ABSTRACT
The only consistent thing about cities is that they are always changing. Classifying and understanding the processes of urban change present problems for geographers and others studying the city. Cities, since their inception, have always demonstrated gradual, piecemeal change through processes of accretion, addition or demolition. This type of change may be regarded as largely cosmetic and the underlying processes of urbanisation and the overall structure of the city remain largely unaltered. However, at certain periods fundamentally different processes of urbanisation have emerged; the result has been that the rate of urban change has accelerated and new, distinctly different, urban forms have developed. This occurred, for example, with the urbanisation associated with industrialisation in the UK in the nineteenth century.
