Social Functions of Urban Spaces through the Ages

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Urban spaces are intricately linked to social functions, serving as venues for individual and group interactions, frameworks for social organization, and contexts for social practices, all of which contribute to modes of life and habitus. These social functions also shape urban spaces, embedding communication processes influenced by specific situations or institutions and establishing vertical, horizontal, and relational structures through the interplay of practices, objects, and placements. The contributions from the 2016 conference of the International Commission for the History of Towns explore these connections between urban spaces and social functions, examining their various orientations (centre and periphery, top and bottom, inside and outside) through European examples from late medieval to modern times. Topics include the conditions of Jewish life in Polish cities, the significance of hospitals in Bohemian residence cities, and environmental relationships in medieval Ljubljana. The discussions extend to the interconnections of social spaces in Baroque architecture and urban planning, care facilities in spa towns, the formation of courtly places in medieval cities, spatial dimensions of urban social protests across centuries, and communal activities in urban open spaces in Regensburg around 1800.