The City in History

Module code: HS7251

In this module, you’ll explore the urban past.

How has the concept of a town or city developed across the medieval and modern periods? How have relationships of power, such as colonial rule, affected people's interactions in urban places over time? In what ways have rural surroundings and environmental factors such as famines and floods shaped towns and cities?

By investigating questions like these, you’ll gain an appreciation of the key concepts - space, power, network, environment - through which historians and others aim to understand the urban past. This will give you an understanding of how towns have grown and diversified over the past 500 years and the specific historical forms they have taken across time and place. By the end of the module, you will have a clear sense of the making of the historic environments which we value today.