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Journal - Viewpoints vol.9 nr.2 (2005)

Viewpoints

If you would like to respond to a viewpoint, or want to write your own, please contact the editor.

The study of territory and the role of history in applied research in urban morphology

Giancarlo Cataldi,
Dipartimento di Progettazione dell'Architettura, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Viale Gramsci 42, 50132 Firenze, Italy. E-mail: giancarlo.cataldi@tin.it

Two themes that are in my view crucial to urban morphology have not received the attention they deserve: the study of territory and the long-term background role of history. I shall explore these here, mainly with a view to seeking to understand the way in which cultural change is triggered.1

The study of territory

However much the importance of territory is taken for granted because of the priority given to geography in our discipline,2 it is worth restating that it is a necessary starting point of every form of applied research in towns. The theme of territory has only been touched on briefly in this journal and hardly ever as a means of understanding urban form and its transformations.3

In a little book published several years ago,4 I endeavoured to develop a specific method for the interpretation of territory, which explicitly referred to Saverio Muratori's teaching.5 I should like to present it again in the form of a 4 x 4 matrix (Figure 1), which summarizes the settlement process of the Italian peninsula in its four fundamental phases (hill or mountain, slope, valley bottom and plain), analysed according to the four essential components that characterize all human environments (bound-aries, routes, tissues and settlements). I am not going to dwell on the theoretical and method-ological implications of this matrix, which are discussed elsewhere as applied to particular Italian towns and regions.6

What I should like to emphasize is the typological distinction of urban forms in relation to various topo-hydrographic situations. The distin-ction is based on the underlying assumption of a settlement process in which hills and mountains were the first to be occupied, followed by slopes, then valley bottoms, and finally major plains, the latter having been previously reclaimed by extensive drainage works.7 This approach enables us to immediately grasp the diverse origins of settlements which tended, in time, to become a constant and indelible reference point - mental more than physical - between the inhabitants and the town's geographical location.

Ridge-top towns situated on a drainage divide, such as Siena and Volterra, with alleys descending on both sides of main streets are constitutionally, functionally and perceptually different from towns that slope down in large steps like Genoa and Gubbio, which in turn differ from valley bottom 'impluvium' towns built at lower altitudes as market centres in the vicinity of river crossings, like numerous towns along the banks of the River Arno.8 Lastly, Roman plain towns - such as Florence, Pisa, Lucca and Pistoia - are character-ized by regular, generally square layouts that fit into a large-scale design.9 In these towns a radius of 6 miles10 delimited the pertinent administrative area, which formed an integral part of the town as a 'productive reserve' to sustain the inhabitants and more specifically as a 'building reserve' to meet dwelling requirements in times of growth.11 The analysis of the territory surrounding towns can provide revelations about the structure of urban form. An example is the case of straight routes that converge on the city centre but which radically change direction to adapt to the gates of a new city wall. Such a form cannot be recognized without analysis of the town's pertinent geographical area.

An important objective of studying territory is to reconstruct the system of relations external to an inhabited centre initially considered as a formless geographical point. The aim is to clarify the roles and relations of the three components that, together with settlements, make up the territorial picture: boundaries (administrative and geographical), the network and typology of connections to nearby settlements, and field patterns. These constitute the connective pattern of the town and its surrounding countryside. In this sense the interaction between the town and its pertinent area is born out of the complimentary characteristics of the quantitative diversity of, and qualitative similarity between, the two sides in the relation: the town as building tissues integrated by a system of public highways and spaces (streets and squares), lined with houses and special buildings; territory as a continuous series of productive tissues, for pasture, arable and industry, served by roads and settled by dispersed farmsteads and houses.12

