«The narrative of the city as a disaggregated assemblage of private interactions—especially via private housing—is a fiction with special pride of place within the history of liberalism—and in particular, with the idealization of the “rise of cities” in the medieval to early modern period. Indeed, the real history behind the “rise of cities” is much more problematic and complex. The relative autonomy of an emergent bourgeoisie was not gained primarily through the cunning of traders and artisans—a bottom-up narrative—but through the internecine warfare of landlords, religious orders, and monarchs—an elite, top-down contest.»