This session aims to revisit the evolution of urban-rural relations in premodern Europe. The key objective is to examine the interdependence between cities and towns and their rural hinterlands and how this relationship shaped environmental, demographic, economic and social dynamics on both sides (cf. Fulkerson and Thomas 2021). In particular, ecological dynamics driven by the urban demand for resources – for example, food, water, and energy – add a new perspective to the existing literature (e.g. Bailey and Rigby 2011; Wilkin et al. 2015). This ever-increasing demand for resources has transformed the countryside globally and strongly affected social relations both within and between urban and rural nodes in the network (cf. Beckert et al. 2021). In addition, we would welcome research that demonstrates the potential of digital tools and/or interdisciplinary approaches (e.g. Kowaleski 2014). We invite papers on, for example, the origins of urban settlements and later urban centres with more extensive hinterlands, environmental consequences of geographic clustering, patterns of (de)urbanisation, and papers that investigate the extent of the gravitational pull of urban centres to their hinterland (and vice versa). In addition to case studies from an urban or rural perspective, we are interested in contributions that take a broader, regional outlook or offer a reconceptualisation of the relation between town and country in the medieval and early modern periods.