THE RESILIENCE AND DECLINE OF URBAN AGRICULTURE IN EUROPEAN HISTORY Urban agriculture is a highly diversified and multi-layered phenomenon, and its roots are both very old and very recent. Throughout European history, it has appeared in different forms and guises. In some periods and regions, urban agriculture seemes to have declined at an early stage, whereas in others urban economies and societies remained firmly based on more or less specialized and commercialized agrarian production un...

What do we mean when we say that cities have altered humanity’s interaction with nature? The more people are living in cities, the more nature is said to be "urbanizing": turned into a resource, mobilized over long distances, controlled, transformed and then striking back with a vengeance as "natural disaster". Confronting insights derived from Environmental History, Science and Technology Studies or Political Ecology, Urbanizing Nature aims to counter teleological perspectives on...

Disasters and History offers the first comprehensive historical overview of hazards and disasters. Drawing on a range of case studies, including the Black Death, the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 and the Fukushima disaster, the authors examine how societies dealt with shocks and hazards and their potentially disastrous outcomes. They reveal the ways in which the consequences and outcomes of these disasters varied widely not only between societies but also within the same societies according to...