The role of history

History comes into play as soon as towns and territory are considered as dialectic factors in a diachronic process. That is the only mode of being for any geographical reality, a reality that inevitably - either as a result of geodynamic events (exogen-ous and endogenous) or human endeavours - undergoes a series of transformations, almost always continuous but also (at times of crisis) in a more traumatic manner wholly divorced from preceding phases. In this way, we really get to the heart of our discipline. The form of the city and the structured aspects of its territory change substan-tially at more or less short intervals. Grasping the meaning of territorial and urban transformations that have occurred in succession in time and space is the greatest, most ambitious aim of any morph-ological research: from the stage of initial settlement - which is the most difficult and uncertain and yet decisive - to subsequent, gradual, intermediate transformations and on to the acceler-ating changes of the contemporary era, about which we are fortunate to have at our disposal rich and precise 'work-in-progress' documentation from satellite photographs. Historical research on towns relating to a single period or short time intervals runs the risk of being fragmentary and incompre-hensible if it is not inserted, like a link in a chain, within a wider diachronic system.

The history of the city of Rome

The events in the urban history of Rome are highly instructive in this regard13 because they include two vital 1000-year cycles encompassing periods of formation, and critical periods spanning approxi-mately two and a half centuries (Figure 2). The 'long waves' of history are particularly important in this case.14

Naturally, I shall not go into the reasoning and arguments that led to this historical periodization which, as it is currently projected, would lead us to the Muratorian concepts of 'crisis', and 'operative history'.15 I just want to highlight the linking role of the Middle Ages and how, in large part, the historical fabric of numerous European cities owes its structure to the spontaneous building of the period. It is one of the cornerstones in the lessons of Gianfranco Caniggia who, with the term 'medi-evalization', intended to identify the 'unauthorized' acts of building leading to the privatization of public squares, a phenomenon typical of the Middle Ages.16

In fact, this period witnessed a considerable reduction17 in the settled area of Rome, the surviving part of the city concentrating to the north-west of the Campidoglio on the flat ground of the Campo Marzio, protected on two sides by the loop of the River Tiber and linked by the Ponte Sant'Angelo to the new religious centre of the Vatican. From the second century BC numerous major public building complexes were erected, making this area the new centre, spatially and functionally distinct from the forum area to the south-east of the Campidoglio. In the Middle Ages, basic buildings replaced special buildings in Campo Marzio, systematically reusing building materials: houses occupied all open spaces and fitted into the interstices of monuments, which provided a huge reserve of building materials for the Romans down the centuries. At least until the mid-eighth century, Caesar's 'heart' of Rome - the area of the forum - was abandoned and its buildings fell into ruin. In his engravings, Piranesi still depicted it as countryside with grazing herds and rare visitors wandering cautiously around archaeological remains.

Conclusion

The case of Rome allows us to reflect on a number of methodological issues concerning the place of the Middle Ages in urban morphology. In studying this period, it is essential to understand what linked it to the preceding age and modern history: a laborious task not so much on account of the time span as the difficulty of dealing with data that are so heterogeneous and distant in time, involving arch-aeology on the one hand and current problems on the other. To do so, we have periodically to draw back from over-specific detailed viewpoints to get the big picture and discover the continuity between underlying structures, medieval buildings and their more recent transformations. Sometimes these connections are missing or less evident, especially where technically incompatible structures, such as timber studwork and stone foundation walls, have been superimposed or where re-planning of the city has involved reorientation of tissue, abandoning antecedent patterns. However, subsequently such patterns almost always re-emerged spontaneously on account of their various advantages.18

If these comments come as a surprise in our field of studies, it is probably owing to the 'distorted perspectives' that have stemmed from viewing various parts of disciplines from sectional standpoints.19 Most medieval historians and arch-aeologists are prejudiced against Rome because they are used to working on written documentary sources subsequent to AD 1000 and on specific excavation data, which are rarely 'interpreted' and considered in the light of current building tissues. Hence the common belief that European cities largely arose in the Middle Ages and only inherited sporadic elements from their ancient predecessors and not their whole town plan. In contrast that town plan, albeit much reduced in area, is still - according to the Muratorian school - vital in its organicity, and has fundamentally conditioned subsequent developments (in terms of routes and tissues). To deny this runs the risk of perpetuating in peoples' minds the typical early medieval view that major Roman territorial works were a contrivance of the devil.20 Alongside this is the attendant modern view that it is not credible that people in a period so far removed from our own could possibly have undertaken planning on such a vast scale with such advanced technology as did the Romans. Also in this case, I suppose, such a view is linked, for ideological reasons, to the Enlightenment myth of progress.

