Cities and Urban Life, Renaissance

Abstract

At the time of the Renaissance, Europe was already heavily urbanized. The Middle Ages had witnessed an extraordinary period of city building in which many new settlements were founded. During the Renaissance, this activity dramatically slowed. However, the Renaissance did give rise to new ways of considering the city and to new discourses regarding urban life. These included innovative forms of city description and the birth of the modern architectural treatise, something that, arguably, also initiated the modern discourse of urbanism. Simultaneously, there were multiple developments in the visual representation of the city, with the genre of city views becoming increasingly popular throughout the sixteenth century. Renaissance thinkers of various kinds concerned themselves with the ideal city, formulating schemes that ranged from the practical to the unrealizable. While these projects frequently remained unbuilt, colonialism did give rise to new city building in other continents – particularly “Spanish America” where the grid became more or less ubiquitous. Among the small urban projects that were executed in Europe, some have continued to exert enormous influence on discussions of urban planning. For example, the Tuscan city of Pienza – a hilltop village that was given a new central piazza, a cathedral, and a number of other monumental buildings in the fifteenth century – continues to be held up as a model for development by urbansists adhering to a variety of different views. Meanwhile, the works of the architectural treatise writers of the period are still regarded by many as foundational documents for the theory and practice of urbanism.