From the early 1960s until his sudden and unexpected death in August 1978, Jim Dyos was the chief inspiration, proselytizer and ambassador of urban history in Britain. Through many personal contacts and friendships in various parts of the world, he gave to all those connected with his chosen pursuit the sense of belonging to a great international family. It was entirely in keeping with his ambitions that he had been planning a major international conference to chart the progress made since the earlier agenda for urban history was set out at Leicester in 1966, and to highlight those methodological issues which should be confronted if urban historians are to sustain an innovative role into the 1980s. This conference will still take place with the help of a committee which had been working with him, the intention being to publish a volume based on the proceedings as the most fitting tribute to his memory. Nevertheless, it seemed right to begin this issue of the Yearbook with a short appreciation of the way Jim Dyos contributed to the study and enjoyment of urban history through his own teaching, research and writings.

To the historian the map has traditionally been used as little more than a descriptive or illustrative device which helped clarity of exposition by enabling events to be located, campaigns comprehended and treaties interpreted. It was not in itself regarded as a critical instrument of analysis, other than in highly specialized, peripheral studies such as the history of exploration. Maps simply illustrated arguments based on documentary evidence; the map as a document, original or secondary, was regarded with great suspicion. Undoubtedly the inaccuracy of early maps was partly to blame, especially to an historian more concerned with delineatory accuracy than with what was contemporary perception of the world. But even if historical maps were acceptable in evidence, the derivation of conclusions from mapped material was barely permissible and usually, in reviews, the subject of severe warning if not actual stricture. These attitudes have largely disappeared over the last decade in line with changes in direction of historical research. Perhaps the earlier influence came from pre-historic archaeology, where in the nature of things there was no documentary evidence and inference had to be made from the distribution of characteristic artifacts. This, in itself, taking its methodology from geographical or locational analysis, has been translated into a study adopting sophisticated methods for the analysis of distribution patterns. Another important influence has been the majestic work of H. C. Darby in interpreting Domesday in cartographic terms and thereby demonstrating the significance of such an approach to a widely known historical document. Even so, it is in urban history that the use of map evidence and mapped material has made the greatest impact.

Urban history progresses through the work of many different types of historian. Some think of themselves as primarily urban historians, the zealots in a novel faith. Others explore problems that happen to have occurred in cities, potential converts by association. Still more have an ambit that is society-wide and ‘pass through’ cities haphazardly, the casual visitors. All have something to say to us. This is especially true in the study of urban politics, where until recently it has been the ‘politics’ and not the ‘urban’ which has been the point of focus. The student of urban politics may be confronted with books on re- ligion, class, values, institutions and political systems, none of which may be primarily urban in orientation. But all of them may be grist to his mill.

The medieval period is often regarded as part of the statistical ‘Dark Ages’ in English history before the nineteenth century. The figures which are available were mostly collected for immediate administrative or fiscal purposes far removed from the future needs of historians and by a state lacking the comprehensive administrative organization of a census-taking modern government. Medieval man in particular is usually thought to have had little concept of the meaning of high numbers. In 1371, for instance, the English parliament believed that there were 40,000 parishes in the country when in fact there were less than 9,000. Again, ‘when the pope was assured by his advisers that the Black Death had cost the lives of 42, 836, 486 throughout the world, or the losses in Germany were estimated at 1, 244, 434, what was meant was that an awful lot of people had died’. Estimates of total populations have of course been a famous source of controversy. ‘Medieval man like classical man before him was little interested in figures. Neither showed any desire to formulate a precise estimate of population, and when figures were called for they hazarded only the wildest guesses.’ Even for England, where more promising evidence survives than for any other country, Professor Postan concluded that it was not possible to measure the total size of the population at any given point of time. For 1086 for example, estimates of total population could have a ‘heroic’ margin of error of up to 150 per cent. Historians, he decided, should rather be concerned with the dynamics of medieval population than with global numbers.

