Urban History

Abstract

Despite its intermittent reliance on social-science terminology and the increasingly frequent use of statistical materials in the course of its narratives, the new urban history is only incidentally social scientific in its content. Moreover, over the past 20 years the preponderance of the American urban history literature has not been concerned with urbanresearch questions at all. To be sure, what we generally call urban history deals with events which took place in cities, but these events may or may not have taken place in other cities or, for that matter, in rural America. This lack of a consistent focus is all the more intriguing given the singular introspective character of the field. No subdiscipline has been more self-conscious of its promise, its progress, and its ommissions. This essay is only the most recent (surely not last) in a long line of prolegomena (Schlesinger

Community, ethos and local initiative in urban economic growth: review of a theme in Canadian urban history

“…For Canada, as for the United States, Australia and New Zealand, 'each generation of city-builders confronted a major portion of the economic landscape which could be developed relatively free of the residue of earlier decision-makers'. 7 The recency and scale of Canadian urban development are reflected in this table: 8 Table 1 Year % of total population in incorporated No of urban centres of 5,000 or more urban places with 1,000 or more people people 1871 18 23 1901 35 57 1931 52 135 Most Canadian towns and cities have developed from first foundation only in the past 100 to 150 years, so records are more likely to survive as evidence of important growth phases and factors. Only a few Canadian cities were founded as early as the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, notably Quebec and Montreal in New France and St John's, Newfoundland.…”