ABSTRACT
The patterns of how we live our lives affect the patterns of physical development. Changes in the physical arrangement of buildings and infrastructure are relatively slow — it takes time and money to remove existing structures and replace them, or to add new ones to the existing volume of development. Changing the use to which existing structures are put can also take time. We have planning rules to control many of these changes, and there is inertia in the system, created by the hope that the previous use may still be viable in the future — a hope held sometimes by the planners, and sometimes by the buildings' owners.
