ABSTRACT

Surviving as an enclave near the heart of the modern town is a mediaeval remnant, containing the Abbey and its precincts. Shops, offices, banks, public services, as well as the market, are grouped at and near the principal route-focus. In the course of urban development, certain forms of land-use and building become segregated while others are brought together in close association. Established patterns of roads and railways and special conditions of site are controls which invariably introduce lack of symmetry in the growth of towns. The symmetry of schematic representations of town growth is often impaired by the presence of enclaves of various kinds. Enclaves are, in effect, reservations for special functions and their ancillary services, set apart from the free interplay of forces that make for the normal patterning of a town. They are tracts of urban land preserved from the operation of a market economy which assigns land to the highest bidder.