A new opportunity, and a new challenge, presents itself to urban historians. In order to obtain a deeper understanding of historical urban space and spatial relationships, the contributors to this Special Issue deploy new techniques of spatial analysis using mapping tools to explore the density, frequency and proximity of various features of towns and cities. The contributors focus on case-studies at various urban scales – from major commercial centres (New York, Rome, Paris and London) – to smaller towns in the urban hierarchy. They also range across the tenth to the twentieth centuries and so challenge a common assumption that mapping the town is essentially an approach best suited to the modern period. Individually and collectively, the authors demonstrate how the urban morphology of the city developed and how durable that spatial patterning can be.

中文翻译：

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空间思考：城市历史的新视野

一个新的机会，一个新的挑战，呈现在城市历史学家面前。为了更深入地了解历史城市空间和空间关系，本期特刊的投稿人部署了新的空间分析技术，使用地图工具来探索城镇和城市各种特征的密度、频率和邻近性。撰稿人专注于不同城市规模的案例研究——从主要商业中心（纽约、罗马、巴黎和伦敦）到城市等级中的小城镇。它们还跨越了十世纪到二十世纪，因此挑战了一个普遍的假设，即绘制城镇地图本质上是一种最适合现代时期的方法。个人和集体，