Territories and networks in Europe: In search of a spatial order

TY - CHAP

T1 - Territories and networks in Europe

T2 - In search of a spatial order

AU - Törnqvist, Gunnar

PY - 2018

Y1 - 2018

N2 - Medieval Europe was characterized by geopolitical disorder and territorial disunion. Around 1500 AD, as the modern era dawned, Europe comprised some 1,500 districts which were largely politically independent. Gradually, medium sized territories emerged around cores made up of cultural, economic, and political centres. The Lake Malar area in Sweden was such a territory; London, Paris, Berlin-Potsdam, Vienna, and Moscow formed the cores of others. The Spanish born sociologist Manuel Castells, who works in the USA, has described the increasing transnational mobility in peculiarly drastic terms, coining the phrase ‘from a space of locations to a space of flows’. The ensuing presentation of the European urban landscape is coloured by the idea that contacts, the processing of information, and the building of new knowledge form powerful driving forces in European social evolution. The western part of Europe was moulded by repeated migrations, by Medieval urban development, and by the tenets and styles of the Renaissance.

AB - Medieval Europe was characterized by geopolitical disorder and territorial disunion. Around 1500 AD, as the modern era dawned, Europe comprised some 1,500 districts which were largely politically independent. Gradually, medium sized territories emerged around cores made up of cultural, economic, and political centres. The Lake Malar area in Sweden was such a territory; London, Paris, Berlin-Potsdam, Vienna, and Moscow formed the cores of others. The Spanish born sociologist Manuel Castells, who works in the USA, has described the increasing transnational mobility in peculiarly drastic terms, coining the phrase ‘from a space of locations to a space of flows’. The ensuing presentation of the European urban landscape is coloured by the idea that contacts, the processing of information, and the building of new knowledge form powerful driving forces in European social evolution. The western part of Europe was moulded by repeated migrations, by Medieval urban development, and by the tenets and styles of the Renaissance.

U2 - 10.4324/9780429445835-5

DO - 10.4324/9780429445835-5

M3 - Book chapter

SN - 9781138333673

SP - 85

EP - 109

BT - Networks in Transport and Communications

PB - Routledge

ER -