A Historical Geography of Europe provides an analytical and explanatory account of European historical geography from classical times to the modern period, including the vast changes to landscape, settlements, population, and in political and cultural structures and character that have taken place since 1500. The text takes account of the volume of relevant research and literature that has been published over the past two or three decades, in order to achieve a coverage and synthesis of this very broad range of evidence and opinion, and has tried to engage with many of the main themes and debates to give a clear indication of changing ideas and interpretations of the subject.

This book provides a comprehensive survey of the social geography of Western Europe. It begins by outlining the character of the region nad proceeds with an exploration of demographic and cultural features, including migration and ethnic groups. The political organisation of nations and regions are analysed along with regional change and development. The study concludes with a consideration of key issues central to the geography of social well-being such as regional convergence/divergence and the impact of public expenditure patterns.

"What makes a city endure and prosper? In this masterful survey of a thousand years of urban architecture, Wolfgang Braunfels identifies certain themes common to cities as different as Siena and London, Munich and Venice ... Braunfels describes scores of cities, classifying them as cathedral cities, city-states, imperial cities, maritime cities, "ideal cities" (those towns which, planned by often absent rulers for a specefic purpose, failed to develop independent lives) ... Lavishly illustrated with city plans, bird's-eye views, early renderings, and modern photographs, Urban Design in Western Europe will both delight and instruct architects, urban planners, historians, and travelers."--Page 4 of cover

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Urban sprawl is one of the key planning issues today. This book compares Western Europe and the USA, focusing on anti-sprawl policies. The USA is known for its settlement patterns that emphasize low-density suburban development and extreme automobile dependence, whereas European countries emphasize higher densities, pro-transit policies and more compact urban growth. Yet, on closer inspection, the differences are not as wide as first appears. A key feature of the book is the attention given to France; its experience is little known in the English-speaking world. The book concludes that both continents can offer each other useful insights and perhaps policy guidance.

Instigated by technological and political change, Europe's rural areas have undergone profound and all-pervasive restructuring processes. Although the impact of these processes has often been depicted negatively, this is not always the case. Bringing together a range of comparative case studies from France, Finland, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Spain, Sweden, Portugal, the UK and other countries, this book provides a comprehensive and balanced picture of rural change over the past five decades. It explores which aspects of the European countryside have benefited and which have suffered as a consequence of the often contradictory forces of restructuring. The book looks into economic aspects as well as into the social impact of rural change. The final part examines regional issues and illustrates how different rural areas have responded to the transformative pressures.

This text provides a comprehensive introduction to local government and urban politics in contemporary Western Europe. It is the first book to map and explain the significant processes of change characterizing local government systems and to place these in a genuinely comparative context. Students are introduced to the traditional structures and institutions of local government and shown how these have been transforming in response to increased economic and political competition, new ideas, institutional reform and the Europeanization of public policies in Europe. At the books core is the perceived transition from local government to local governance. This key development is traced thematically across a w

Based on the bestselling book, Rivers of North America, this new guide stands as the only primary source of complete and comparative baseline data on the biological and hydrological characteristics of more than 180 of the highest profile rivers in Europe. With numerous full-color photographs and maps, Rivers of Europe includes conservation information on current patterns of river use and the extent to which human society has exploited and impacted them. Rivers of Europe provides the information ecologists and conservation managers need to better assess their management and meet the EU legislative good governance targets. - Coverage on more than 180 European rivers - Summarizes biological, ecological and biodiversity characteristics - Provides conservation managers with information to resolve conflicts between recreational use of rivers, their use as a water supply, and the need to conserve natural habitats - Data on river hydrology (maximum , minimum and average flow rates), seasonal variation in water flow - Numerous full-color photographs - Information on the underlying geology and its affect on river behaviour

The startling economic and political answers behind Europe's historical dominance Between 1492 and 1914, Europeans conquered 84 percent of the globe. But why did Europe establish global dominance, when for centuries the Chinese, Japanese, Ottomans, and South Asians were far more advanced? In Why Did Europe Conquer the World?, Philip Hoffman demonstrates that conventional explanations—such as geography, epidemic disease, and the Industrial Revolution—fail to provide answers. Arguing instead for the pivotal role of economic and political history, Hoffman shows that if certain variables had been different, Europe would have been eclipsed, and another power could have become master of the world. Hoffman sheds light on the two millennia of economic, political, and historical changes that set European states on a distinctive path of development, military rivalry, and war. This resulted in astonishingly rapid growth in Europe's military sector, and produced an insurmountable lead in gunpowder technology. The consequences determined which states established colonial empires or ran the slave trade, and even which economies were the first to industrialize. Debunking traditional arguments, Why Did Europe Conquer the World? reveals the startling reasons behind Europe's historic global supremacy.