ABSTRACT
The urbanization of Europe in the three centuries after 1500 occurred at varying rates of growth, was selective with regard to the types of cities that ascended to higher levels of size and importance, and featured the construction of a new hierarchical pattern, or rank-size distribution of cities. Urban growth also exhibited pronounced spatial features: its incidence was geographically highly uneven. I have sought to expose these developments by comparing urban growth sometimes in two large regions (Mediterranean and northern Europe), and sometimes in four regions (Mediterranean, central, north and west, and eastern Europe). It is important to go further than that, for European urbanization in these centuries, instead of being an allconquering force, was as regionally selective as we have already seen it to be selective in other respects.
