On account of their dual function as princes of the church and agents for the king of France, the French cardinals in Rome constitute a well-defined and self-contained community. They were governed by complex internal dynamics as well as by the need to present a unified front to the pope, in addition to the College of Cardinals and the citizenry of Rome. French cardinals present in Rome between 1490 and 1560 were mobile, as their physical presence in the city was not continuous: a number of them were stable residents in Rome, charged with diplomatic missions, while others only attended the conclaves. A special case is that of Jean du Bellay, who became fully integrated into the life of the city, established a literary salon open to artists and poets, and was involved in the study of Antiquities and the construction of a villa-garden complex, the Horti Bellayani.

Using film and archival evidence, this article focuses on post-war urban redevelopment in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. During this period, two federal institutions, the National Capital Commission and the National Film Board, worked in tandem to disseminate the promise of post-war urban renewal. Film and planning techniques perfected during World War II would be used to sell national urban renewal to Canadians. Rooted in centralized planning, steeped in militarist rhetoric and embedded in authoritarian tendencies, federal plans for a new modern capital had tragic implications for the marginalized and dislocated residents of the inner-city neighbourhood of LeBreton Flats.

This article argues that historians have largely neglected the dimension of Chinese–Russian interaction, which was central to the development of Harbin from the emergence of this city in 1898 as an outpost of imperial Russia in Manchuria (north-east China). It goes on to propose a new approach to Harbin history, which, integrating its ‘Russian’ and ‘Chinese’ histories during the period prior to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1932, would also place it in a wider comparative context. This comparative approach is illustrated in the article by a consideration of the issue of ethnically segregated living quarters.

On the definitive return of the pope to Rome in 1420, following the so-called Avignonese captivity, the city underwent major modifications. The ‘romanam curiam sequentes’, the court and administration that followed the traditionally itinerant pope, settled in the city, leading to Rome's population doubling in the space of a few years. Furthermore, with the support of the pope, the members of the curia came to take possession of spaces, offices, roles and rituals that had previously been the reserve of the local Romans. This article considers the reaction of the community of the local nobility (here described summarily as Roman families) to the encroaching presence of the curia within the specific context of the development of the built form of the via Papalis. It is argued that the via Papalis, one of the most important and prestigious streets in Rome, became the theatre within which these two communities played out their conflict through the medium of built and ephemeral architecture.

This review begins with a subject that is familiar to all urban historians of the Middle Ages. Citizenship was one of the most ubiquitous forms of social and political organization in medieval towns. Yet, as Pierre Racine points out, in ‘La citoyenneté en Italie au Moyen Âge’, Le Moyen Âge, 115 (2009), 87–108, it is perhaps surprising that there have been so few studies devoted specifically to the right of citizenship in the Italian cities of the communal period. Racine's discussion is focused upon the period between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries, that is, from the formation of the communes to the emergence of princely states in northern and central Italy, when many of the city-states disappeared. If citizenship was in some ways a burden which entailed liability to taxation and the fulfilment of military service, it was fundamentally a privilege. Thus, the thirteenth-century communal governments of cities such as Piacenza appointed officials charged with investigating cases of ‘false citizens’. Citizenship was acquired largely on the basis of more or less permanent residence and the ownership of a house in the city and it allowed the citizen to participate in the popular assembly, where the important questions concerning the election of officials and the problems of daily life were debated and decided. In emphasizing the emotional attachment which citizens felt towards their urban patria, Racine addresses the cultural as well as juridical meaning of citizenship.

In Renaissance Italy clothing, particularly of women, was strictly regulated; individuals were regularly denounced when walking through the city. Modesty was a virtue in a republican state and dress played a major part in urban identity, reflecting social values and those of the political regime. Sumptuary laws were a major mode of control, particularly of patrician women, whose dress reflected both their own and their family's wealth and status. Despite increased availability of luxurious fabrics encouraged by urban policies, legislation was used to prohibit new forms of dress and raise money for state coffers. At the end of the fifteenth century Pandolfo Petrucci (1452–1512) took control of Siena. The inner elite of his regime, particularly its female members, were given exemptions from the strict legislation and were able to flaunt their elevated status and the new social order.

The ways in which the organization of local government and the practice of political power locally have changed over time has attracted heightened interest from urban and administrative historians over recent decades. Much of this burgeoning interest has paralleled the concurrent decline in the status and powers of local government since the 1980s. In recent years, a shifting focus from government to governance has allowed the historian to re-conceptualize approaches to urban political power. Urban governance denotes a wider system of government by encapsulating the complex range of actors, interests and resources, which straddle the public, private and voluntary sectors, each with a vested interest in the way that political power is organized and practised locally. By broadening their approach to urban political power, urban historians have, since the late 1980s, elicited new perspectives on municipal administration, reattaching it with the national and juridical frameworks of analysis from which it had been fractured. In general, this growing number of local, regional and cross-national historical studies hints at a more complex and interesting municipal dimension which transcends previously impermeable divisions between the private and the public spheres, between political democracy and administrative bureaucracy, between the central state and municipal administration, and between national and transnational contexts of administrative thought and practice.

It is well known that the shift from canti carnascialeschi to mascherate, which took place in Florence during the first half of the sixteenth century, corresponds to parallel political changes from republic to duchy. The role of the new Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici in the transformation of Florentine street festivals must be appraised through his aim of establishing a courtly society in which the nobility were subjected to his control. In this article, this double process of change is observed through documents which show how the courtly mascherata can be viewed as a means by which courtiers sought to be identified as a homogeneous group by all Florentine citizens, looking at and listening to them from their windows.

In 1860, Jacob Burckhardt published his view, still influential today, of an artful, urban Italian Renaissance that launched Europe on its passage to modernity. A lively revisionary scholarship has challenged Burckhardt on many points, but his famous formulae still resonate: the state as work of art; the development of the individual; the discovery of the world and of man. Although we now know that Italy did not alone invent the new age, it was for many years a trendsetter, especially in the domains of cultural production at the centre of this collection of essays. Republican and princely polities alike framed these developments, but, whoever ruled, Italy's unusually intense urbanization (paired with that in another well-spring of culture in the Low Countries) fostered innovation. In Renaissance cities, people and groups invested heavily in special actions, objects and places – charismatic cultural products empowered by holiness, beauty, fame and ingenuity – that fortified solidarity and resilience in uncertain times. This essay collection addresses a conjunction of urban culture and society distinctive to Renaissance Italy: an array of encounters of artifacts with ways of living in community.