During the Early Middle Ages, characterized by successive waves of invasions that followed until the century (Germans, Muslims, Vikings, Hungarians), the process of ruralization continued, which dates back to the crisis of the century and feudalism was imposed. The main authority in the decayed Roman cities was that of the bishop. On the other hand, in barbarian Europe, which the Roman Empire did not reach, a slow extension of the forms typical of Roman-Christian civilization took place in these centuries, and the emergence of new cities.

As a general rule, around the 1st century, ancient cities experienced a withdrawal of their spatial domain within a fortified sector (the castrum), which contained the political centers (forum, curia...) and religious centers (cathedral, episcopal residence), sometimes the seat of civil authority.

In the town, activities other than agricultural activities arise, a monetary economy and specialization of jobs (guilds) flourish. The city is now a heterogeneous framework where rural man is freed from his ancestral dependence (feudal servitude), thanks to anonymity (Stadtluft macht frei -the air of the city makes you free-) and the possibilities offered by the city as a center of production of the different knowledge of the time. For centuries, universities have played a prominent role in the development of culture in cities, which is reflected in the urban complexes that appear next to them.

The most prosperous cities of the Late Middle Ages owed their development to long-distance trade, which reconstituted their routes from the Crusades and the advance of the Christian kingdoms against the Muslims in the Spanish Reconquest and southern Italy (Normans in Sicily). This allowed city-states in northern Italy such as Venice, Pisa and Genoa to experience a great boom, and similarly other ports in the Western Mediterranean such as Naples, Barcelona, ​​Valencia or Marseille.

Constantinople remained the most populous and important Christian city, ahead of the more modest western capitals, of which the largest were Rome and Paris. In northern Europe, the Hanseatic cities of the Baltic and the North Sea (Hamburg, Lübeck) developed, reaching their influence to the south of England (London) and the rich cities of Flanders (Bruges, Antwerp); which in turn were connected by the Rhine (Cologne "Cologne (Germany)"), Basel) and the Champagne fairs with Milan and the rest of the Italian cities.

The control of the Strait of Gibraltar allowed the maritime route that connected the Italian core with the Flemish one through Seville, Lisbon and the Castilian ports of the Cantabrian Sea (Santander "Santander (Cantabria)"), Laredo "Laredo (Cantabria)"), Bilbao), connected through Burgos to the interior of the Meseta, where routes were opened parallel to those of the Mesta (Valladolid, Segovia, Toledo) and the fairs of Medina del Campo.

For its part, the Islamic city is characterized by its private character. The streets with irregular and intricate shapes seem to hide the city from the visitor. Something very particular about the Islamic city is that the lives of its inhabitants take place inside their homes. These cities are usually walled and contain a main nucleus made up of the “Medina”, where the main mosque and the main shopping streets are located. Next are the residential neighborhoods and finally the suburban neighborhoods, differentiated by union activities. Other elements of interest in the Islamic city are the baths, the souk and the palace gardens.

Florence had suffered a sharp contraction in its size after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the Carolingian period it expanded, extending its walls five times, and building a multitude of bridges over the Arno. With the appearance of the mendicant orders, the existing religious buildings will be revalued and new ones will be built outside the walls, around which urban centers will grow, which will be enclosed in the successive expansions.[5] It will be these religious orders that will become promoters of construction on the vacant lands. At this time, the Florentine Commune will begin to promote public spaces (roads, streets, squares, cathedrals...) establishing communication between the important elements of the city. Thus, urban planning will be carried out around these elements, seeking the greatest use of the properties to obtain the greatest economic return. From here the most notable construction processes will be carried out: the fifth wall, palaces, squares, new roads... coinciding with the beginnings of the Renaissance.

The appearance of the medieval city will be given by a series of conditions.

Feudalism: the members of feudal society are grouped hierarchically. To maintain both economic, social and military protection in the small agricultural industries of the feudal lords, small urban centers were established.

The Church: medieval cities will also be grouped around episcopal sees and monasteries. They will not do it with a defined planimetry, but it will depend on the importance of the religious settlement.

Commerce: with the resurgence of commerce, especially in northern Italy (Florence, Pisa, Siena...) and in the Hanseatic League, urban life will also resurface. Cities will also appear on the Mediterranean coast due to the trade routes with the East, and in Central Europe. With the appearance of trade routes, toll cities were created where the commercial bourgeoisie could carry out their work, separated from each other, no more than a day's journey to be connected.

