Increasing returns to scale in the towns of early Tudor England

Abstract

Urban agglomeration economies make cities central to theories of modern economic growth. There is historical evidence for the presence of Smithian growth and agglomeration effects in English towns c.1450-1670, but seminal assessments deny the presence of agglomeration effects and productivity gains to Early Modern English towns. This study evaluates the presence of increasing returns to scale (IRS) in aggregate urban economic outputs—the empirical signature of feedbacks between Smithian growth and agglomeration effects—among the towns of 16th century England. To do so, we test a model from settlement scaling theory against the 1524/5 Lay Subsidy returns. Analysis of these data indicates that Tudor towns exhibited IRS—a finding that is robust to alternative interpretations of the data. IRS holds even for the smallest towns in our sample, suggesting the absence of town size thresholds for the emergence of agglomeration effects. Spatial patterning of scaling residuals further suggests regional demand-side interactions with Smithian-agglomeration feedbacks. These findings suggest the presence of agglomeration effects and Smithian growth in pre-industrial English towns. This begs us to reconsider the economic performance of Early Modern English towns, and suggests that the qualitative economic dynamics of contemporary cities may be applicable to premodern settlements in general.     

«Non urbe, non vico, non castris»: territorial control and the colonization and urbanization of Wales and Ireland under Anglo-Norman lordship

By playing on the Classical belief that urbanity is a sign of civility, urbanism has often been used by Europeans to characterize the «other» as uncivilized. In the twelfth century, contemporary chroniclers in England made much use of the myth that Wales and Ireland were unurbanized and therefore uncivilized. This conviction provided, in their view, a justification for colonizing lands in Wales and Ireland, at the western edge of the Anglo-Norman kingdom. Throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the process of this colonization was intimately linked with urbanization. This paper examines the spatial dimensions of this process and proposes two views of how urbanization facilitated colonization. First, English domination was extended geographically by the use of particular Anglo-Norman urban laws, and by the foundation of chartered towns. These laws spread English legal practices into Wales and Ireland, reinforcing the myth that these areas lacked urbanity before colonization, whilst at the same time placing them under the watchful eye of Anglo-Norman lordship. Secondly, in the creation of chartered «new» towns, Anglo-Norman lords used exclusionary devices to structure the internal spaces of towns, separating English townspeople from Welsh and Irish and in the process marking them as «outsiders» in a «colonial» society.     

Small-Town Sustainability: Prospects in the Second Modernity

Small towns account for a significant fraction of the total population in many regions, but there has been a relative lack of research into small towns, with researchers' attention being drawn more to the effects of globalization and technological change on large cities and city regions. Yet, as the effects of globalization have become increasingly imprinted on small towns, transnational grassroots movements have emerged to address the needs, challenges and opportunities of small-town communities. Many of these movements involve partnerships and networks linking the local and international levels. They are often framed in terms of sustainability of their community, with an emphasis on liveability and quality of life. This article places the emergence of cross-border collaborations between small towns in the broader context of shifts from the “first” to the “second modernity”. Through in-depth case studies of movements such as Italy's Slow Food and Slow City movement, Sweden's eco-cities, economic gardening in the US and the creative cities project in Albania, we highlight four sensibilities that have emerged: local, organic and slow food; environmentalism; entrepreneurship and creativity.     

外地游客与本地居民的城镇空间感知差异——以广东省佛山市南海区西部城镇为例

随着全球竞争的不断加剧,地方政府着力于塑造城市形象以吸引外部资源,这种效率导向的建设行为扩大了城市内部的空间差异,并使得外地游客与本地居民的空间感知产生差异。本文以语义差别法（SemanticDifferential）为分析工具,通过对广东省佛山市南海区西部城镇的实证调查,比较分析了外地游客相对于本地居民对城镇感知的评价特征。分析发现,研究对象的空间感知总体呈现平庸化的格局,但是外地游客对城镇生态环境品质、城乡空间差别方面的空间感知评价均优于本地居民,且这种评价与实地场景照片内容具有内在的一致性。研究最后提出,对旅游城镇而言,地方政府往往重点建设外地游客高频活动区域,易忽视对本地居民日常生活场所的建设投资,从而导致了两类社会群体对空间感知的语境差异。     

