The Dutch city of Leiden experienced economic and demographic growth from the last quarter of the sixteenth century onwards. This article analyses its effects on the urban private housing market by charting both the ratio of owners to tenants and the spatial patterns of housing wealth. Housing inequality increased in Leiden, reinforcing existing economic disparities and patterns of residential segregation. These dynamics were mainly caused by migration, which created great demand for housing. Gaining an insight into the pre-modern housing market also helps us to understand how inequalities were (re)produced and how they affected the daily lives of urbanites differently.

The essays that follow aim to capture aspects of the unique style of R.J. Morris, aspects which taken together represent the formidable legacy that he leaves to the global world of urban history.

Bob (or R.J.) Morris was probably best known in academic circles for his histories of class and specifically the British middle class. This essay traces his thinking about class in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain from an early study of class consciousness to his later attempts to rework ideas about social structure and culture in a post-Weberian direction. A feature of this intellectual trajectory was the increasing importance of the city and urban place in the account of class formation, most evident in his work on Leeds. In the process, Bob carved out a distinctive type of urban social history which has proved highly influential in historical studies of social structure not only in Britain but in Europe and beyond.

In this article, we present an exploration of the social meaning and functions of marketplace sounds – including language, yelling and hailing – in two adjacent, yet very different sites in Copenhagen, Gammel Strand and Højbro Plads. We argue that the marketplace soundscapes played central functions as means of constructing customer-oriented semiotic spaces while negotiating territories and branding and selling products. Language by way of dialectal speech, yelling, street cries, cursing and swearing was an integral part of such processes. The two sites, by virtue of their physical placement in close proximity to each other, reinforced the contrasts between them, hence, co-constructing contrasting sonic territories – a concept which we employ and develop as part of the analysis. Central to our argument is that a sensory approach, including the sound of language, to a semiotic description of the urban marketplace requires a historical contextualization of the marketplace and its functions in the urban space, as well as of the life and culture of the marketplace vendors themselves; that is, the case in point, the female vendors from Amager and Skovshoved.

Two characteristics that defined Bob Morris were his empathy and his humanity. As a person, not just as a teacher and scholar, these elements infused his approach to people no matter their age or status. This short appreciation considers his contributions to urban and social history, his capacity for synthesis and analysis and his sensitivity in exploring places and spaces using text, data and images. Bob Morris’ humility was the hallmark of an exceptional historian, colleague and friend.

Once the disorderly output from the mainframe was pushed to one side, R.J. Morris was quick to realize the potential of the early Apple Mac personal computer to enhance how he taught the historical method. In this article, I reflect on Morris’ pedagogy in the fields of urban history and middle-class formation, and in his approach to nominal record linkage. These insights come from my experience as both an undergraduate and postgraduate student under his guidance and then later as collaborator in the classroom and in research. When teaching the power of the computer to advance the historian’s craft, Bob Morris never lost sight of the ‘concept’ as his favoured means of exploring and understanding historical transformation.

Bob Morris first influenced social historians in Hungary through personal contacts, but these contacts were later strengthened by institutional networks. The post-transition historiography of Eastern Europe found concepts in Morris’ work that dovetailed with the rise of interest in researching the history of the public sphere and the understanding of structural changes in society. However, because of the different historical traditions of the region, these concepts could not be easily transposed. Nevertheless, the work of Bob Morris is often cited in research on modern urban forms of associational life. His work on urban history is systematically being introduced to younger generations through one of the principal handbooks for teaching social history at the university level. Most importantly, Bob Morris’ approach to research and his enthusiasm for conversation with scholars at all stages of their careers will long be remembered, and his work guides urban historians across the continent.

This article studies public amusement in turn-of-the-twentieth-century Gothenburg, Sweden, and argues that historians of urban and popular culture need to take the hybrid character of modernity more seriously. The case of the small peripheral port city of Gothenburg, more clearly than large metropoles or rapidly growing urban centres, showcases how turn-of-the-century urban culture was negotiated through the confrontation of traditional and innovative forms of popular amusement. Hence, insights from Gothenburg can prompt a more critical, nuanced view of ‘urban modernity’, marked not only by the emergence of commercial mass entertainment but also by the resilience of itinerant performers, for example. The article draws on different types of source material that from different perspectives embrace the co-constitutive character of practices and representations of pleasure through which people in Gothenburg negotiated urban change.

R.J. (Bob) Morris’ contribution to debates around the history of class, associational culture and urban governance have underpinned numerous publications across the decades. This article extends the appreciation of Bob’s work to reflect on how his approach to documenting, demystifying and disseminating the history and heritage of cities and industrial places – including through his use of photography – made a notable impact at the interface between urban and public history and has had a lasting impact on future generations of urban historians’ approach to understanding the historic built environment.

Bob Morris was elected as president of the European Association for Urban History (EAUH) ahead of its 2002 conference in Edinburgh. Bob’s presidency, and the Edinburgh conference specifically, took place at an important point in the development of urban history within Europe and further afield. First, the programme reveals several emerging themes and topics of interest that have since shaped the sub-field in new and innovative ways. Second, Bob’s informal and collegial approach towards networking is reflected in the decision to place the EAUH on a quasi-formal constitutional basis. Both of these developments reflect, in part, Bob’s own research interests, as well as the sub-field’s welcoming approach to younger researchers, including taught and research postgraduate students, interested in networking with more established scholars.

Scholarship on brewing in early modern London is torn between two irreconcilable stories, one positing stunning growth before 1560 and the other insignificant change until after 1720. Careful attention to company and court records as well as state papers, however, reveals that by 1600 London brewing had boomed, likely making it Europe’s largest brewing centre, led by individual houses operating on scales close to the largest of the mid-eighteenth century. Such breweries were accurately perceived to be large scale and highly profitable, clustered along the Thames in urban industrial zones.

The nineteenth century was an era of rapid urban growth, increasing temporal awareness, and a rising demand for precision. Time measurement and display became particularly important in this context, not just for scientific or military purposes, but also for administrations, businesses and for the general public. There was, however, one significant problem: making all the public clocks show the same and correct time, which led to the development of urban temporal infrastructures as symbols of urban modernity and a source of civic pride. This article presents an account of the origins of two temporal infrastructures in Paris, focusing particularly on the electrical network devised by the scientists of the Paris Observatory.

The Hong Kong Colonial Cemetery, established in 1845, served as both an exemplary burial space and a refuge from the ‘degenerative’ tropical urban environment for the British during the second half of the nineteenth century. This article argues that what constitutes the sacredness of the cemetery was not merely Christian values, but a mixture of personal emotional meanings and imperialist sentiments. The sacredness of the site during the nineteenth century also rested upon the exclusion of the Chinese ‘other’, even though such boundaries were often volatile due to the diverse and unfixed nature of the colonial community, and the rising influences of the Chinese elites.

Early modern local chronicles are a largely neglected, yet stable genre of texts that can be used for comparative research over time and space. The NWO-funded research project Chronicling Novelty (2018–24) investigated the reception of new media and new knowledge among early modern chroniclers in the Low Countries. For this purpose, we created a digitized corpus of 204 Dutch-language chronicles from the period 1500–1850. This article presents the methodological decisions made in creating this corpus and their implications for its representativeness. The second part examines the social, religious and political profile of the chroniclers: who wrote chronicles and what does this reveal about chronicling as a cultural and social practice? Particularly interesting in this respect is how the chroniclers’ strong involvement in local public affairs authorized their chronicling practices, and vice versa.

This introduction to the ‘Survey and Speculation’ special issue ‘Empire and Cities’ outlines how this collection came about, summarizes the six contributions and draws general conclusions.