Landscapes of Preindustrial Urbanism

The Industrial Revolution is often seen as a turning point in the emergence of the metropolis and its distinctive urban landscape. And, no doubt, large cities as commonly experienced today are dependent on a range of industrial-era breakthroughs in construction technology, climate control, communication, and transportation. On this view, urban landscapes are a historically late development and are, therefore, seen to embody an essentially modern and Western concept.

But, as the essays in Landscapes of Preindustrial Urbanism show, features associated with contemporary urban landscapes can also be found in the preindustrial contexts of various time periods and regions. Like today's cities, these early cities were products of massive efforts to adapt space for the needs of concentrated populations. Preindustrial urban settlements generally occupied land that had been used for other, mostly productive, purposes, and their development involved complex and dynamic management of natural resources--management that can seem quite modern.

Early cities are traditionally studied as centers of commerce, trade, artisan production, and secular and religious authority, but Landscapes of Preindustrial Urbanism takes a different approach to their history, examining their physical forms. In those forms are traces of their evolution from clusters of agrarian communities, as well as signs of the contemporary urban landscape's deep past.

Revolutia industriala este adesea vazuta ca un punct de cotitura in aparitia metropolei si a peisajului sau urban distinctiv. Si, fara indoiala, orasele mari asa cum sunt experimentate astazi depind de o serie de descoperiri din epoca industriala in tehnologia constructiilor, controlul climatului, comunicarea si transportul.