Chapter 1 examines urban development in the predominately Judaean parts of Palestine. It demonstrates that urban development involved the gradual administrative, physical, and cultural transformation of Hellenistic settlements. Elite interests fueled urban development, but involved more than just consumption and exploitation. In Jerusalem, urban development stimulated trade and technological development, created jobs, and bolstered the pilgrimage economy centered on the Temple. The pace of urban development in the Galilee was slower than is usually presumed. Archaeological evidence shows that Tiberias witnessed considerable transformations in the first half of the first century CE, but Sepphoris did not become a proper city (polis) until the second half of that century. In order to complicate the assumptions about urban exploitation of rural producers, this chapter calls attention to the proliferation and relative stability of Galilean villages. It also highlights the diverse economic activities in semi-urban district centers like Magdala. Although most elites lived in cities, some resided in these district centers.

In the major literary writing by women in New Orleans in the latter half of the nineteenth century, the theme of home is a central preoccupation, and it is often figured in the literal houses the main female characters inhabit and the landscape that surround these houses. What these houses and landscapes mean varies for each of them, but all of them share an interest in the power of storytelling as a tool for taking ownership over a space and thereby achieving a certain autonomy – a sense of home – with regard to a world that would otherwise dominate them.