Urban History: The Growth and Internationalization of an Interdisciplinary Field

This chapter traces the development of modern urban history scholarship across the twentieth century, its roots being found in several interdisciplinary fields interested in the shape and growth of urban areas and the changing experience of urban life over time. I then examine urban history’s institutionalization and internationalization, which started in the 1960s and 1970s before gathering momentum in the following decades with the spread of teaching and exchange programmes at European level and the end of the Cold War. At its core, the objective of these programmes and initiatives was to map the history of urbanization and the growth of towns and cities using a comparative methodology, both within nation-states and increasingly, using a transnational approach to compare across borders. Finally, the chapter considers several recent ‘turns’ within modern and contemporary urban history since the 1990s – cultural, spatial and environmental to name a few – to illustrate emerging and emergent themes prevalent across the subfield. Yet, notwithstanding the fact that these ‘turns’ reflect the changeable nature of wider historical scholarship, urban historians remain fundamentally interested in the people, places and processes that constitute our frame of reference.

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