Urban Order and Street Regulation in Seventeenth-Century Sweden

Abstract

Th is article examines how, in the early modern towns of Stockholm and Åbo, royal interests, town planning, street building and maintenance, and street behavior related to ideas and ideals of urban order. Town laws and ordinances, royal letters and some town court records are employed to tell a story of royal interest in well-ordered, impressive, successful towns; various street plans for the capital and the smaller provincial towns; and the varying execution of renewal plans. It is evident that the capital was to refl ect the royal person and the state and that streets and street behaviour were important in this regard. But in towns outside the capital, especially in concrete street maintenance, the centrality of streets does not clearly emerge. Th e burghers in towns operated as individuals-there was no bottomup or top-down plan or supervision.

The Meaning of Urban Centrality in a Medium-Sized Eighteenth-Century Town

“…Clearly visible on the eighteenth-century maps are the medieval town centre, with its narrow streets around the cathedral and the marketplace, and the seventeenth-century rectangular quarters and wider streets, which were built after the regularisation of Swedish towns from the 1630s (figure 2). 17 The main axes of the town were the river and the two parallel, latitudinal streets of Konungsgatan and Drottningsgatan on opposite sides of the river. The most important nodes of the urban topography were the market square (Stor torg), with the only bridge of the town crossing the river, the cathedral, and the new market square (Ny torg).…”