Capital (Newspaper):
What would happen if Facebook were turned off?
9 September 2019
Guy Michaels, of the London School of Economics, and Ferdinand Rauch, of the University of Oxford, studied the fortunes of Roman-era towns in Britain and France. When the empire foundered, those fortunes diverged; the French political order was less disturbed by the collapse than the British, and more towns continued to function in France than in Britain. As a result, new towns arose more readily in Britain than in France when, in later centuries, the advantages of proximity to navigable water became apparent. Between 1200 and 1700, populations grew much faster in towns with access to the coast than in those without. Britons benefited from having their urban network "reset", while the French were stuck liking and sharing the towns their Roman ancestors occupied.