ABSTRACT
Changes in the conserved townscape may be studied for their own sake alone, and this can provide information about rates, scales and types of change or non-change, as did Sabelberg’s study of the persistence of historic features in the urban landscape of Tuscan towns (Sabelberg 1983). Yet this provides relatively little insight into why changes occur. Within the discipline of geography, urban morphologists have increasingly widened their activities from narrow conceptions of urban form itself to include consideration of the individuals, organisations and processes shaping that form (Slater 1990a). This line of inquiry is one of three prevalent in current geographical urban morphology which stem both directly and indirectly from the ideas of M.R.G. Conzen (Whitehand and Larkham 1992:7). Yet relatively little is known of the operation of these agents of change.
