Regional and Urban Development in Europe∗

This chapter provides an overview of the historical economic development of regions, their successes and failures, and their advances and retreats, which can help to make place-based policies more effective. We review data and literature on regional and urban development from antiquity to 1914, the year of World War I. We discuss common data sets and sources and go on to reflect on empirical methods and common challenges. We review the historical urban and regional economic literature on the role of the church, the impact of wars, crises, and events that shaped Europe’s cities and regions, then institutions, trade, and finally industrialization. We conclude with an outlook for the future of historical urban and regional economic research.