BREAKING NEW GROUND? APPRAISING TRADITIONAL URBAN FORM THROUGH THE PRISM OF CONZENIAN ANALYSIS

Urban morphological analysis has a long history and dates from Europe’s industrial revolution when Quatremere de Quincy, editor of the Dictionnaire d’Architecture, utilized (in 1832) town plans in order to appreciate urban transformations occurring at that chronological juncture. Following from this diagnostic innovation a monumental volume of research has ‘read’ town plans. Accordingly an enhanced understanding of processes of urban growth, metamorphosis and built forms has been established. Central though to this understanding has been methodological creations like M.R.G. Conzen’s town-plan analysis which offers the potential to be applied to any settlement regardless of its history, size, regionalization, and socio-cultural traits. This is especially significant with so much still to be learned of the urban world, and in such a context it is appropriate to question whether the application of such inferences, concepts and methods can be a dialectical means to better understand the traditional built world. Utilising up-to-the-minute research on traditional settlements in China this paper will ask if historic-morphological studies elsewhere in Asia can realistically be achieved through town-plan analysis