During the past thirty years the study of English early modern urban history has concentrated on the detailed examination of individual towns. Some very useful works have been produced, but each has treated the town in isolation, not daring to venture beyond its protective walls to speculate on the wider implications of its discoveries. Enough has now been written to encourage a recent wave of attempts at a more general view of the subject, in which,for the first time, certain generalizations are advanced which claim to summarize the characteristics of most, if not all, urban communities. Such enterprises demand much courage, for large sections of the field have still not been examined in detail, and in the reduction of the rich diversity of English urban experience to some sort of general principles lies the greatest challenge of all. It would be churlish not to pay tribute to the value of these syntheses, but equally unwise to claim that in the present state of our knowledge they can be regarded as definitive. The purpose of this essay is to examine critically three recently published studies which seek to establish general concepts of urban growth and decline in this period and to suggest alternative approaches to the problem.

In seeking to purge what he seems to regard as the dangerously insidious views of an academic ‘gang of four’,Dr Alan Dyer has certainly eschewed gentle persuasion as the appropriate way of re-converting erring heretics. Being apparently the worst offender - and bedaubed in penitential ashes, as I clearly ought to be - it is then hardly for me to answer for the views of my fellow conspirators: Peter Clark, Paul Slack and Penelope Corfield. They are well able to stand up for themselves. All I have space to do here is to reflect on Dr Dyer's re-assertion of the neutralist text-book orthodoxy regarding the state of England's towns in the earlier Tudor period, and so to ponder whether a recantation of my own seemingly obsessional sins might be appropriate. I certainly do not intend simply to reiterate what the disinterested follower of this discussion might wish to read for himself, the actual arguments of my 1975 paper, with its qualifying remarks and its ‘handful’ of 75 urban examples.

The constitutional change which was embodied in the Union of Parliaments in 1707 provided for the retention of distinctive Scottish codes governing banking, the church and the law. Such a guarantee ensured that the economic, social and cultural idiosyncracies of Scotland would not be absorbed or Anglicized, and that in the long term the unique institutional framework would continue to stamp its character upon most aspects of daily Scottish life, urban and rural. The tacit acceptance of these legal and institutional differences in certain parts of the kingdom became compounded over the decades so that attempts to modify most aspects of Scottish urban life required separate treatment rather than an extension of British Statutes. Indeed tables of parliamentary statutes in most years display a significant number of purely Scottish bills, thereby reflecting the necessity of specialized legal draughtsmanship, skilled in the peculiarities of Scots law, to accommodate the changes desired north of the border. Two important consequences of these arrangements are worth noting. First, the basis of the Scottish legal and administrative structure was distinct, and second, to amend that framework, separate Scottish bills were frequently required, and thus the timing, coverage and intent of the law were at variance with the remainder of the country.

Research has revealed spatial segregation of status groups to be characteristic feature of many urban settlements. Sjoberg has identified such areas in pre-industrial cities although many have argued that marked spatial segregation primarily occurred in post-Industrial Revolution cities. Much interest has surrounded detailed analysis of settlements, or parts thereof, within particular historical eras, e.g. Victorian studies, but the study of the status areas of a settlement over a longer time period has received less attention. This article resulted from a study of status areas in Edinburgh at three points in time: 1855, 1914 and 1962.

Australia was possibly ‘the first suburban nation’. Already at the end of the nineteenth century the American statistician Adna Weber noticed the peculiar demography of this ‘newest product of civilization’ whose population, he calculated, was more urbanized than any other country's. Yet the large coastal cities in which most town—dwellers lived were less densely occupied—more suburbanized—than the cities of Europe or North America. Here, Weber suggested, was ‘the representative of the new order of things towards which the modern world is advancing’. Later research on urban development has largely confirmed Weber's opinion. Australian city-dwellers enjoyed among the highest per capita incomes and levels of individual home-ownership in the nineteenth-century world and were among the first to display the low birth and death rates characteristic of ‘modern’ societies. They were early and enthusiastic users of railways, tramways and other forms of public transport. In 1900 about one in five Austalians lived in detached houses in the suburbs of the capital cities but by the early 1970s the proportion had risen to about three in five. A traveller flying in over Sydney or Melbourne now sees ‘the newest product of civilization’ spread out in a monotonous mosaic of green lawns, terra cotta roofs and sparkling backyard swimming pools.