Richard Rodger

Urban History: prospect and retrospect

The appearance of Urban History as a journal marks a further stage in the progression from Newsletter to Yearbook and now to a semi-annual periodical. The timing is apt since it coincides with the thirtieth anniversary of the first issue of the Urban History Newsletter , and the enthusiasm surrounding the production and publication of Urban History is a continuing sign of the vigour and confidence expressed by H.J. Dyos thirty years ago, and again in 1974, when the Yearbook first appeared. The current academic self-confidence is matched by a commercial one from the new publishers, Cambridge University Press.

Inspiring Capital ? Deconstructing myths and reconstructing urban environments, Edinburgh, 1860–2010

‘Inspiring Capital’ is the sign that confronts visitors and residents alike at the boundaries of the Edinburgh administrative area. It is a consciously ambiguous message of self-promotion: the logo proclaims the dual standing of the city of Edinburgh as a European capital city and a city of international capital. The article uses a long-run approach to explore how, by inventing and nurturing a myth about Edinburgh as a non-industrial city, councillors and planners privileged the ancient and historical character of the city and so conditioned policies associated with urban renewal and land use.

Industrialisation and the city economy

This chapter reviews the impact of industrialisation on the modern city economy, and on the city itself, to an extent. Next, it highlights the ways in which the industrial city operated to promote and retain business. The chapter then discusses whether this role was maintained or undermined during the course of the twentieth century. Towns and cities were the information superhighways of the nineteenth century. The linkages between industrialisation, the growth of employment opportunities and the fortunes of British towns and cities are both obvious but yet difficult to disentangle, given the considerable variation in the trajectories and resulting profiles of urban-industrial development. Diversification can be regarded as a consequence either of an organic process of growth which derived from the demands placed on the economy by the growth of urban populations or of the increasingly complex and specialist needs of dominant sector industries.

David A. Reeder (1931–2005) Educationalist and urban historian

David Reeder, who has died aged 74, made a major contribution to the understanding of two academic fields: urban history, and the history of education. The son of a railway fireman, David was born in Hull in 1931 and evacuated during the war from the familys council house first to Rawcliffe, near Goole, and then to York in 1942. There David attended Nunethorp Grammar School, where he was head boy, and won a scholarship place to Durham University, graduating in 1952. David Reeder began a 50 year association with the University of Leicester when he embarked upon a Post-Graduate Certificate in Education course in 1952. Heavily influenced by his National Service experience as an RAF Education Officer (1953–56), and by his spells successively as a teacher and superintendent of the Evening Institute in Leicester (1956–59), lecturer in history at Westminster College (1959–62) and as Head of the Faculty of Education at Garnett College, Roehampton (1962–66), David initially established a reputation in nineteenth-century British history by publishing general historical syntheses.

The Pre-Industrial Urban System: France, 1740-1840.

List of figures List of tables Foreword List of abbreviations Introduction 1. The urbanisation of France 2. Urban images 3. The town, the economy, the territory 4. An essay in urban typology 5. Hierarchical gradations 6. The new geography of power 7. The France of the chefs-lieux 8. Towns and roads 9. Urban systems: from frameworks to networks 10. Back to representations Conclusion Appendices Bibliography Index.

Property transfers and the Register of Sasines: urban development in Scotland since 1617

Walter Scotts assertion in Rob Roy that ‘In those days possession was considerably more than eleven points of the law’ overlooked a pivotal point of Scots Law, the distinction between ownership and possession. Possession or occupancy was not ‘as good as title’ as the sixteenth-century Scottish proverb or old French saying ‘possession vaut titre’ claimed. Though the distinction between ownership and possession might have seemed a nicety to Rob Roy in the sixteenth century, by 1617 a general register of titles to land, the Register of Sasines, was established in Scotland, and has continued virtually uninterrupted until the present day. It is consequently a record of immense importance to urban historians.