From urban space to urban history: an introduction

While interest in urban space in the Roman world has boomed in recent decades, the debate has developed a strong emphasis on conceptual innovation, and this has limited the sensitivity of current discourse to historical change, so that debates about Roman urban space and Roman urban history have been developing without much interaction. By fine-tuning the conceptual apparatus to make it more susceptible of change over time, and by analysing key transformations in the spatial articulation of Roman cities, it becomes possible to strengthen the connections between these two debates, and to assess how continuing urban growth and the resulting developments in urban space transformed everyday life in urban communities. The emergence of urban landscapes full of both commercial facilities and monuments of civic memory and identity helped facilitate social interaction in increasingly complex urban communities, even if the processes that brought them about were mostly bottom-up rather than centrally organized.NWO275-61-004The Unification of the Mediterranean World (400 BC - 400 AD