Of all the cities in Western Europe, the first where commerce re-emerges, after the fall of the Roman Empire and after a parenthesis caused by the invasions of Muslim hordes in the 19th century, is Venice. The human implications are notable. The cities would not have been created, they would not have gone from villages made up of serfs dedicated to cultivation and livestock for the lords of the land, if trade had not flourished.[6]​.

The bourgeoisie had some aspirations:

The monarchs, who were interested in reducing feudal power, supported the bourgeoisie, which is why they granted them letters of privilege, also called franchises or charters, which were documents that established their freedoms and freed them from subjection to the feudal lord. In exchange, the city paid taxes to the king, which he used to finance his fights against the nobility and to increase his domains.

Whether they are of spontaneous or planned origin, they have a common building typology, distinguishing the following parts:

The wall is the delimiting element of the city, and creates a legal and legal environment within it. If the city grows, the wall can expand, in concentric rings. It had two functions: a defensive military function and another, economic, by collecting tariffs at the doors.

In the century, convents appeared outside the walls, around which new neighborhoods were created. In the 19th century, when the use of gunpowder became normal, another type of wall was built, following the so-called Italian layout.

The entire city road was a market "Market (establishment)"), with union specialization by areas or streets (shoemakers, silversmiths...). However, commercial activity will intensify in some squares, arcades, where several guilds may coincide, giving rise to the market square.

The church "Church (building)") is the second pole of the city, along with the market. The medieval city is characterized by the bipolarity of the market square and the church square, although they do not conflict with each other, as one of them is only commercial and the other only social.

The homes are grouped in extensive blocks of narrow houses lined up, between party walls and with an orchard at the back. Thus, these large blocks have enormous interior spaces dedicated to horticultural crops. Usually, the orchards have access to a service road that runs through the interior of the block parallel to the streets that delimit it.

The typical plot will be the Gothic plot, which is characterized by its narrowness (3 to 5 meters), due to the construction system of the traditional house: the wooden beams did not allow large spans to be reached (Light (engineering)), so the load-bearing walls cannot be very far apart.

Depending on its urban form, a classification can be established:

They can arise from Roman settlements (London, Barcelona...) or closed villages. They grow spontaneously responding to an organic and irregular pattern, adapting to the terrain.

In medieval Europe, a multitude of planned cities were founded for different reasons.

During the Early Middle Ages, characterized by successive waves of invasions that followed until the century (Germans, Muslims, Vikings, Hungarians), the process of ruralization continued, which dates back to the crisis of the century and feudalism was imposed. The main authority in the decayed Roman cities was that of the bishop. On the other hand, in barbarian Europe, which the Roman Empire did not reach, a slow extension of the forms typical of Roman-Christian civilization took place in these centuries, and the emergence of new cities.

As a general rule, around the 1st century, ancient cities experienced a withdrawal of their spatial domain within a fortified sector (the castrum), which contained the political centers (forum, curia...) and religious centers (cathedral, episcopal residence), sometimes the seat of civil authority.

In the town, activities other than agricultural activities arise, a monetary economy and specialization of jobs (guilds) flourish. The city is now a heterogeneous framework where rural man is freed from his ancestral dependence (feudal servitude), thanks to anonymity (Stadtluft macht frei -the air of the city makes you free-) and the possibilities offered by the city as a center of production of the different knowledge of the time. For centuries, universities have played a prominent role in the development of culture in cities, which is reflected in the urban complexes that appear next to them.

The most prosperous cities of the Late Middle Ages owed their development to long-distance trade, which reconstituted their routes from the Crusades and the advance of the Christian kingdoms against the Muslims in the Spanish Reconquest and southern Italy (Normans in Sicily). This allowed city-states in northern Italy such as Venice, Pisa and Genoa to experience a great boom, and similarly other ports in the Western Mediterranean such as Naples, Barcelona, ​​Valencia or Marseille.

Constantinople remained the most populous and important Christian city, ahead of the more modest western capitals, of which the largest were Rome and Paris. In northern Europe, the Hanseatic cities of the Baltic and the North Sea (Hamburg, Lübeck) developed, reaching their influence to the south of England (London) and the rich cities of Flanders (Bruges, Antwerp); which in turn were connected by the Rhine (Cologne "Cologne (Germany)"), Basel) and the Champagne fairs with Milan and the rest of the Italian cities.

The control of the Strait of Gibraltar allowed the maritime route that connected the Italian core with the Flemish one through Seville, Lisbon and the Castilian ports of the Cantabrian Sea (Santander "Santander (Cantabria)"), Laredo "Laredo (Cantabria)"), Bilbao), connected through Burgos to the interior of the Meseta, where routes were opened parallel to those of the Mesta (Valladolid, Segovia, Toledo) and the fairs of Medina del Campo.