北魏军镇州郡化问题新探

军镇的成立、发展乃至转型皆深藏于北魏政治演进之中,并在政区地理以及地方行政制度维度,与州郡相互勾连。太武帝基于地方行政治理的需要,在部分军镇开启了州郡化进程,至孝文帝时,军镇州郡化全面席卷地方行政领域。而军镇在政区地理方面的差异,影响了州郡化的路径与结果。根据军镇的类型及其转型方式,军镇州郡化应细分为“改镇立州”“废镇立州”“废镇存州”三种方式,前两种直接改变了北魏政区体系,并使得军镇体制渐次退出地方行政领域,第三种的作用则仅限于制度变化方面。三者共同推动军镇政区及军镇体制的州郡化,进而在政权结构层面引发北魏地方行政制度的更张。     

新时期新疆边境城镇体系构建和口岸小城镇发展

新疆所处区位条件决定了边境的稳定与发展在整个区域经济中占据重要位置。把城市化和对外开放结合起来,通过边境城镇体系的构建来密切边境城镇与腹地的联系具有积极作用。边境城镇体系通过交通轴线的连接,对不同层次、不同职能分工的核心、节点、边境城市和口岸小城镇进行空间纵深配置,从而发挥对外开放的城镇整体优势。口岸型小城镇是边境城镇体系的前沿,最具特色。在发展条件较好,规模较大的口岸可考虑直接设立建制镇。在一些自身设镇条件不足的口岸,可考虑与地方、兵团联合设镇,协调管理。     

ZONING A CROSS‐BORDER CITY

This paper investigates zoning in a cross‐border linear city that consists of two bordering towns. In each town, a local regulator has a say in the location of the local firm. We find that local regulators may use zoning strategically. The incentive to gain consumers from the other town, or not to lose local consumers, may push regulators to approve only locations for firms close enough to the frontier. When zoning is costly an asymmetric equilibrium may emerge: only one regulator resorts to zoning. In the case of towns of different sizes, the regulator of the larger town is the only one that zones in an asymmetric equilibrium.     

A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE FOR CONTINUITY IN BRITISH TOWNS IN THE 5TH AND 6TH CENTURIES1

Summary. An attempt is first made to define ‘town’and ‘continuity’for this period, and to assess the vigour of towns in the fourth century. The body of the article is a review of the fifth and sixth century archaeological evidence (including structures, artefacts and dark soil) and an analysis of the interpretations based upon it especially the theories of (1) Germanic ‘mercenaries’and (2) the prolongation of towns into the fifth century so that they overlap with early English activity. The conclusion is reached that there is no archaeological evidence for continuity in fifth and sixth century towns.     

Governance at community level: Small towns in rural Victoria

The ‘blurring’ of the boundaries between and within public and private sectors has led to new styles of governing that affect the way that rural communities organise themselves. Some have called this a shift from ‘government’ to ‘governance’ where there has been a convergence of neo-liberal and communitarian ideologies to form the basis of a new relationship between the state, the market and civil society. We analyse the impact of these converging ideologies using a survey of development groups in 35 towns in rural Victoria and explore the types of community governance that have emerged as a response to changes in those towns that lost their local government authorities in the last decade of the twentieth century.     

Local labour markets and socio-economic change: evidence from Danish towns, 2008–2013

The recent financial and economic crisis had substantial but spatially differentiated impacts on growth. However, there is still a lot left to be understood about the local aspects of the crisis. One of these aspects is its socio-economic consequences. This paper investigates local socio-economic change to Danish towns from 2008 to 2013, with a focus on the impact of local labour market (LLM) structures on change. Socio-economic change in towns is measured both directly as mean income and employment growth, and indirectly as population and human capital growth. The paper relies on micro-data and uses robust regression to generate results. Several findings are presented, but the two main conclusions are: first, the LLM structures of towns still influence local socio-economic development; and, second, towns experience better socio-economic development if they are in close proximity to a larger labour market and/or have a large ratio of commuters in the working population.     