Notes

1. This is a sequel to Cataldi, G. (2005) 'Dialectical pairs in urban research: some epistemological issues' Urban Morphology 9, 46-8.

2. Ibid., 47.

3. Previous issues of this journal contain only two articles that deal with the territorial scale. See Koter, M. and Kulesza, M. (1999) 'The plans of medieval Polish towns', Urban Morphology 3, 63-78; and Nitz, H.-J. (2001) 'Medieval towns with grid plan and central market place in east-central Europe: origins and diffusion in the early-thirteenth century', Urban Morphology 5, 81-97.

4. Cataldi, G. (1977) Per una scienza del territorio. Studi e note (Uniedit, Firenze).

5. Muratori, S. (1967) Civiltà e territorio (Centro Studi di Storia Urbanistica, Roma).

6. Cataldi, G. (1975) 'Il territorio della Piana di Gioia Tauro', Studi e Documenti di Architettura 4, 13-175; Vaccaro, P., Gialluca, B. and Lavagnino E. (eds) Cortona struttura e storia. Materiali per una conoscenza operante della città e del territorio (Editrice Grafica l'Etruria, Cortona).

7. This is K.A. Wittfogel's so-called 'hydro-logic theory' about Asiatic and southern cultures arising from the need for reclamation to irrigate and exploit the plains of major rivers. See Wittfogel, K.A. (1968), Il dispotismo orientale (Vallecchi, Firenze).

8. Montevarchi, Figline, San Giovanni Valdarno, Pontassieve, Empoli, Pontedera, Cascina. Generally speaking, all towns with the suffix 'bridge' in various languages belong to this settlement typology (Italian ponte, French pont, Spanish puente, German brücke, etc.).

9. Cataldi, G., Iacono, P. and Merlo, A. (2000) 'La geometria di Firenze: il progetto matrice della città e del territorio', Firenze Architettura 1, 4-17; Maffei G.L. (2002) Città di fondazione romana. Lettura di impianti urbani pianificati (Alinea, Firenze); Cataldi, G. (2004) 'Attualità e persistenza delle strutture pianificate antiche nella periferia di Roma' in Cassetti, R. and Spagnesi, G. (eds) Il centro storico di Roma: processualità e progetto (Gangemi, Roma) 78-89; Cataldi, G. (2004) 'Forma quadrata Italiae. La pianificazione territoriale dell'Italia romana', Atti e Memorie della Accademia Petrarca di Lettere, Arti e Scienze New Series 45, 89-121.

10. In Lucca, the '6-mile circle' expression was used to identify the town's customs boundary until a century ago.

11. Cf. Cataldi, in Cassetti and Spagnesi (eds) op. cit. (note 9).

12. Cataldi, G. (1981) 'Note sui processi di formazione urbana e territoriale. Vitorchiano e l'Alto Lazio', L'Universo 6, 915-44, Fig. 1; Cataldi, G. (1989), 'Origini pianificate romane dell'edilizia medievale italiana', L'Universo 6, 536-59, Fig. 2.

13. See Muratori, S., Bollati, R., Bollati, S. and Marinucci, G. (1963) Studi per una operante storia urbana di Roma (Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Roma).

14. The concept of 'long waves' in history is put forward by the French Annales school that gravitated around the journal Les Annales; see Febvre, L. (1962) Pour une histoire à part entière (Edition de l'École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris).

