ABSTRACT

Some of our earliest markers of human civilization are found in the traces of urban residents. Throughout time, people have gathered together, forming villages, towns, cities and great metropolises; they came together for trade, sustenance, protection and sociability. Patterns of urbanization were erratic, and disease, abandonment, disorder, warfare and sieges as well as economic developments in trade, industry and migration, among other factors, marked ebbs and flows in urban change. However, the majority of the worlds’ population has lived in cities only since 2006. 1 Expansion was also uneven geographically. For example, Rosemary Sweet argues that ‘The period 1680–1840 arguably saw the English town undergo greater changes than in any preceding period, all of which were essentially the result of similarly unprecedented urban growth’. 2 Indeed, by 1840, England was almost 50 per cent urban in contrast to France, which remained at about 20 per cent. 3 Urban experience is not only about numbers but also reflects cultural, political and economic factors. It is about how people live in urban spaces and interact with them, how they express themselves and how they feel about these spaces. For some, they are ‘home towns’; for others, a piece in a migratory experience. People work, play, relax, eat, drink, sleep, argue, love in towns. They are where most of us live.