Most evidence for leasing in medieval towns is episodic and unquantifiable. An exceptional Norwich source has been used to estimate the scale of demand for rented accommodation and to assess the resulting multiple occupation of freehold properties. The way in which a growing population was housed at Norwich and the physical and social consequences is examined. Much of the demand for rented property was met by landlords who were both secular and private, suggesting that in this respect fourteenth-century Norwich resembled Bristol rather than Oxford. Finally, the response of institutional landlords to an apparently growing demand and the behaviour of rents is considered. Falling rent receipts from the late 1330s may be an indicator of economic rather than population decline.

Oddfellows' lodges in mid-nineteenth-century Lancaster and Preston offer fresh perspectives on affiliated friendly societies. These societies combined fraternal good fellowship with a hierarchical organization which operated on the assumption that members were breadwinners supporting dependants in nuclear family households. Despite the skilled or artisan occupational status of many oddfellows, their domestic economies often relied on more than one wage and complex household structures. Since oddfellows' households also clustered in certain neighbourhoods, social associations established by lodge membership overlapped with local networks. By considering these lodges less as bounded institutional entities and more as focuses for intersecting social networks where mores of respectablity and social identity were worked out, relations of gender and community as well as class, can be brought to bear on a historical appreciation of this topic.

Although plans for urban renewal after 1945 were largely based on clearance and redevelopment, the changed circumstances of post-war Britain also favoured a revival of interest in the repair and improvement of older housing. The article looks at the different approaches of Aneurin Bevan and Harold Macmillan, and at the reasons why only limited, if useful, progress was made. It stresses the significance of a repairs backlog in conjunction with the politics of property ownership and political conceptions of the conditions under which public money could be invested in urban renewal. In such considerations repair and improvement presented far greater difficulties than clearance and redevelopment, and this was an essential element in the continuing popularity of the latter method.

This paper juxtaposes two key themes: the concept of citizenship and ideas on urban renewal over the past century. The aim is to explore the interaction of cultural changes and the physical environment of cities. The concept of citizenship represents a cultural response to social change which itself has changed dramatically over the past century. Urban renewal has taken many forms. Yet behind all the growing technical expertise in dealing with the physical environment, there are specific social responses to the city which legitimize action. By looking at citizenship and urban renewal together, it is possible to establish a perspective on how the urban environment has been manipulated over the past century, often in ways which have barely interfaced with the social demands of many sections of the community.

This article stresses the need to develop a more systematic approach to data sources in a context of greater European comparative study. The work and initial findings of the European Directories Project to provide a resource guide of one universal European data source, the town directory, are outlined here. Pathways and mechanisms of directory evolution are considered with special reference to Germany. This is succeeded by a discussion of the problems associated with the compilation of a pan-European directory database and the potential difficulties associated with directory use in urban historical research.