Property rents in medieval towns were an important source of income for property-owners including the king, local lords and civic authorities, and a significant expense for local residents. This article examines the causes of variation in property rents in fourteenth-century Hull, an important international port with unique records on plot dimensions. It illuminates the topography and growth of the port, identifying locations where rents were highest, and particular streets which attracted premium rents. Civic and mercantile property-owners are examined through reconstruction of their biographies and the impact of the identity of owners on rent levels is assessed.

This article examines the thriving lodging house sector in early modern Venice, arguing that such spaces of temporary accommodation offer a valuable key to understanding how mobility and migration shaped the daily lived experience of the city. Lodging houses were important both to the many Venetian residents who profited from renting out rooms, and to the people who stayed in them, and found there companionship, conversation and access to social and professional networks. Considering the kinds of encounters, conflicts and exchanges that unfolded in these shared spaces, the article offers new insight into the functioning of a pre-modern multicultural metropolis.

In 1452, approximately three-quarters of Amsterdam was destroyed by fire. Despite attempts by the city government to encourage citizens to build using brick and pan tiles, the city was mainly rebuilt with timber-framed buildings. Only in 1521 did petrification of Amsterdam's buildings gradually start to become more widespread, coinciding with an enormous increase in the total number of houses. The great rebuilding of Amsterdam led to a sustainable renewal of the housing stock, of which some houses have survived to the present day. This article investigates the reasons for the delay in building with brick, based on building archaeological research, bylaws and investigation of the 1562 tax register. It shows the mechanisms of transforming a wooden city into a brick one and reveals the effects on living conditions in the final stages of the rebuilding process in the sixteenth century.

This article examines the decline of the craft guilds in early modern England by way of a case-study of the Tuckers’ Company in Exeter. From the 1980s, this case figured prominently in the historiographical debate concerning guild decline; however, it has not been examined recently. The current study reveals the Tuckers’ Company is not a case of decline in guild membership so much as a case of the loss of guild monopoly and a concomitant transition to charitable functions. On the basis of empirical sources, this study also reveals the mechanisms and context of this transformation in the post-Civil War politics of the city of Exeter. Specific attention is given to first, the decline of royal authority bolstering the guild against the city government and secondly, the shift of power in the guild with the ascendance of the merchant fullers. Finally, the historiographical implications of the article's findings are discussed.

This article examines how, in the production and use of cartographic items, urban space and local knowledge were brought together to construct authoritative representations of place. Its approach is twofold. The first half of the article is an examination of the mapmakers John Bartholomew & Co.’s changing premises across Edinburgh, which shows that the firm carefully curated their business properties in order to convey credibility and gain trust. The article then introduces the London-based firm Charles E. Goad Ltd, producers of fire insurance plans, and considers their acquisition of urban information and their use of local knowledge from a distance to achieve similar aims. Both cases illustrate the importance of close attention to geography and the spatial dimensions of knowledge construction.

Copenhagen is today praised as a truly bicycle-friendly city. The Danish capital earned its reputation as a ‘bicycle city’ early on. The network of bicycle infrastructure developed in the first half of the twentieth century was a result not least of a thriving cycling culture and the efforts made by cyclists’ organizations. In the following car-centric decades this network made cycling a more resilient practice than elsewhere, before cyclists and their lobby organizations managed, again, to pressure policy makers to renew supportive measures for cyclists. The article thus highlights two concepts: road users as potential co-producers of the mobility system as well as the obduracy of infrastructure and its capacity to preserve habits and cultures of the past.

After Hong Kong fell on Christmas Day 1941, the ongoing war threatened life in isolated, neutral Macao. While many scholars have attributed the local people's starvation and suffering to the war, others have highlighted Macao's economic prosperity. To explain the gap between these two narratives, this article explores how the locals dealt with rice scarcity and fared relatively well during the four years of Japanese occupation of the Pearl River Delta. Instead of blaming the shortage solely on the machinations of the Japanese and the rice merchants, we uncover the local people's actions in exacerbating the problem.