Making Good and Breaking Bad: Materiality and Community in Netherlandish Cities, 1380–1520

Abstract This article discusses community formation at a neighbourhood level from material-spatial perspective. It argues that wholesome, safe, ‘good’ living environment required both social harmony and well-functioning material (infra-) structures. Neighbours’ conflicts, mined the court records of five cities in late medieval Low Countries, provide evidence for two main themes. The first concerns making things, especially houses their attendant facilities, second breaking things: acts deliberate destruction within environments, by implication, communal peace. Neighbours took on diverse roles, among which more commitments have remained underexplored historians. Yet shared use, construction upkeep facilities infrastructure around domestic spaces, were high value, had considerable influence power relations interactions. Groups neighbours participated legal validation processes offered physical help to each other, but also policed local order bad behaviour. latter often involved damaging constructions. Such informal communities thus acted as links formalised urban structures organisations, foundations could develop. Their interactions with central governments multidirectional contested than has been assumed. Understanding social-material dynamic therefore reveals an important layer pre-modern politics.