A major trend in European urban history research, during the past few decades, has been the increasing attention given to town plans and topographical conditions. Even in the 1930s, little attention was paid to the physical aspects of urban development, and it was not uncommon for town plans to be totally absent from works on urban history. A turning point was reached in two classical studies, viz. Fernand Vercauteren, Etudes sur les civitates de la Belgique seconde (1934) and F. L. Ganshof, Etude sur le développement des villes entre Loire et Rhin au Moyen Age (1943). The Stadtkernforschung begun in postwar Germany, when bomb damage enabled archaeological investigations of central city areas to be carried out on an entirely different scale than had been previously possible, was also of great importance for continued development.
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