Urban Morphology (2001) 5(2), 103-109 103

British urban morphology: the Conzenian tradition

J.W.R. Whitehand
School of Geography and Environmental Sciences, University of Birmingham,
Birmingham B15 2TT, UK.
E-mail: [email protected]

Revised manuscript received 25 July 2001

Abstract. This paper describes the origins, development and characteristics

of the school of urban morphological thought that is grounded in the work
of M.R.G. Conzen. After considering the early influences of Schlüter and
Geisler, attention is given to the concepts Conzen developed, such as the
burgage cycle, the fringe belt, the morphological frame and the
morphological region. In the second half of the paper three examples of
current research that builds on foundations laid by Conzen are illustrated:
namely, micromorphology, the relationship between morphological periods
and the typological process, and the link between decision-taking and urban
form.

Key Words: Conzen, morphological concepts, German influence,

micromorphology, fringe belt, United Kingdom

Within the United Kingdom the term ‘urban development and characteristics of the
morphology’ is applied to a number of Conzenian school and gives examples of
different types of investigation. Though recent and current research in this tradition,
they nearly all focus on the physical forms of including some that would benefit from
urban areas, each has until recently been closer co-operation with the adherents of
pursued by a largely separate group of other schools of thought.1
researchers. Within architecture the
typomorphologists have tended to work
The antecedents of M.R.G. Conzen
independently of those employing space
syntax. Similarly within geography those
The Conzenian school of thought, founded by
working in the Conzenian tradition have had
M.R.G. Conzen, has its immediate
little contact with the adherents of spatial
antecedence at the end of the nineteenth
analysis. The lack of integration within
disciplines has been paralleled by the low century. The early work of Schlüter was
level of communication between architects particularly important, notably two papers
and geographers. There is a need for the published in 1899, one on the ground plan of
different schools of thought to set out their towns2 and the other his views on wider
stalls if the intellectual trade that was aspects of settlement geography. 3 The latter
showing signs of beginning in the last years was important because of its programmatic
of the twentieth century is to gain character. The former, which drew on the
momentum. This paper describes the earlier work of Fritz, 4 suggested among other

ISSN 1027-4278 © International Seminar on Urban Form, 2001

104 British urban morphology

things the scope that existed for recognizing high priority to the distinction, among
within town plans the stages in their residential buildings, between morphological
development. It was in this respect a periods.
forerunner of the far more sophisticated
morphogenetic approach which was much
Conzen’s ideas and their influence
later to become a hallmark of Conzen’s work.
In addition to the impact of his own work,
Permeating all Conzen’s work was a concern
Schlüter exerted influence through the
for terminological precision. In this respect
dissertations that he supervised at the
the contrast between Conzen and most of his
University of Halle. The most significant of
British colleagues was striking. For Conzen
these for the development of urban
terms were created to represent concepts as
morphology was on Danzig by Geisler,
faithfully as could be achieved within the
published in 1918.5 The map of inner
limits of language. This meant exploring the
Danzig that it contained distinguished in
roots of words. It also, of course, gave
colour land and building utilization and the
primacy to concepts.
number of storeys in residential buildings.
It was Conzen who recognized the
This too had an influence on Conzen. It was
tripartite division of the townscape, or urban
evident in his Staatsexamen dissertation,
landscape, into first, the town plan, or ground
submitted in 1932 in the University of Berlin,
plan (comprising streets, plots and block
in which he mapped in colour the building
types in twelve towns in an area to the west plans of buildings), secondly, the building
and north of Berlin. 6 More importantly, it fabric, and thirdly, land and building
was to influence the coloured maps he utilization. 8 However, it was the concepts
produced of Whitby in east Yorkshire, that he developed about the process of urban
published in 1958.7 These emphasized the development that did most to stimulate a
importance that Conzen, like his German school of thought founded on his work.
predecessors, attached to visual repre- Some of his most fruitful ideas were
sentation, especially cartographic repre- developed in relation to the plot, which
sentation. The map of building types gave constituted a very detailed, micro-scale