For its part, the Islamic city is characterized by its private character. The streets with irregular and intricate shapes seem to hide the city from the visitor. Something very particular about the Islamic city is that the lives of its inhabitants take place inside their homes. These cities are usually walled and contain a main nucleus made up of the “Medina”, where the main mosque and the main shopping streets are located. Next are the residential neighborhoods and finally the suburban neighborhoods, differentiated by union activities. Other elements of interest in the Islamic city are the baths, the souk and the palace gardens.

Florence had suffered a sharp contraction in its size after the fall of the Roman Empire. In the Carolingian period it expanded, extending its walls five times, and building a multitude of bridges over the Arno. With the appearance of the mendicant orders, the existing religious buildings will be revalued and new ones will be built outside the walls, around which urban centers will grow, which will be enclosed in the successive expansions.[5] It will be these religious orders that will become promoters of construction on the vacant lands. At this time, the Florentine Commune will begin to promote public spaces (roads, streets, squares, cathedrals...) establishing communication between the important elements of the city. Thus, urban planning will be carried out around these elements, seeking the greatest use of the properties to obtain the greatest economic return. From here the most notable construction processes will be carried out: the fifth wall, palaces, squares, new roads... coinciding with the beginnings of the Renaissance.

The appearance of the medieval city will be given by a series of conditions.

Feudalism: the members of feudal society are grouped hierarchically. To maintain both economic, social and military protection in the small agricultural industries of the feudal lords, small urban centers were established.

The Church: medieval cities will also be grouped around episcopal sees and monasteries. They will not do it with a defined planimetry, but it will depend on the importance of the religious settlement.

Commerce: with the resurgence of commerce, especially in northern Italy (Florence, Pisa, Siena...) and in the Hanseatic League, urban life will also resurface. Cities will also appear on the Mediterranean coast due to the trade routes with the East, and in Central Europe. With the appearance of trade routes, toll cities were created where the commercial bourgeoisie could carry out their work, separated from each other, no more than a day's journey to be connected.

Of all the cities in Western Europe, the first where commerce re-emerges, after the fall of the Roman Empire and after a parenthesis caused by the invasions of Muslim hordes in the 19th century, is Venice. The human implications are notable. The cities would not have been created, they would not have gone from villages made up of serfs dedicated to cultivation and livestock for the lords of the land, if trade had not flourished.[6]​.

The bourgeoisie had some aspirations:

The monarchs, who were interested in reducing feudal power, supported the bourgeoisie, which is why they granted them letters of privilege, also called franchises or charters, which were documents that established their freedoms and freed them from subjection to the feudal lord. In exchange, the city paid taxes to the king, which he used to finance his fights against the nobility and to increase his domains.

Whether they are of spontaneous or planned origin, they have a common building typology, distinguishing the following parts:

The wall is the delimiting element of the city, and creates a legal and legal environment within it. If the city grows, the wall can expand, in concentric rings. It had two functions: a defensive military function and another, economic, by collecting tariffs at the doors.

In the century, convents appeared outside the walls, around which new neighborhoods were created. In the 19th century, when the use of gunpowder became normal, another type of wall was built, following the so-called Italian layout.

The entire city road was a market "Market (establishment)"), with union specialization by areas or streets (shoemakers, silversmiths...). However, commercial activity will intensify in some squares, arcades, where several guilds may coincide, giving rise to the market square.

The church "Church (building)") is the second pole of the city, along with the market. The medieval city is characterized by the bipolarity of the market square and the church square, although they do not conflict with each other, as one of them is only commercial and the other only social.

The homes are grouped in extensive blocks of narrow houses lined up, between party walls and with an orchard at the back. Thus, these large blocks have enormous interior spaces dedicated to horticultural crops. Usually, the orchards have access to a service road that runs through the interior of the block parallel to the streets that delimit it.

The typical plot will be the Gothic plot, which is characterized by its narrowness (3 to 5 meters), due to the construction system of the traditional house: the wooden beams did not allow large spans to be reached (Light (engineering)), so the load-bearing walls cannot be very far apart.

Depending on its urban form, a classification can be established:

They can arise from Roman settlements (London, Barcelona...) or closed villages. They grow spontaneously responding to an organic and irregular pattern, adapting to the terrain.

In medieval Europe, a multitude of planned cities were founded for different reasons.