The Basis for an Historico-Geographical Theory of Urban Form

Abstract

Methodological problems in urban morphology are discussed and a strategy for a more coherent development of the field is outlined. A theoretical framework, in which the explanation of urban form is firmly rooted in the wider realm of social and economic processes, is proposed as a basis for more specific studies and as a stepping-stone to a more fully developed theory. This framework relates to 'western', especially British, society during the industrial era and is supported in part by reference to empirical studies. Innovation, diffusion and constructional activity play major roles in the theoretical argument and the implications of their interrelationship for the arrangement of forms within the city are outlined. Regional variations in the adoption of innovations and in constructional activity are considered and their significance for the forms that characterize different towns is discussed. THE major economic value of the physical fabric of the city' and its substantial environmental role in industrial societies are sufficient to warrant an important place for the study of urban form as a field of research. More subtle and arguably more fundamental justifications for such work have been put forward by Conzen.2 Schliiter, in a paper published in I899,3 has been credited as the first to stress the importance of the townscape in geography.4 In the subsequent three- quarters of a century a substantial quantity of literature slowly accumulated on what became widely known among geographers as 'urban morphology', German-speaking scholars having made a formative contribution during the inter-war period.5 Recent' development of the field has not been commensurate with that in geographical research as a whole, a situation foreshadowed