Integrated Examination of Urban Form: Historicity

This chapter presents two case studies with contrasting urban contexts chosen to apply the integrated methodological framework in the study of the historical transformation of cities. They are Ludlow, a well-preserved historic town with incremental growth outward from the existing peripheries of the town in the UK, and Chinatown, a historic district that has undergone great urban redevelopment in the past decades in Singapore. The results show that on the one hand, the street configuration, especially the integration-segregation pattern, is correlated with the distribution of plan units and therefore can inform their recognition; on the other hand, the place-specific knowledge about the historico-geographical process of the city can help explain the changes in the configurational values of different plan units. The findings indicate that the combination of these two approaches is capable of providing enhanced understandings of the historical transformation of urban form for both urban areas with incremental growth and those with fast-changing urban landscapes.