My name is Dea Barbieri and I’m a senior majoring in English and French. I studied abroad in France last semester and was able to make it to London for a week, but I definitely felt like I didn’t see as much as I wanted to and that I didn’t get a true feeling for the city. So I am looking forward to learning more about the city’s history and hopefully be able to contextualize a little more the few places I was able to get to while I was there.

I really enjoyed this article because it gave such a broad overview of the evolution of London as the “first global city”. I’ve taken classes on medieval studies so I liked that the article used the medieval era as a jumping point to begin the conversation on how and when London began evolving; in my head I can clearly see medieval homes and ways of life and how ready people were to industrialize and leave that part of history behind. I thought the article did a good job geographically describing how London changed and how the different classes organized themselves into North, South, East, and West and what each section was known for. I thought it was interesting that even very early on South London had a reputation for being dicey and less-than the other, more affluent, parts of the city.

I also found the history of the railways very interesting and crucial for understanding London’s development. For example the railways were able to completely revolutionize working life by allowing middle-class workers to commute to work and live in the suburbs instead of the more dangerous parts of the city where they were previously forced to live. It is reminiscent of how middle-class people live today, many choosing to live in a suburban town with a train station and have the ability to commute to the city for work every day. This point connected with me the most and definitely helped me connect more to this period of history when so much was changing.