How might one tap the idioms of vanished communities once local knowledge has faded? How might one chart the mental landscapes of locales that have been overlaid by other people's understandings and whose material forms have been erased by urban redevelopment? This paper integrates history and archaeology as it attempts an ethnographic re-reading of one such precinct in Melbourne, Australia.

The paper investigates the activities of the eight London Commissions of Sewers during the period 1800–47. It is argued that the criticisms of the Commissions made by Edwin Chadwick and later historians are undeserved. The Commissions were efficient, innovative and honest, and successfully kept pace with the ever-changing sanitary needs of the capital. Although they operated under severe statutory constraints, they constructed many miles of sewer and can be seen as the true instigators of the nineteenth-century sanitary revolution.

In Japan, department stores and public markets grew rapidly from the early twentieth century, and these had significant impacts on both consumers and traditional retailers. Despite pressures from the large-scale retailers, however, traditional, small-scale retailers stubbornly survived. As a result, the Japanese retail system in the pre-war period was characterized as ‘the dual structure’. In addition, the government played a critical role in Japan's retail development. These features can be accounted for as reflections of the unique modernization process of the country.

This article examines the changing images of the city of Milan over a period of two decades spanning the 1980s and 1990s. The article considers theoretical debates concerning city images. Milan is then analysed through the various spatial forms which encompass this modern city – political space, populated space, geographic space, urban space and economic space. The next section assesses the changing images of the city through shifting historical phases and crises. Finally the article draws together the fundamental economic and social changes which have marked the deindustrialization and reinvention of Milan.