Just Passing Through? New research into urban infrastructures for transient migrants in the Low Countries, 1780-1870

This project analyses the interplay between passanten (an early modern term for people passing through cities, a sort of transient migrants) and urban space from a spatial-material approach. It centres on the questions how and why urban infrastructures for passants changed in the Low Countries in the period from 1780 to 1870, a period characterised amongst others by transport revolutions from human and animal to steam power. The interplay between infrastructures of accommodation, transport and the administrative framework is analysed through case studies of three cities which functioned as nodes in their transport networks, namely Leiden (water), Luik-Liège (paved roads) and Mechelen-Malines (railways).