History of the urban environmental imprint: introduction to a multidisciplinary approach to the long-term relationships between Western cities and their hinterland

This paper introduces a series of 11 studies on the relationships between large Western cities (Paris, London, Brussels, Vienna, Barcelona, Athens, New York, Providence) and their surrounding territories over a long historical time period. The concept of hinterland is introduced to designate a rural territory structured by its function of supplying the city with food, fuel, water and other material. The papers question the usefulness of this concept in the current globalized world, where cities are often considered as simple nodes of a network of worldwide trade exchanges, but where new citizen aspirations for reconnecting urban and rural territories are emerging.