Rise of Cities Revisited: Reflections on Adriaan Verhulst's Vision of Urban Genesis and Developments

Adriaan Verhulst's The Rise of Cities in North-West Europe (1999) is the last comprehensive work written by a single author on the urban genesis and spatial developments of cities in the medieval Low Countries. Since then, monographs, specialised studies and articles have been published on various cities and towns, while urban archaeologists have carried out numerous excavations. Much new knowledge has been gained, yet many gaps and the need for comparative overviews remain. Twenty-five years after Verhulst's synthesis, The Rise of Cities Revisited takes a fresh look at the origins and developments of cities and towns in the Low Countries between the tenth and the sixteenth centuries, critically assesses progress made in scholarship and outlines future directions for research. The nine chapters of the book are written by senior and junior specialists from various fields, including medieval history, historical geography, economic history, archaeology and building history. The Rise of Cities Revisited presents a state of the art and provides scholars with tools to study this complex subject in future.