Cities and Towns in East Central and Eastern Europe: East Central Europe as an Urban Region?

The lands of East Central Europe experienced three major transformations: Christianisation and the formation of a new political framework in the tenth-eleventh centuries; the profound social and structural changes of the thirteenth century; and the emergence of early modern states in the seventeenth century. Each of these engendered distinct steps in urbanisation. Many steps of these developments followed similar (although usually earlier) processes in Western and North-Western Europe, but with certain limitations. The constitutional status of cities and towns in diets was more precarious. Certain forms of communal governance were lacking, such as the institutionalised participation of guilds in municipal government or the role of neighbourhoods as local units of social solidarity and self-defence. Quantitative estimates show a low-density urban network and small sizes of towns.