15. See Muratori, S. (1959) 'Studi per una operante storia urbana di Venezia - I', Palladio 3-4 (2nd edn, 1960, Istituto Poligrafico della Stato, Roma); Maretto, P. (1960) 'Studi per una operante storia urbana di Venezia - II L'edilizia gotica veneziana', Palladio 3-4, 123-201 (2nd edn, 1961, Istituto Poligrafico della Stato, Roma; 3rd edn, 1978, Filippi, Venezia); Muratori, S. (1963) Architettura e civiltà in crisi (Centro Studi di Storia Urbanistica, Roma); Muratori et al., op. cit. (note 13).

16. For Caniggia's initial statement of the concept of 'medievalization' see Caniggia, G. (1973) 'Lettura delle preesistenze antiche nei tessuti urbani medioevali', in Caniggia, G. (1976) Strutture dello spazio antropico. Studi e note (Uniedit, Firenze) 63-102.

17. Falling from 1 million to 100 000 inhabitants between the second and sixth centuries AD: see Muratori et al., op. cit. (note 13).

18. For the so-called 'law of the permanence of plan traces' see Vagnetti, L. (1972) 'Il rilevamento del centro antico di Genova. Prolegomeni per lo studio di un tessuto urbano', Quaderno dell'Istituto di Progettazione Architettonica, Facoltà di Architettura di Genova, Nos 8-10, 7-167.

19. Cf. Cataldi (2005), op. cit. (note 1).

20. In medieval times it seemed impossible that Roman fortifications and roads could have been built by mere men, and it is no coincidence that the medieval names for both the Antonine Wall in Scotland (Grymisdyke) and the Raetian frontier in southern Germany (Teufelsmauer) meant Devil's Wall: see Jones, G.D.B. and Wooliscroft, D.J. (2001) Hadrian's wall from the air (Tempus, Stroud) 25. On present-day maps of Great Britain, numerous Roman roads are still indicated with the place-name 'Devil's causeway'; see, for instance, Alnwick & Morpeth, Landranger Map 1:50.000 scale, Ordnance Survey, Sheet 81.

The question of 'proper' and 'improper' types

Giuseppe Strappa,
Dipartimento di Scienze dell'Ingegneria Civile e dell'Architettura, Politecnico di Bari, via Orabona 4, 70125 Bari, Italy. E-mail: gstrappa@yahoo.com

I am grateful to Professor Vecchio (2005) for his attentive and gratifying review of our book La città come organismo: lettura di Trani alle diverse scale (The city as an organism: reading Trani at different scales). Nevertheless, although the observations about our work are generally accurate and precise (which is frequently not the case with comments on the Muratorian school), I was surprised to be told that on page 133 of our book we recommend that town planners retain those ancient buildings 'pertaining to the original type' while discarding the rest as 'improper'. In the case of the ancient town of Trani such a policy would be disastrous for the preservation of an historical heritage which is widely regarded as absolutely precious. It is a complete misinterpretation of what we wrote.

What is at issue is a rehabilitation programme not based on the mechanistic preservation of the existing heritage but on the interpretation of each building as the 'contemporary result of a long sequence of transformations' (portato contempo-raneo di una lunga serie di mutazioni). This issue is by no means unimportant. In recent times the historical urban fabrics of ancient Italian cities have been widely adapted to contemporary life styles, sometimes having been transformed by erratic extensions (superfetazioni is the word we use) or drastic renovations inappropriate to the character of ancient buildings, such as changes to load-bearing walls and alterations to the form and dimensions of rooms (trasformazioni improprie). Recent town planning policies, prohibiting alterations of any kind to the historical heritage, have resulted in a remarkable increase in uncontrolled and illegal transformations. In our opinion attempts at general prohibition of change are mistaken. Ancient cities, as living organisms, need some updating to survive. We believe that town planning must take account of the actual transformation of types and the historical process of renewing (esiti raggiunti dal tipo).