Miami's Little Havana: Yard Shrines,Cult Religion and Landscape

The urban square has been a distinguishing characteristic of European cities for millennia. However, in the context of small towns, where the square is often the sole identifier of their physical urbanity, its role differs from that of large towns. This fact is substantial within national administrative systems that endorse desirable urban status to rural settlements endowed with urban morphology. It is also important in times of extensive EU-subsidized actions aimed at improving the quality of public space in small underresourced towns. However, many projects fail to draw from and respond to the specifics of the local context, and, by focusing on the details and disregarding the basics, they may defeat their purpose. Departing from extensive field observations in Poland, this paper puts theoretical framework and current trends in urban design into relation to various elements of a square's spatial configuration in order to arrive at degrees of their urban significance. By interpreting the fundamental values embedded in the morphology of market squares, this paper attempts to isolate the cultural archetypes that shape our perception of such places as urban. The proposed analysis could be used to meet the main goal of market square revitalization, namely to visually articulate urbanity.     

Roman Urbanism: A View from the Countryside

The towns of Roman Britain have been subject to a long tradition of empirical research and discussion, but far less attention has been paid to the landscape context in which they developed. This paper considers the implications of this caveat for our understanding of Roman urbanism and suggests that most previous approaches have internalized the study of towns as social institutions and have failed to give due weight to the role of local rural agency in influencing the character of urban development. In so doing, it is suggested that the potential role of other important and competing nodes of economic, political and religious life, such as forts, fortresses, vici and small towns as well as rural sanctuaries and other settlements, is also not given due consideration in discussing the distinctive character of urbanism in Roman Britain.     

England’s trade with the Continent in the early thirteenth century: customs and the port of Dover

ABSTRACT

This article identifies and prints the earliest detailed customs list from northern Europe, which was prepared for the port of Dover in 1233 or soon after, and it gives fuller and more detailed information about trade than for any other northern European port at this date. The list shows a remarkable diversity of trade, including some of the earliest references to particular goods in English documents, and widespread sources of trade including Flanders, Germany and Italy. The depiction of such trading links prompts questions about the ‘commercial revolution’ and the development of European trade, for it shows how varied trade and consumption could be in the era of the fairs of the Champagne towns, before the establishment of direct maritime links from the Italian cities to northern Europe. The appearance of commodities and trading links in the Dover list suggest that commercial development was earlier and more evolutionary.     

Degraded towns in Poland as cultural heritage

This paper discusses how the concept of cultural heritage is currently used in relation to the so-called degraded towns (i.e. deprived of their urban status) in Poland. It shows the role of heritagisation in the process of restitution of urban status, and addresses the effects of the ongoing revitalisation of degraded towns in order to restore their lost urban glory. I argue that the Polish understanding of urbanity is ambiguous, muddling formality with cultural connotations. I address how such convolution both rewrites history and affects modernity by the imposition of values and foreclosures. I also discuss how alterations to the built environment made in the name of cultural heritage (revitalisation) are often conducted with disregard to identity, authenticity and historical hybridity, and how the introduction of ‘history’ into a modern arena affects the local society. I conclude that considering degraded towns as a special form of cultural heritage is a new construction, where coupling of the disconnected dimensions of the Polish understanding of urbanity becomes even more apparent. I stress that this field is neither sufficiently differentiated nor problematised, and that cultural heritage relating to degraded towns is often taken for granted.     

THE CITY OF GOD AND AFTER: RELIGIOUS CHANGE AND ORGANISATIONAL DECLINE IN GREAT ENGLISH TOWNS SINCE C. 1850

Abstract

The demands and effects of warfare have not been one of the traditional concerns of historians of early modern English towns. This essay looks at the way in which the townsmen of York, Hull and Beverley responded to the demands of war. It explores the level of urban involvement in the king's wars, mainly but not exclusively against the Scots, and the way in which the pressure of war acted to transform relations within towns and relations between towns and their neighbours. In a period when towns were experiencing rapid economic, social and religious change, war provided one means of renegotiating power relations and allowed urban elites to expand their authority, through partnership with the Crown, vis-à-vis their fellow citizens and non-urban elites. The balance between profiting from war and being ruined by its demands was a fine one, however, exemplified by the experience of Hull in the 1540s.     

