It is widely claimed that there was a clear spatial continuity in the evolution of the traditional Middle Eastern city, with every new development the result of an intelligent, albeit unplanned, evolution of pre-existing doctrines of construction. However, as far as the new Safavid urban development of seventeenth-century Isfahan (in Iran) is concerned, it is possible to distinguish a spatial fragmentation, in terms of urban pattern and urban structure, between the old texture and new extensions.

This article offers a reconsideration of planning and development in English towns and cities after the Black Death (1348). Conventional historical accounts have stressed the occurrence of urban ‘decay’ in the later fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Here, instead, a case is made that after 1350 urban planning continued to influence towns and cities in England through the transformation of their townscapes. Using the conceptual approaches of urban morphologists in particular, the article demonstrates that not only did the foundation of new towns and creation of new suburbs characterize the period 1350–1530, but so too did the redevelopment of existing urban landscapes through civic improvements and public works. These reveal evidence for the particular ‘agents of change’ involved in the planning and development process, such as surveyors, officials, patrons and architects, and also the role played by maps and drawn surveys. In this reappraisal, England's urban experiences can be seen to have been closely connected with those instances of urban planning after the Black Death occurring elsewhere in contemporary continental Europe.

We describe and analyse how Newcastle was transformed from a relatively stagnant British city at the dawn of the nineteenth century to one of the most vibrant cities in the world by the early twentieth century. We use two frameworks to chart and explain this momentous change: Wallerstein's model of hegemonic cycles to locate Newcastle's late development in a world-historical context, and Jacobs’ theory of city economic growth to understand the processes of change within the city and its region. These lead to an empirical focus on three investigations: first, how Newcastle grew geographically to become a multi-nodal city region (Tyneside plus Wearside); second, how the Newcastle city economy grew and developed into a very complex division of labour; and third, how this generated a new modern metropolitan cultural world.

This article examines the role played by workmen's trains in allowing working-class families to move out into London's suburbs between 1860 and 1914. While previous scholarship has argued that these trains effectively only benefited skilled artisans or a working-class elite, it is argued here that from the 1880s onwards they were increasingly used by unskilled workers in irregular employment. Furthermore, they were also used by women and children earning low wages in subsidiary employment. Ultimately, it is demonstrated that a much broader spectrum of the working class were living in the suburbs and commuting than has been previously supposed.

This article argues that a one-sided focus on official sources has dominated historical research on urban green space. The absence of the users’ perspective obscures a substantial part of its significance. This article, which aims at complementing rather than contradicting existing research, will show that the different perspectives and practices of city dwellers widen our understanding of the history of urban green spaces. The article will also consider the value of often marginalized, unofficial green spaces like ramparts and wastelands at the urban fringe.

The provincial press played a significant role in forming local attitudes and senses of civic identity in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Local and regional newspapers often adopted a ‘boosterist’ language, a style that enthusiastically promoted the particular qualities of places. The persistence of boosterism into the early twenty-first century makes it a concept worthy of further exploration. This study considers just one ‘booster’, Bernard Samuel Gilbert, and his illuminating series of articles on Lincoln for the Lincolnshire Echo in 1914. His correspondence illustrates the contrasting stances towards improvement typically employed within the local press – including the boosterist alongside the more critical.

Taking a cue from Walter Benjamin, this article exposes the wreckage of urban renewal on LeBreton Flats – a mixed industrial and working-class neighbourhood in Ottawa, Canada. Photographic and textual fragments of urban life retrieved from government expropriation files are used to expose the spell of progress embodied in the urban renewal plan for the neighbourhood. This article shows how urban historians can deploy Benjamin's methodological approach to reclaim the memory of everyday life on LeBreton Flats from the realm of official planning documents. This article shows how despite an official narrative of decline scrap-dealers, craft-workers and residents continued to value the Flats and participate in an imaginative urban life.

Given the dominance of economic matters in the daily news, this article speculates why the topic has attracted relatively little attention amongst urban historians over the last 40 years, and why it is important that the local economy gains a wider acceptance as a powerful determinant of a city's fortunes.