ABSTRACT
Europe, as a whole, has experienced four great periods of urban growth, and each gave rise to a special type of city that reflected its civilization. Greek civilization began in the Ægean lands, and there its earliest city-states were located, while the Greek colonial city was founded on the coast lands of the Mediterranean, especially in southern Italy. Roman civilization spread the city idea not only throughout the Mediterranean, but also, for the first time, to the mainland of Europe north of the Alps, throughout Gaul as far as the Rhine, throughout southern Europe as far as the Danube, and across the English Channel to the lowland zone of Britain. Then followed the Dark Ages, when urban life and traditions north of the Alps all but disappeared for over five hundred years (c. A.D. 500–1000). The next great phase of urban growth commenced with the turn of the millennium. From A.D. 1000 to 1400 there occurred in western and central Europe on the one hand, and in central Russia on the other, a great expansion of the human habitat and a marked growth of population. The concept of the town developed anew in Gaul and in the Rhineland. By 1400 the whole of western and central Europe was covered with towns and villages. The sphere of western settlement reached north to latitude 60° to the edge of the coniferous forest and the winter frozen seas, and to the east, in the great borderland of central Europe, it merged into the forested lands of the Slavs and the semi-arid steppes of the Magyars and Tatars. The overwhelming majority of the settlements of to-day, throughout the whole of western, central and southern Europe, were in existence at the end of the Middle Ages. Thereafter, from about 1500 to 1800, relatively few new towns came into being. The main areas of town building in this period were Poland, Scandinavia, and above all the steppes of southern Russia and the middle and lower Danube lands. In western and central Europe this period was one of relative stability, the most marked growth being in the capital and Court cities and in the ports.
