This article analyses the ways the urban boundary and the landscapes beyond it were culturally conceived and physically manipulated in Munich between about 1890 and 1920. It highlights planning practice outside the ‘canon’ of planning history, showing the importance of localized decision-taking in urban design. The article explores cities as cultural constructs and material artefacts in Germany as part of a broader project linking planning history to broader historical investigation, and tries to bridge the gap between the ‘material’ city as a physical space, and the ‘cultural’ city of language and symbols.

In Germany, the Revolutions of 1848 and 1918/19 resulted in the martyrdom of opposition leaders and constituents, whose burial sites in Berlin became key sites of memory and commemoration for the working-class movement. Political turbulence and regime change throughout the twentieth century has resulted in contestation over the meaning and use of these places; a trajectory illustrating the dynamic, reciprocal relationship between popular memory and official history, and the interplay between representation, place-based associations and spatial relations in constituting social meaning in the urban landscape.

Last October I moved to Southampton, ‘City of the Titanic’ – what a strange way to advertise a place. The memory of the sunken ship is still very much alive. I did keep my apartment in Berlin, though, and from time to time I manage to spend a couple of days there. From a distance, the city looks and feels different. When I go shopping in my favourite market hall or for a latte macchiato in Café Atlantic, I try not to step on the stones laid in the ground beside the normal cobblestones. They are of the same size, but painted in something golden; they glitter in the sun and bear an inscription such as ‘Hier wohnte Alfred Hohenstein, Jg. 1920. Deportiert am 10.05.41 Auschwitz’.

The micro-history of one apartment block in the inner-suburb of Bovisa, Milan over a period of 100 or so years is examined using oral history interviews to trace the development of the block and its residents in relation to that of the city of Milan. The piece is bounded by theoretical reflections on the role of micro-history, oral history and other methodologies as tools for understanding the home and urban history, and concludes that the survival of a rural past, the role of gender, the importance of architecture and of nostalgic memory in a rapidly changing world were important influences.

This article examines the architecture and design of the pioneering planned fishing villages established by the British Fisheries Society across the Highlands of Scotland in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The Society established a utilitarian planning model which fundamentally influenced the subsequent planned village boom that remains so evident in the historic landscape of the Scottish Highlands today. The British Fisheries Society also made a significant contribution to urban history with Thomas Telford's innovative plan for its last development of Pulteneytown. Pulteneytown remains the most complete example of Telford's work as a town planner.

This article considers the relationship between landed culture and the emergent middle classes in a rapidly expanding urban context substantially removed from the more familiar examples. The port of Grimsby expanded rapidly in the second half of the nineteenth century, displaying many facets in common with other industrial centres and boasting a substantial middle-class presence from a relatively early stage. At the same time the extent to which Grimsby's middle classes assumed a leading role in the town's development is questionable and subject to qualification.

The social relationships of housing tenure shape urban life. One of the most peculiar tenure regimes emerged in the towns of East and Central Africa during the colonial period. In accordance with the colonial policy of trusteeship, employers and municipalities were together responsible for housing all permanently employed Africans, who constituted the majority in most urban centres. Contemporaries noted that employers and municipalities commonly failed to do their job, a judgement that historians have endorsed. In fact, their contribution varied greatly from place to place and, though generally insufficient, was still substantial. This paternalistic tenure regime created dependency and open-ended commitments that could not be met.