Sociotopography of Premodern Cities: Methods and Perspectives

Abstract

The article explores some promising approaches of urban historical social and economic topography

through the examples of Mühlhausen (1413-1419) and Görlitz (1500). The analysis focusses on the one

hand on the amount of mobile capital compared to the value of the houses, an indicator of the way of

doing business, and on the other hand on the topography of credit relations. The repartition of mobile

capital shows that the inhabitants with a high proportion of mobile capital in their declared wealth were

not the rich merchants inhabiting the main streets but people engaged in industrial activities like tanning

and textile production living in a more marginal neighbourhood. The analysis of some streets from

Mühlhausen in 1413 and some parishes from Bologna in 1296/97 show that credit relations were

established more often between people living in the same area, particularly in central neighbourhoods

and main streets with well-to-do inhabitants.