ABSTRACT
Catastrophe, Gender and Urban Experience in Europe, 1648–1920 concentrates on the shift from premodern to modern from the perspective of the increasing presence of catastrophes in European imagination and everyday life. This chapter explores the influence of gender on the shape of towns themselves, the gendering of catastrophes and of spaces and the significance of gender as a force for urban change. It takes the view that gender is fundamental to the ways many towns shaped themselves, and that the effects of catastrophes and responses to them are not gender-neutral. In the history of catastrophes, the eighteenth century deserves particular attention, primarily because of emergent industrialization and its ramifications. Gender relations are played out through the structures, systems and fabric of the city, in space, time and experience. Franz Mauelshagen has argued that patterns for perceiving and interpreting disasters are based on cultural memory, a pre-existing framework of shared knowledge that help to comprehend the experience of catastrophe.
