where was the greatest concentration of urbanization after the tenth century?

Question

is it England and France or is it Italy and the Low Countries?
thank you i would REALLY appreciate it

Answer 1

Top TEN cities based on population in the 10th Century were

1. Cordova, Spain 450,000
2. Kaifeng, China 400,000
3. Constantinople (Istanbul), Turkey300,000
4. Angkor, Cambodia 200,000
5. Kyoto, Japan 175,000
6. Cairo, Egypt 135,000
7. Baghdad, Iraq 125,000
8. Nishapur (Neyshabur), Iran 125,000
9. Al-Hasa, Saudi Arabia 110,000
10.Patan (Anhilwara), India 100,000

References below:

By contrast, ancient Rome had a population of over 1 MILLION people. No other city came close to that size until London in the late 1800s.

Answer 2

Is it 'After' on 'Around' the tenth century? And then by 'urbanization' do you mean who had the largest cities, or who had the highest proportion of people living in urban areas, or who had the highest number of people living in urban areas (which are all potentially different).

If we take it as 'around the tenth century', I'd suspect that Italy and the low countries had a higher proportion of people in urban areas, because compared to France and England, they had relatively small overall populations who for reasons of trade (seaports) or security lived in walled cities (Italy). Italy partly for reasons of terrain, and partly of history was broken up into more small 'States' than England or France, and each 'State' had a principal city (eg Venice, Milan, Florence, etc).

But I'd suspect in France and England far more people lived (in total population terms) in urban areas, than did so in the low countries or Italy, because France and England simply had larger populations overall. Even picking the 'largest' city in 1000AD is not easy, as most of that information is buried in journal articles not available on the internet (except through universities). London at the time was between 35 and 50 thousand, Rome had around 30,000. Brugge in the Netherlands was probably not far behind, Paris had around 20,000.

One of the illuminating things coming out of the question though, is the relative prosperity of the Lowlands (shortly after forming the Hanseatic League) that people tend to overlook (except the Dutch perhaps...) The other thing that comes out of this is that the 'limiter' on population appears to be water supplies. If you refer to the excellent answer earlier, you'll see that the largest cities - Kaifeng in China, Cordoba in Arab Spain, Constantinople in the Roman/Byzantine empire were all served by engineered fresh water supplies and relatively sophisticated sewerage and waste disposal technologies. It was this technology that allowed Rome to grow to a million people in the classical era.

Answer 3

England and France, they had more big cities, Italy had big cities too, which is why humanism thrived there in the Rennaissance, but the Low Countries was mostly a lot of villages.

Answer 4

A great deal depends on how you define "urbanization". I would think it would be in Europe, perhaps France.