To avoid any misunderstanding, let me refer to a practical case. In many old Italian towns the small dimensions of ancient row houses are inconvenient for a normal present-day family. Two needs arise simultaneously: to allow a present-day use of the building, and to preserve the character of the urban fabric, not only aesthetically but including the general structure of the type. In our opinion the solution is indicated by the historical fabric itself. Where necessary, different row houses have in the past been fused together in certain ways, according to a 'type of aggregation' (tessuto) distinctive to each particular cultural area, to form a casa in linea - a multifamily house in which the space within each unit can be increased. We are convinced that the aggregation of row houses to form case in linea is, in some cases, suitable, as this constitutes a 'contemporary result of a long sequence of transformations'.

The final product of the change is, in other words, what we describe as trasformazioni pertinenti al tipo (transformations pertinent to the type) - an updating absorbed by the urban tissue without traumatic effect, because historically it accords with the notions of 'process' and 'cultural area'.

This point of view is, we believe, briefly, but clearly, expressed in our book.

Reference

Vecchio, B. (2005) 'Review of La citta come organismo. Lettura di Trani alle diverse scale', Urban Morphology 9, 60-1.

Which traditions do we keep and who decides?

Matthew Hardy,
International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, The Prince's Foundation Building, 19-22 Charlotte Road, London EC2A 3SG, UK. E-mail: Matthew.Hardy@Princes-Foundation.org

Modernists frequently judge contemporary traditional architecture and urbanism to be merely 'pastiche'. This, I would like to argue, results from a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of tradition.

Pastiche - from the Italian pasticcio meaning 'pasty' - suggests a medley or jumble of fragments pieced together. Usually too it implies imitation of an earlier style.

In traditional architecture, training is undertaken by apprenticeship. Young artisans, builders, painters or whatever first learn their trade by copying successful models from the past, under the guidance of an experienced tutor. Growing in confidence, they then make their own language from the words they have practised. Finally, with everyday design a routine done almost without a second thought, they introduce mannerisms and innovations. Some reach this stage quickly, others late in life. This is the career trajectory that artisans and artists, architects and builders followed for most of human history. People trained this way produced beautiful and functional things almost without fail. Perhaps 99 out of 100 of the artifacts they produced are still sought after today.

Tradition differs from custom1 by a certain consciousness about the act of replication. Traditions in design are those elements of past designs that are knowingly reused as referents to work done before. In building they are frequently elements that are deeply functional, often in ways that are not immediately apparent. Designers repeat them perhaps only for stylistic reasons, but they carry answers to practical problems. Cornices, for example, suggest Classical or traditional archi-tecture, but they also keep water off your walls. If you are a traditional designer, you do not learn this lesson the hard way, as so many Modernists have done.

By contrast, Modernist designers introduced innovations into design on a wholesale basis. The search for newness was a raison d'etre of design. The post-war generation in which Modernism reigned unchallenged produced buildings and towns in which every element was novel. Too many innovations were introduced into the mix, resulting in designs without robustness. The failure of critical elements brought the collapse of whole structures and systems. Such over-innovative structures were not culturally sustainable.2 This was extremely wasteful of material resources and inefficient of human effort. Much damage was done to the environment.

In traditional design, where novelties are introduced more slowly, the success of innovations can be judged by whether they are reproduced in large numbers.3 Stylistic and material innovations in design are introduced one by one, or by novel recombinations - pastiches - of established elements. Failures of new components still occur, but because of their limited scope do not cause collapse of the whole system. It is a conservative system that can be compared to evolution - the tradition of nature - and is practised in engineering and product design but not architecture.

Pastiche is not an insult, but one of the major methods by which new traditions are created. Tradition is, I believe, the means by which successful innovations are passed on to the next generation, and pastiche is one of tradition's most successful techniques.

Notes

1. Custom can be characterized as 'the way things are usually done', tradition as 'they way things used to be done'.

2. I judge cultural sustainability by the reproduction of design elements unchanged by more than one generation.

3. This process has been written about in Surowiecki, J. (2004) The wisdom of crowds: why the many are smarter than the few and how collective wisdom shapes business, economies, societies and nations (Little Brown, New York).

