This study addresses the interplay between the formation of civic society and urban development in the Latin East, particularly in the city of Jerusalem. It argues that while the municipal mechanisms that were formed in Jerusalem during the first half of the twelfth century drew on Western European models, they were adapted to meet the challenges of the young capital of the Latin Kingdom. The process revolves around the pivotal role of the patriarch and the clergy of the church of the Holy Sepulchre, Jerusalem's most important religious institution at the time, in the moulding of the urban fabric. This was realized through a close collaboration with the local burgess class, followed by the rise of new religious institutions that spurred the transition to a new urban balance. These processes demonstrate the reciprocity between spatial, social and economic factors in the shaping of the cityscape and urban dynamics in Frankish Jerusalem.

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In this article, we suggest a new analysis of the decline and abandonment of medieval urban landscapes, using as a case study the thoroughly excavated and documented Caelian Hill in Rome during the eleventh century, supported by notions from modern studies of climate change. We provide evidence for the concurrent decline of the urban landscape and the abandonment of waterways, including the aqueduct of Aqua Claudia that functioned since the first-century CE and was last recorded as functioning ca. 1006 CE. We further point to the implications of these processes on changes in the urban fabric in other areas of the city, challenging previous studies which associate its decline with political and economic circumstances culminating in the Norman sack of 1084. We suggest that these processes should be attributed to the effects of the regional climatic disturbances that affected Central-Southern Italy during the medieval climate anomaly (MCA).