and cultural cities in China lack of urban construction features, and cities are no longer familiar homes and hometown in people's memory, which makes people have cognitive difficulties and identity crisis. This paper discusses the characteristics of urban memory from the dynamic relationship of interaction between urban memory, urban space and local cultural characteristics, and points out that urban memory has the value of continuing urban history and culture, forming local identity and giving urban spiritual connotation. Finally, taking the design of Anyang culture and sports Center as an example, this paper discusses the idea of urban memory construction in the renewal of historical and cultural city, so as to regain people's emotional dependence and identity on urban space.

THE POLITICS OF URBAN ECOLOGY: Paul Duvigneaud and the Rise of Ecological Urbanism in Brussels during the 1970s

AbstractToday, design disciplines such as ecological urbanism aim at fusing natural and social sciences to restore the equilibrium between social and natural systems, and in extenso the urban and natural environment. But recent literature in urban political ecology and urban history has shown how this socioecological approach is generally stripped down to a merely ecological perspective, ignoring the sociopolitical side of the urban ecological project. I therefore argue that there is a need for a research programme that interrogates the history of the interaction between ecology, planning and politics. In this article I respond by developing a historical perspective on the rise of the ecosystemic approach towards the city, delving into the agency and political nature of ecological science itself. Through an in‐depth historical analysis of the Brussels school of urban ecology and urban ecologist Paul Duvigneaud, I highlight how urban ecology influenced politics through its association with the regional government and vice versa to argue that ecological knowledge was used to overcome political opposition, incorporate a specific regionalist agenda and build an ecological zoning practice in urban planning policies.

Building colonial Hong Kong: Speculative development and segregation in the city – A book review

Cecilia Chu, an urban historian, was surprised at her studies that unmasking the 19th-century colonial land tenure system resulted in “good government” in Hong Kong. She found the colonial governance evolved to respect traditional Confucian values of impartiality, integrity, and a commitment to the public interest. The need for Hong Kong government to be self-sufficient by Britain was the original driver for this to happen; that is, the requirement to sell public land to raise revenue from the European and Chinese Speculators essential for the development of Hong Kong. Chu’s research revealed that both events and politics over time required the government to move beyond laissez-faire economics and to become interventionist to tackle diseased slum areas and unsafe buildings and to shape new urban development to deliver healthier housing and better environments. Overseas experience of epidemics had led to a growing understanding of the relationship between health and economy in the 19th century. Populations fleeing Hong Kong during epidemics served to demonstrate that the city needed to be healthy if it was to prosper. This caused the government to adopt interventionist policies. In particular, the government intervened in its land sales strategy to reduce fiscal revenue income from sales to induce the private sector to contribute towards social provision in public health, housing and modern town planning. It also had a bearing on colonial segregation strategies to reflect different expectations of the European and native Chinese communities. Crucially, while the colonial administration remained in power, greater involvement of the Chinese elites in the bureaucracy gave legitimacy portraying Hong Kong as a “land of justice.” This demonstration of “good government” helped maintain the loyalty of the Chinese merchant elites and native Chinese population.

‘Differences within a range of similarity’: mapping Australian urban history

AbstractIn 1964, Australian writer Donald Horne observed that ‘whatever differences there are between the Australian cities are differences within a range of similarity’. He proposed that Australia had 11 major cities and yet, in general, there existed a singular national urban culture, a one-city Australia. Unpacking the story of Australian urban history, its national trends and local nuances, has been an ongoing project ever since. What follows is an analysis of the field, which suggests how historians might begin to unpack Horne’s assertion. The final section of the article explores the contribution of Australian urban history in the national and global contexts.

Nineteenth-Century Conservation of Byzantine Heritage in the Ottoman Empire: The Significance of the 1893 Istanbul Historic Peninsula Fortification Map

ABSTRACT City walls are essential urban elements contributing to the identity of historical cities. Their significance as a component of a city’s image is reflected on historical city maps, revealing the physical traces of urban history. The Istanbul Historic Peninsula, a multi-layered historical city centre surrounded by Byzantine-period walls, has been represented on different maps and drawings by Ottoman and foreign experts ever since the fifteenth century. One of the first architectural documentation studies focusing on these city walls is the Historic Peninsula Fortification (HPF) Map, dated 1893. Archival and literature research shows that the map is a copy of the Nineteenth-Century Istanbul Map, also called the Ayverdi Map. In this paper, we discuss the value of the 1893 Istanbul HPF Map as a historical document, its properties, and its historical and cultural significance for documenting the city walls for conservation purposes in the Ottoman period.

Rethinking the dominant modernist planning narrative: Investigating pedestrianisation in Europe, 1960s–1970s

This article intends to discuss the 1970s as a breaking point in both urban and transport history. The dominant narrative of urban planning sets two periods after 1945 in opposition: the post-war modernist and car-oriented city on the one hand, and on the other hand the (more) sustainable and pedestrian-oriented city that supposedly started to arise in the 1980s. This time frame reveals the importance given to the narrative of the avant-garde, the great intellectual figures, and the national policies in urban history. The paper decentres the investigation into the history of pedestrianisation in Europe and highlights how “anonymous” city engineers and local urban planners produced alternative pathways to modernisation as early as the 1950s. The European municipal movement for pedestrianisation appears as the missing link between the radical functionalist approach of post-war modern planning, and the present trend in favour of public space and walkability.

Heritage-Based Spatial Form Consideration: Western Urban Planning Concepts Used in Chinese Urban (Dalian) Development

Dalian, a typical modern colonial city, originated in the late 19th century and was planned and built by Russian architects. Academics have traditionally focused on the unique qualities of the spatial form from the early stages of urban development, but due to a lack of urban history archives, the formation of the spatial form and the planning ideology of this time have not been examined. For this study, we visited the Russian State Historical Archives to search for relevant materials to restore the process of forming Dalian’s spatial form. Based on this, the heritage value and attributes of Dalian’s modern urban spatial form are discussed. The results show that, although Dalian was always under the control of Russian political power at the early stage of its urban construction, the urban planning ideas were integrated with modern Western urban planning ideas. Secondly, under the influence of modern Western urban planning ideas, including “classicalism” and the “garden city”, the modern Dalian urban space gradually formed a unique form and appearance, bearing the brand of the times and urban memory in a special context. Moreover, this study finds that the evolution of urban space is not simply a cumulative development of itself but the result of the influence of external ideas implanted with unique heritage values and attributes.

‘Compliments from the Housewives’: Contesting White Public Space in Late-Colonial Nairobi

AbstractThis article examines the racial politics of decolonization in late-colonial Nairobi in the decade before independence through the unique space of the colonial bus using archival letters from a group of European women who called themselves ‘The Housewives’. In letters to Nairobi's mayor and the Kenya Bus Service (KBS), the Housewives argued against a newly proposed transportation policy that would make all seating on the colonial buses the same price, doing away with the first-class section. The letters reveal that African bus riders, particularly Muslim women riders, were centrally important in this crucial time in Kenya's urban history. With Nairobi still under a ‘State of Emergency’ as military operations against the Land and Freedom Army (Mau Mau) were coming to an end, these letters show colonial buses as battlegrounds during the final years of British colonial rule in Kenya with extremely porous social borders and transportation vehicles serving as rich sites of urban life.