The proposed project aims at capitalizing on acquired know-how and at the same time at rejuvenating and expanding the network in order to fulfill the scientific goals. This way, available know-how on urban history in Belgium can be brought together to work on topics that closely follow recent historical themes and introduce methodological innovation in history.

In practice progress will be made not only by using the traditional means of historical science (new PhDs, conferences and inventories of data), but also by introducing a more structural organisation, more than was the case in the previous IUAP-projects, of supporting teaching programmes in the 3rd cycle (graduate training) and by integrating various existing initiatives in Flanders, Wallonia and the Netherlands.

The supervisons of this project are commited, on the basis of the results this project will produce and also using the expertise acquired in the past projects, to bringing together new insights on every aspect of urban history in the Low Countries in this crucial phase of their history, from the late 13th until the 16th century, in order to make a new synthesis. There is a great need on an international level - experience tells us - for such work.

The proposed research project intends to emphasize the sociocultural historical approach through four specific lines of research:

1. city and countryside: socio-economic and cultural osmosis
2. behavior regulation
3. city identity
4. sociocultural city history, urban middle groups.

It seems quite evident that in addition to these there are still other themes relative to city history which for some time have already been the object of study (nrs. 1 and 4), but they have been placed here in the renewed perspective of this project near themes (nrs. 2 and 3) which have recently emerged in international research.

The composition of the teams (UGent, ULB, UA, RULeiden, KBR) came about according to available competencies; at least two of these teams will participate directly in each of the proposed lines of research. The teams also reflect an evident tendency toward rejuvenation and féminisation.

With regard to research strategies, the project entends to make possible a maximum of original, fundamental research in the form of doctoral dissertations; at the same time, the substantial contribution of the expertise deriving from the presence of post-doc researchers is also foreseen. The resulting output will take the form of colloquia, a synthesis which the project supervisors will produce at the project's end, and the systematic intégration of this project into the postgraduate education of the 3rd cycle.

Thus, the project plans to make a substantial contribution to a scholarly domain in which Belgium has already enjoyed international recognition for generations. Themes will be explored (the development of a particular political culture, the evolution of collective behavior in the face of the process of political and economic expansion) which for knowledge of today's society is not without significance, but which, primarily, given the importance of the phenomenon of the city in the past of the Netherlands, will elucidate the exceptional development of the Netherlands in a European context.