English Heritage, characterization and the urban historic environment

Roger M. Thomas,
English Heritage, 23 Savile Row, London W1S 2ET, UK. E-mail: rogerm.thomas@english-heritage.org.uk

Among those with a custodial concern for the built environment, attention is devoted largely to individual buildings, sites and monuments, or small areas of special interest: the emphasis is on individual features, rather than the historico-geographical structuring of entire cities or sizeable parts of cities.

So wrote Professor Whitehand (2005, p. 21), with reference to the UK, in a recent issue of Urban Design. There is a fair measure of truth in Professor Whitehand's remark, but there have also been significant moves in the UK in recent years to take a wider view of the 'historic environment'. The management of the historic environment is an activity involving many different disciplines, some of which (such as archaeology) have always taken a broad geographical view of their subject matter. An important initiative in this area is pertinent to urban morphology: the national programme of map-based urban characterization being undertaken by English Heritage (EH). EH is the UK government's lead body for the historic environment in England.

EH's urban character work has its roots in the 'Extensive Urban Surveys' (EUS) programme, launched in the early 1990s in response to Arch-aeology and Planning (PPG 16: Department of the Environ-ment, 1990). The work also draws heavily on concepts and methods developed for understanding the wider landscape, primarily in rural areas, through EH's 'Historic Landscape Characterisation' (HLC) programme.

Power of place (Historic Environment Review Steering Group, 2000), an EH-led sector-wide review of policies for the historic environment, emphasized the importance of taking a compre-hensive view - spatial as well as temporal - of the historic environment. The whole of our surround-ings are historic. A 5000 year old burial mound and a 1980s office block both derive from the past and both form part of our contemporary environ-ment. The historic environment encompasses complexes and extensive areas as well as sites - places, in fact.

Power of place advocates the use of character-ization as a way of helping to understand and protect the historic environment in all its complexity. Historic characterization (see Conser-vation Bulletin, 2005 and http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/characterisation) has links with the Countryside Commission and English Nature character maps of England produced in the 1990s, as well as having an obvious antecedent in the process of conservation area character appraisal. It also draws on the philosophy of sustainability.

Characterization contrasts, in a number of important respects, with the 'traditional' approach to heritage protection. That approach (in essence, the one summarized above by Professor White-hand) revolves around the designation (by legal mechanisms such as listing) of particular items or areas which are held to be of special interest or quality. Designation is therefore (more or less by definition) selective. Characterization, by contrast, aims to be comprehensive at some level - every part of the landscape has 'character', and there is no 'white space' on the character map. Whereas designation implies a value judgement (the item designated is considered to be special), character-ization is a more neutral and descriptive process, aiding decision-making and spatial planning by providing better understanding of the whole rather than, as designation does, applying specific legal controls to selected items only. In character terms, context is often as important as intrinsic significance.

The examples of characterization projects described below have already gone a significant way, within 'heritage conservation', to meeting Professor Whitehand's call for a broadening of the field of view to consider whole settlements (or large parts of them), rather than simply focussing on individual items and small areas in isolation from their wider context. All of the projects are being funded by EH and carried out by local authority historic environment services. The results are held in the local Historic Environment Records (or Sites and Monuments Records). The examples chosen show how EH's approaches to characterization have developed in recent years. The use of GIS technology, digitized historical and modern mapping and digital aerial photography are central to achieving the fundamental philosophical aim of extensive, contextual understanding.

Extensive Urban Surveys

In 1992, EH published a policy document on archaeology in towns (as opposed to urban conservation at large) to support the imple-mentation of PPG 16 Archaeology and Planning. Part of the new policy was to undertake county-based 'Extensive Urban Surveys' (EUS) of all the smaller towns in England. A separate programme deals with the complex archaeology of selected major towns and cities.

