217Kurze Wege: Gewalt und Gewaltprävention in Nachbarschaften italienischer Stadtkommunen

This essay begins by considering the use of the concept of neighbourhood in the twentieth century, against the backdrop of massive urbanisation that took place in the wake of industrialisation. In this context, neighbourhood has often served as a code for an ideologisation of supposedly overseeable, long-term social relationships in the modern city. It thus functions as the equivalent of the village – a place of longing for supposedly authentic social relationships. The essay subsequently traces the significance of neighbourhood in a late medieval ‘boomtown’: Florence around 1300, as exemplified in passages from Dino Compagni’s Cronica . The close proximity in which people lived could foster bloody conflicts simply because members of an elite with an affinity for violence literally had trouble avoiding each other. At the same time, the neighbourhood was one of the administrative units of urban government and administration. Beyond modern nostalgia, ‘neighbourhood’ stands for the challenges and dynamics of rapidly changing urban societies, even in late medieval Italy.