ABSTRACT
This chapter introduces the volume and discusses the ways in which towns are imagined, lived and experienced as well as conceived and constructed. Towns reflect the cultural and intellectual currents of the day, the prevailing economic climates and the unresolved tensions in the lives of their inhabitants. They are physical entities, shaped by topography, time and technology as well as by social and spatial constructs in which gender always plays a significant role. Gender consciously or unconsciously informs the built environment; it underlies the opportunities for, and meanings of, movement through locations; it is a constituent component of street culture and neighbourhood life; and it plays an important part in the setting of boundaries, be they personal or collective, public or private, social or political, formal or informal, licit or illicit. We join in the scholarly process which has over the past two decades informed us of the meanings of spatiality in the past and hope to broaden our understanding of the factors affecting the physical, material and cultural development of specific locations.
