‘So one would notice the good navigability’: economic decline and the cartographic conception of urban space in late fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Bruges (original) (raw)

H. Deneweth, W. Leloup, M. Speecke, 'Visualising urban social change, Bruges 1300–1700'

A. Plosnic-Skaric (ed.), Mapping Urban Changes / Mapiranje urbanih promjena (Zagreb, 2017) 336-363

Starting from the concept that everyone chooses housing according to his means or status, the evolution of housing and the resulting social topography can serve as excellent indicators of social change. In this contribution, we will investigate the relationship between economic development and social change, and how these factors shaped the social topography of Bruges between 1380 and 1670. In the late medieval period, Bruges was the main commercial gateway and the prime financial centre of Northwestern Europe and an important centre for cloth production. The sixteenth-century rise of Antwerp, which took over Bruges' leading role in trade and finance, encouraged the latter to reconvert its economy. Bruges remained an important regional centre throughout the early modern period, but the composition of its population changed over time. Whereas many socio-topographical studies focus on urban expansion and resulting residential patterns, studies of intra-urban transformations are rare. Bruges provides an excellent case study for exposing transformations driven by economic reconversion and social change. Visualising urban social change is quite a challenge, especially when dealing with the late medieval and early modern periods. Given the lack of extensive, comparable sources and accurate maps, researchers face an additional challenge when trying to visualise and explain social and urban transformations from a longitudinal perspective. For this purpose, we used fiscal sources (taxes on the rental values of houses) for three benchmark years: 1382, 1583 and 1667. These sources provide data on the number of housing units, their use (owners or tenants) and their rental values. Historical GIS helps to explore the spatial dimension of these data and to visualise the impacts of profound economic change in the urban tissue from a longitudinal perspective. The added value of GIS is that it establishes the coexistence of diverging patterns and evolutions on the meso-and micro-levels and therefore leads to a better understanding of urban history. Following a short survey of some trends in the historiography of social stratification and topography, we present our specific case study, including sources and methodology. Finally, we present key results and conclude with some points of discussion.

2.5. The medieval territory of Brussels: A dynamic landscape of urbanisation

Amsterdam University Press eBooks, 2012

The urbanisation process has a huge impact on both the urban and rural landscape. Not only does it thoroughly modify the urban area, it also has a tremendous impact on the rural hinterland. We propose to take medieval Brussels (Duchy of Brabant) as an example to illustrate this complex issue. According to our different fields of research, a multidisciplinary point of view will be adopted, combining urban history (the study of human urban society), rural history (agricultural developments and rural socioeconomic change), historical geography (interaction between medieval people and their spatial environment) and natural sciences (through the archaeopedological and phytolith study of Dark Earth). Firstly, we briefly discuss the essential concepts 'medieval city' and 'medieval urban landscape' and try to apply them to the case of medieval Brussels. Secondly, we address some essential characteristics of landscape transformation, by tackling the major stages of the emergence and development of medieval Brussels and its changing impact on the regional landscape. We argue that the urbanisation process, generally allocated solely to the urban area, is key to understanding landscape transformation of the medieval territory of Brussels.

The medieval territory of Brussels: A dynamic landscape of urbanisation

S.J. Kluiving & E.B. Guttmann-Bond (Eds.), Landscape Archaeology between Art and Science. From a multi- to an interdisciplinary approach, Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2012, pp. 223-238 (= Landscape & Heritage Series, vol. 1).

The urbanisation process has a huge impact on both the urban and rural landscape. Not only does it thoroughly modify the urban area, it also has a tremendous impact on the rural hinterland. We propose to take medieval Brussels (Duchy of Brabant) as an example to illustrate this complex issue. According to our different fields of research, a multidisciplinary point of view will be adopted, combining urban history (the study of human urban society), rural history (agricultural developments and rural socio-economic change), historical geography (interaction between medieval people and their spatial environment) and natural sciences (through the archaeopedological and phytolith study of Dark Earth). Firstly, we briefly discuss the essential concepts 'medieval city' and 'medieval urban landscape' and try to apply them to the case of medieval Brussels. Secondly, we address some essential characteristics of landscape transformation, by tackling the major stages of the emergence and development of medieval Brussels and its changing impact on the regional landscape. We argue that the urbanisation process, generally allocated solely to the urban area, is key to understanding landscape transformation of the medieval territory of Brussels. keywords landscape history, urbanisation, urban morphology, archaeopedology, archaeobotany, agriculture 224 · landscape archaeology between art and science

Port Cities and River Harbours: A Peculiar Motif in Antwerp Landscape Painting c. 1490-1530

This paper focuses on depictions of port cities and river harbours, integrated in the background landscapes of Early Netherlandish panel paintings. As compositional parts of larger landscape settings, these motifs were quite popular in the southern Low Countries and especially in Antwerp during the first decades of the sixteenth century. A thorough investigation into their precise nature and significance has hitherto been lacking. It is the aim of the present article to fill this gap and investigate to what extent the emergence and evolution of this specific kind of imagery can be linked to larger societal developments in the southern Low Countries and in the distinctive urban culture of Antwerp more specific.