REGIONAL INEQUITY AND SOVIET CONCERN FOR RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN INDUSTRALIZATION

Regional inequity has been an important national issue in most industrial societies. Measures to reduce inequity usually include the location of more industries in rural and small-town areas. The USSR has always possessed a strong ideologically based concern for regional inequity, but it was not until the 1960's that the matter was given serious attention. The last three five-year plans have called for more industry in small towns and rural villages. Life in these areas is to be made more attractive, labor resources more fully utilized, local economies improved, and the out- migration of people reduced. However, there are obvious barriers to industrialization in rural and small-town areas, and as in most industrial nations, the reduction of regional inequity is a slow and difficult process.     

‘Good order and the police’

The emergence of police ordinances and police authorities in the early modern period has traditionally been seen as a way to discipline society in order to increase the power of the absolutist state. However, recent investigations of early modern policing in German and French regions show that ‘good order and police’ was in demand by the subjects and also adapted to local needs. Inspired by this research this article investigates the enforcement of police ordinances in the Danish market towns of Aalborg and Sæby and the country district of Børglum-Jerslev. The results show that policing remained focused on local needs even after the creation of a royal police office in 1682. Policing mainly concerned the welfare and privileges of burghers in market towns until the introduction of a country police in 1791, when agrarian reforms began to erode the patriarchal order in the countryside. As a new way of governing, ‘police’ was a way both to govern free burghers and preserve traditional order.     

Competing discourses of built heritage: lay values in Irish conservation planning

Built heritage conservation has traditionally been shaped by professionals through an ‘authorised heritage discourse’, emphasising expert knowledge and skills, universal value, a hierarchy of significance, and protecting the authenticity of tangible assets. However, while the purpose of built heritage conservation is widely recognised to be broad, encompassing cultural, social and economic benefits, it takes place in the presence, and on behalf, of a wider public whose values and priorities may differ starkly from those of heritage power-players. Drawing on the perspectives of a range of built heritage actors in three small towns in Ireland, this paper contributes to these debates, exploring the competing values and priorities embedded within lay discourses of heritage. Based on critical discourse analysis of interviews with local actors, the paper identifies that collected memory and local place distinctiveness, contributing to a sense of local identity, are of central importance in how non-experts construct their understanding of built heritage. In the Irish context, this is particularly important in understanding social and cultural statutory categories of heritage interest. The paper concludes on the implications for policy and practice and, in particular, the need to more effectively take account of non-expert values and priorities in heritage and conservation decision-making.     

古镇遗产分类及资源型古镇的保护性利用模式初探

古镇是人类主要聚落形态之一,按其成因和社会功能可把古镇分为聚落型村镇、区域贸易中心型集镇、资源型或资源—产业型集镇、军事重镇型集镇和文化景观型集镇等。资源型古镇通常是在对某地自然资源进行开发利用的过程中发展起来的场镇,它的发展历程直接折射出区域社会变迁及其关联的社会背景,构成地方文化和历史记忆的重要载体。对资源型古镇的保护性利用旨在服务当地,在内容和形式上旨在使古镇的"形"与"神"与其生存空间达到高度的融合与统一,从而准确传达古镇所蕴含的历史信息及遗产价值。     

English towns in the late middle ages: the case of Great Yarmouth

Historians are divided over the economic fortunes of English towns in the late middle ages. Many argue for a ‘general crisis’ while others emphasize the variety of urban experience. Great Yarmouth is a striking example of a town facing protracted difficulties. Its decline in relation to other English towns between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries is particularly marked. Fourth among provincial towns in the 1334 tax return, Yarmouth ranked eighteenth in 1377 and twentieth in the subsidies of the 1520s.Yarmouth's problems become apparent soon after 1350, but while the Black Death may have killed one-third of its inhabitants, it is not the main cause of the town's misfortunes. Yarmouth depended heavily on two industries: shipping and fishing. The former was undermined by the early stages of the Hundred Years War, and the latter by competition from the Low Countries. A silting harbour which drove away trade and the high cost of building and repairing the town walls added to Yarmouth's difficulties.Whether economic decline is measured in terms of totals, for example total volume of trade, or in terms of individual production or wealth, Yarmouth fared badly. In the second half of the fourteenth century, Yarmouth's trade was much reduced and the town's leading burgesses seem much poorer than their counterparts before 1350. While Yarmouth clearly was in decline from about 1350 onwards, the town's experiences cannot be used to prove the case for a ‘general crisis’. They have to be seen in the context of the continuing prosperity of Norwich and the revival of Ipswich.