“Mehr Licht,mehr Luft” — wissenschaftliche Hygiene und Stadtentwicklung in Deutschland im 19. Jahrhundert

Since 1870 a group of planners tried to ground urban planning scientifically in economy, engineering and hygiene. It is argued that hygiene as a newly developed natural science provided planners with a lot of good arguments to legitimize a change in the traditional urban planning regulations. These had not been able to prevent the chaotic growth of big cities that resulted in a housing misery, in large block of flats, and in noisy and smelling factories neighboring better class housing. Hygienic reasoning concerned with sunlight (because of its germ killing capacity), air, and ventilation (to drive away miasma) was transformed into urban planning and, than, stood for lesser hight of buildings, more space between large blocks of flats, and different parts of town for industry and housing. Planning regulations with these ends were often opposed by owners who did not accept the devaluation of their property. Therefore it was not before 1918 that these hygienically motivated planning regulations could be set into practice by a new ruling class.     

The Return of Zipf: Towards a Further Understanding of the Rank-Size Distribution

We offer a general-equilibrium economic approach to Zipf's Law or, more generally, the rank-size distribution—the striking empirical regularity concerning the size distribution of cities. We provide some further understanding of Zipf's Law by incorporating negative feedbacks (congestion) in a popular model of economic geography and international trade. This model allows the powers of agglomeration and spreading to be in long-run equilibrium, which enhances our understanding of the existence of a rank-size distribution of cities.     

Scinditur in partes populus: Pope Damasus and the Martyrs of Rome

Pope Damasus (366–384) was the impresario of the late antique cult of the martyrs at Rome. Damasus celebrated the martyrs with epigrams written in Virgilian hexameters which he had engraved in exquisite lettering on their tombs. This article investigates the specifically Roman context of these activities as a means of shedding new light on Damasus' purposes. The enhancement of the cult of the Roman martyrs was more than a stage in the process of christianisation, creating Christian but still distinctively Roman holy patrons for the urbs. It was also directed against rival Christian traditions, including Nicene splinter groups such as the Ursinians and Luciferians who contested Damasus' election. The epi grams allowed Damasus to inscribe very specific and carefully shaped meanings on strategic and often contested sites within the Christian topography of Rome. By placing the Damasan epigrams in the context of a bloody ecclesiastical factionalism in Rome, this paper argues that these very public celebrations of the martyrs were used to promote concord and consensus within the Catholic community in Rome.