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Urban history from the foundation down to modern times -
presented in texts, maps and figures |
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| Welcome to GSV Städteatlas Verlag GERMAN HISTORIC TOWN ATLASES Urban history from the foundation up to modern time in a synop-sis of illustrations, maps and text. Germany in its boundaries of the 19th century with cities in today's Lithuania, Poland and Russian Federation. The atlas is written in German. Nevertheless, for its high percentage (90%) of maps and illustrations its generally understandable! Documentation of the urban plan: In illustrations and maps from about 1800 Interpretation of the town's history: Map illustrating the phases of growth from the first settlement up to modern time. Textual contribution with a brillantly written urban history by well-known urban historians. What is a town? – How did it come into being? – Which developments furthered it? – Which functions does it perform? – Which purposes does it serve? These questions which have been asked for the past five decades have not lost any of their topicality. Quite the contrary, life of modern man is oriented more and more towards the town. Its role as the central place of his or her life is becoming ever more predominant. Thus, studying the history of one's place of origin makes sense, as there are fre-quent public and private occasions to remind one-self of the past of one's place of residence, and – last but not least – as it is simply fun. “The city grows unstoppably” is the German version´s title of historian and futurologist Arnold J. Toynbee's book “Cities on the Move“ (1970) - a simple but apodictic statement. “The urban explo-sion”, he formulated, “is equally sensational and terrifying”. He predicted the culmination of an inevitable process of aggregation of human living space to a city that spans the whole world, the “Econopolis”. Even a decade before that, the histo-rian Lewis Mumford had asked in his book “The City in History” (published in 1961): “Will the whole pla-net transform itself into a single, huge beehive city?” One may leave the answer to this question to the futurologists and it may also be undecided whether the majority of the current human popula-tion is to be counted as urban residents, but the growing predominance of urban socialization in our times is beyond dispute. The modern men orientate themselves towards the city. More and more it be-comes a central place of their lives. |