The EUS methodology includes analysis and documentation of the development of the town plan by defining a series of period-based topographic components (market place, monastic precinct, tene-ment block and so on). The likely archaeological potential of each component can then be predicted. The debt to M.R.G. Conzen is clear, although EUS is necessarily very rapid and broad-brush.

Work on some 29 counties, covering about 700 towns (out of a likely total of about 1100) has been completed or is in progress. The resultant town reports are now beginning to be made available over the Internet, through the Archaeology Data Service (http://ads.ahds.ac.uk).

Urban historic landscape characterization

Since the early 1990s, EH has had a programme of county-wide Historic Landscape Characterisation (HLC) projects running across England. This takes a broad-brush view (captured at 1:10 000 scale or larger but designed to be used at scales up to 1:25 000 or smaller) of the historic character and long-term development of the present-day landscape. This programme has been fully described elsewhere (Clark et al., 2004; Fairclough and Rippon (eds) 2002; http://www.english-heritage.org.uk/ characterisation).

The EUS and HLC methodologies have recently been brought together to tackle areas in which urban, rural and industrial landscapes are intricately intertwined; notably, the large 'metropolitan' conur-bations that grew up during industrialization, usually in regions of previously dispersed settle-ment. Current projects include Merseyside, South Yorkshire and the Black Country.

In these projects, a set of 'character types' is defined, principally on the basis of land-use or building type. 'Broad types', such as 'residential' or 'extractive industry', can be subdivided into narrower categories, such as 'terraced housing', 'stone quarrying' and so on.

The present-day landscape is then divided into a series of discrete areas (or 'polygons') in the GIS, according to their character type. Historic sources (such as maps) are then used to identify the past character of each of these discrete areas at successive dates. Thus, a particular area might have been unenclosed heathland in the mid-nineteenth century, a colliery in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century and residential in the late-twentieth century. All this information is recorded in a database linked to the GIS, which allows sophisticated searching and display of the results.

Conclusion

Hand-in-hand with its local government partners, EH has devoted substantial energy and resources over the past 15 years to mapping and character-izing the topography and development of English towns and cities of all sizes, from the smallest market towns up to the largest conurbations. This work takes a comprehensive view of the historic environment, rather than focussing on selected individual items or limited special areas.

The purpose of this work has been to inform decisions about future change. Our historic environ-ment is wholly the product of change in the past, and it will (and must) continue to change in the future. Achieving a better understanding of how places have come to be the way they are today (and, indeed, accepting that the physical evidence of change is archaeologically, historically and socially as important as evidence for survival or continuity), places us in a better position to make sensible decisions about future trajectories of change. The EH programmes have a clear contribution to make to such processes as master-planning and strategic environmental assessment (Conservation Bulletin, 2005, pp. 4-10). The spatially comprehensive and GIS-based approach makes the results readily accessible (both intellectually and practically) to spatial planners and other decision makers.

The foundation for any exercise in urban design is an understanding of how a place has evolved. By improving our knowledge of the past, we can promote a better future for our towns and cities.

References

Clark, J., Darlington, J. and Fairclough, G. (2004) Using Historic Landscape Characterisation: English Heritage's review of HLC applications 2002-03 (English Heritage and Lancashire County Council, London and Preston).

Conservation Bulletin (2005) 'Characterisation', Conser-vation Bulletin 47, 1-33.

Department of the Environment (1990) Archaeology and Planning Planning Policy Guidance Note 16 (HMSO, London).

Fairclough, G. and Rippon, S. (eds) (2002) Europe's cultural landscape: archaeologists and the management of change Europae Archaeologiae Consilium Occasional Paper 2 (EAC Secretariat, Brussels).

Historic Environment Review Steering Group (2000) Power of place: the future of the historic environment (Power of Place Office, London)

Whitehand, J.W.R. (2005) 'Urban morphology, urban landscape management and fringe belts', Urban Design 93, 19-21.

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