The imperfect city

An introduction to the life of towns and cities in the medieval period, this book shows how medieval towns grew to become important centers of trade and liberty. Beginning with a l...

Abstract The Short Oxford History of Italy series, in seven volumes, will offer a complete History of Italy from the early middle ages to the present and, in each pe...

This study offers the first extensive analysis of the function and significance of urban panegyric in the Central Middle Ages, a flexible literary genre which enjoyed a marked and ...

By the late 1840s, a new genre of literature revealed deep concerns with corruption in the growing urban centers. City mysteries exposed a dark underworld of the metropolis, leadin...

This inquiry attempts to probe the essence of politics in-itself, something that has been singularly discerned by Plato in Republic, grounded in his theory of universal forms and g...

The city is the most distinctive product of modernity, but it is also its most unruly. How do we approach a culture that is both physical and imaginary, that has moulded concrete a...

This chapter examines the development of the city commune in Rome during the period 1050–1150. Rome does not occupy a central place in accounts of early Italian city communes. The ...

This empirical chapter explores the dynamics of city delegation theory, the glue that helps hold together the urban political order’s pieces. The first half of the chapter takes a ...