Urbanization without Economic Growth in Pre-Industrial Italy

Why did some of Europe’s most urbanized pre-industrial societies industrialize relatively late? Conventional theories link urbanization to economic growth. Yet European history presents a paradox: early industrializers were not the most urbanized, while highly urbanized regions often stagnated. This book argues that urbanization levels alone are misleading. What matters is the structure of urbanization — the spatial concentration of cities and the organization of urban networks — inherited from earlier historical processes.

Italy, the demographic and infrastructural core of the Roman world, inherited exceptionally high urbanization within a markedly decentralized urban system. Through comparative analysis and detailed case studies — including the Republic of Genoa and Early Modern Tuscany — the book shows how this legacy fostered the emergence and persistence of regional states, constrained political unification, and encouraged extractive institutional arrangements, producing urbanization without growth and contributing to delayed industrialization. The Roman Empire constituted the foundational origin of Western Europe’s urban landscape. Its urban system generated enduring and uneven spatial configurations across Europe, whose effects persisted long after the Empire’s collapse. These inherited patterns shaped trajectories of political fragmentation and processes of state formation.

By reconnecting urbanization to its deep historical foundations, this study offers a new perspective on Italy’s long-run development and clarifies the longstanding urbanization puzzle.

Luigi Oddo earned his Ph.D. in Economics and Political Economy in 2022. Presently, he is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research lies at the intersection of economic development and economic history, with a particular focus on urbanization, institutions, and environmental factors as structural determinants of long-term economic development in the pre-industrial world. His work has been published in leading international journals such as Explorations in Economic History, European Review of Economic History, and Rural History.