Investing in the Early Modern Built Environment

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carole Shammas
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Early Modern

November, 1494: Politics in Motion in the Streets of Florence

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 61-95
Author(s):  
Niall S. Atkinson
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Built Environment ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Reliable Information ◽  
Modern Cities ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City

Abstract The spectacular entry of Charles VIII into Florence in 1494 initiated a series of political negotiations and maneuvers in which the French monarch, the local government, and the embattled Medici family vied for control over the city. With the threat of violence so present and reliable information so scarce, Florentines had to perform subtle interpretations of the movements of these actors in order to determine what was happening to their city. These eye-witness accounts reveal that the most elaborately staged ritual and the most improvised single gesture were part of a moving tableau whose meaning was contingent on understanding the relationship between the paths taken, the places visited, and the manner in which the protagonists moved through the city. As a result, we can learn how early modern cities were constituted by the ceaseless exchanges between the ephemeral movements of communities and the solidity of the built environment.

scholarly journals Mobility and Urban Space in Early Modern Europe: An Introduction

2021 ◽  
Vol 25 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Luca Zenobi
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Urban Space ◽  
Urban Spaces ◽  
Pivotal Role ◽  
Early Modern Europe ◽  
The Subject ◽  
And Migration ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Multisensory Experience

Abstract Early modernists have explored a range of mobile practices taking place in cities: from religious and civic rituals to the multisensory experience of traversing streets and squares. Research has also shown the pivotal role played by cities as hubs where people came and went, ideas circulated, and goods passed through. Yet mobility did not just “take place” in cities. In presenting a new collection of articles on the subject, this paper suggests that urban spaces were more than just a stage for the streams of trade and migration. Rather, mobility had a transformative effect on cities: it assigned new meaning to urban locations, altered the ways in which space was ordered, and often refashioned the built environment itself. In addition, the paper argues that the relationship between movement and urban spaces was reciprocal: by channelling the flow of people through spaces of control and reception, cities shaped mobility as much as mobility shaped cities.

scholarly journals LANDSCAPING PALESTINE: REFLECTIONS OF ENCLOSURE IN A HISTORICAL MIRROR

2010 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 82a-82a ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Fields
Keyword(s):  
Built Environment ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Land Ownership ◽  
State Building ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Property Law ◽  
Institutional Power ◽  
The Past ◽  
General Meaning ◽  
Material Power

This article examines the origins of the walled and fragmented Palestinian landscape by situating it within a context of recurrent encounters between dominant groups with territorial ambitions and less powerful subalterns focusing on the interplay of power and territorial space. The argument is that the Palestinian landscape is part of a long-standing narrative in which groups coveting territory transform the economy, demography, and culture of territorial space through the time-honored practice of enclosure. Enclosure is the exercise of force upon space by groups with territorial ambitions resulting in the remaking of landscapes. Mobilizing the institutional power of property law and the material power of the built environment, these groups reorder land ownership, use, and circulation on the landscape in an effort to consolidate systems of control over subalterns and reorganize socioeconomic life and demography in a place. This article argues that the project of state building launched by Zionists in Israel or Palestine is fundamentally an exercise of power on space similar to the making of enclosure landscapes from the past, notably, the enclosure landscape of early modern England. By exploring the contours of this pattern, this article seeks to uncover a more general meaning in the landscape of Palestine today.

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