Conceptions of change in the built environment
Abstract
This article starts from the premise that urban morphology and process typology utilize a series of different, more or less explicit, quasi-evolutionary conceptions of change. The article's main argument is that the evolutionary conceptions of change used in these fields could be made more explicit, robust, and broadly applicable if they were abstracted and freed from specific historical periods and sequences. In particular, the article discusses the distinction between ontogenetic change and phylogenetic change. The further argument is that, as a tautological (and heuristic) framework of ideas, a more abstract conception of change is analogous to the ideas of evolution developed in other fields. The article concludes by suggesting that urban morphology and process typology have both to gain and to lose from this homologous relationship with evolutionary thinking in the life sciences.
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