ABSTRACT

Urban geography is still weighed down too heavily under the yoke of the ecological perspective and ‘life-cycle’ theory in which the Anglo-American city type, economically motivated city growth, and the notion of urbanisation centred on the industrial revolution, dominate geographers’ thinking. There are cities with a different past, as Max Weber (1966, p. 197) recognised: ‘The South European city, particularly of Italy and South France, despite all differences, was closer to the ancient polis than the North European city.’ Weber’s urban types are not predictable solely by historical sequence: he finds the ‘patrician’ and the ‘plebeian’ city type in both Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In other words, his theoretical model solidly incorporates history.