Derek Keene (London)
During the Middle Ages towns were not characterized by the high degree of zoning and spatial segregation which have been a familiar feature of European cities since the mid- nineteenth century. The modern pattern is primarily the outcome of economic forces, the great growth of cities in size and wealth, and the development of mechanized transport systems which have reduced the time and cost of travel within the city. As cities grew, so specialization in the use of areas within them became more marked. Moreover, political developments, along with the accumulation of capital and administrative capacity, have reinforced that tendency, above all through attempts to provide solutions to the problems associated with large, densely-populated cities: congestion, pollution, sanitary matters, housing, and social and political disorder. Thus, topics familiar to historians of industrial and post-industrial cities include the planning or reordering of areas within the city, sometimes with a primarily political intent; the public regulation of land use; investment in publicly-funded housing schemes which tend to reinforce social segregation; suburbanization; and the migration of the prosperous to the urban fringes.
Nevertheless, many of the forces which underlie zoning in modern towns were also present in their medieval predecessors. The paper aims to describe the balance of spatial intermixture and separation which characterized the occupational and social geography of medieval towns. It discusses fundamental material and economic factors that determined the pattern, including natural topography, land values, the organisation of manufactures, and the need for access to markets ands transport. It also deals with other factors that had a significant influence, such as life-cycle, gender, ethnicity, religion, political status and the common preference for space and air. In addition, it attempts to characterize the impact of religious and military precincts and of other physical barriers on the pattern of social geography. Some alternative forms of spatial organisation from outside Christian Europe will also be considered as a way of setting our cities in context.