Neighbourhood Social Change in West European Cities: Sixteenth to Nineteenth Centuries

Summary It is argued that both the tenacity of the neighbourhood and its adaptability were much greater than historians have tended to think, and that this was true not only during the ancien régime but also during the nineteenth century when the rate of mobility between towns and within towns reached enormous proportions. Demographic, social and cultural changes did not result in the destruction of the local community, but in its transformation, a transformation in which the growing need for reciprocity among working-class neighbours played a crucial role. The decline of more or less institutionalized forms of self-regulation went hand in hand with the construction by the lower classes of informal channels of social interaction based on local ties, which stimulated an active and participatory street life. Moreover, the tendency towards geographical segregation contributed to the development of a different collective sense of identity in working-class neighbourhoods, which added a new dimension to the concept of solidarity.