ABSTRACT
The social sciences deal with a variety of material or immaterial, fixed or moving,
enduring or ephemeral phenomena.1 Among these phenomena, buildings and
urban form are intuitively and generally considered as material, fixed and endur-
ing entities. They are also often seen as having been produced by local forces,
materials and resources. The regional, the traditional and indigenous – the ‘loca-
tion’ within these forms – have long been favoured compared to the seemingly
anonymous processes of internationalisation and globalisation (Canizaro 2006).