Figure 1. Metrological analysis of Lower Broad Street, Ludlow. Reproduced from

Slater, op. cit., 72, Fig. 4.4 (note 10).
British urban morphology 105

within Berlin in 1936 by Louis, one of

Conzen’s mentors,11 but was developed to a
far greater degree of sophistication by
Conzen in his studies of the English market
town of Alnwick and the major English city
of Newcastle upon Tyne.12 It was then taken
up by numerous other researchers in various
parts of the world.13 In one line of
investigation the relationship was developed
between fringe belts, building cycles, land
values and innovation adoption (Figure 3).14
The creation of fringe belts was shown to be
associated with slumps in housebuilding,
when land values were low, whereas the
creation of high-density housing tended to
predominate during booms in housebuilding,
when land values were high. These
Figure 2. The fringe belts of inner Berlin, c. dynamics, in combination with geographical
1936. Based upon Louis, op. cit., End-map 1 obstacles to the uninterrupted outward growth
(note 11). of the built-up area, gave rise to an urban
area in which residential growth zones
framework for analysis by the standards of alternated with fringe belts. Fringe belts
British human geography. One aspect to were shown to have a number of physical
which he gave characteristically detailed attributes. These included large, contiguous
attention was the relationship between plots vegetated areas, often interspersed with large,
and the block plans of buildings. The often institutional, sometimes ‘landmark’,
burgage cycle that he recognized consisted of buildings of architectural note, the virtual
the progressive filling-in with buildings of absence of housing, and a sparse road
the backland of burgages, terminating in the network, with a low incidence of radial roads
clearing of buildings and a period of urban
fallow prior to the initiation of a
redevelopment cycle.9 He also examined in
detail the boundaries and dimensions of plots,
and it was this aspect that Slater developed
further, showing how metrological analysis
could be used to reconstruct the histories of
plot boundaries (Figure 1).10 By analysing
measurements of plot widths Slater was able
to speculate about what was in the mind of
the medieval surveyor when the area was first
laid out for development and infer both the
original plot widths and how they were
subsequently subdivided.
Of course many parts of towns and cities
lack the regularity of plot dimensions that
series of residential plots often have. This is
particularly so in the case of fringe belts, Figure 3. An innovation/building-cycle
which are comprised of plots of a great model. Based upon Whitehand, J.W.R.
variety of shapes and sizes. The fringe-belt (1994) ‘Development cycles and urban
concept (Figure 2) was first recognized landscapes’, Geography 79, 12, Fig. 11.
106 British urban morphology

and hence a relatively low penetrability to

vehicles. Fringe belts form boundary zones
between historically and morphologically
distinct housing areas: for example, in
England, between ‘bye-law’ terraced houses
and inter-war semi-detached houses.
The fringe-belt concept is linked to a basic
tenet of M.R.G. Conzen's work: the concept
of the morphological frame. This relates to
the fact that the way in which forms are
created on the ground, particularly during the
process in which rural land is converted to
urban use, acts as a long-term constraint on
subsequent change. Plot boundaries and
especially streets exert a powerful long-term
influence. Many streets and plots survive Figure 4. The morphological regions of
largely unchanged. If not, their lineaments Ludlow’s old town. Based upon Conzen,
op. cit., 258, Fig. 17.2 (note 15).
are often reflected in those of replacement
streets and plots. Thus town plans are
Recent research
powerful influences on future forms, with
residual features being passed down through During the last 35 years of the twentieth
successive generations of society, often over century aspects of M.R.G. Conzen’s ideas
very lengthy periods. and perspective were taken up widely. To
For M.R.G. Conzen the climax of the try to do justice within the space of a few
exploration of the physical development of an pages to the various lines of investigation
urban area was the division of that area into that could with justification be termed
morphological regions. A morphological ‘Conzenian’ might well result in doing justice
region is an area that has a unity in respect of to none of them. Therefore the remainder of
its form that distinguishes it from this paper will explore just three strands of
surrounding areas. However, the boundaries current research and thought that personal
between regions vary in strength. In his map knowledge suggests owe much to the
of morphological regions in the English foundations laid by Conzen. These three
market town of Ludlow, Conzen recognized strands may be referred to as first,
micromorphology, secondly, the relationship
a five-tier hierarchy of boundaries (Figure
between morphological periods and the
4).15 The map of morphological regions is a
typological process, and thirdly, the link
composite of separate maps of plan type
between decision-taking and urban form.
areas, building type areas, and land utilization
The recognition of a sub-field of urban
areas. micromorphology is little more than
Such a map is a product of a method acknowledgement that much analysis needs
designed to illuminate the historical to be undertaken at the scale of the individual
development of an urban area. However, for plot or indeed within the individual plot.
Conzen the past provided object lessons for This is new to neither Conzenian geographers
the future. Such a map could therefore be nor most architects. What is fairly new is the
harnessed to the needs of planning: it detailed analysis of the spatial relationships
provided a basis for rooting the future between the physical changes to very
management of the urban landscape in its ordinary twentieth-century dwelling houses.
historical development. The discovery that such changes are clustered
British urban morphology 107

over time and space accords with various

studies of spatial diffusion. The fact that the
building of a house extension, for example,
increases the probability of another house
extension being built soon after in the
immediate vicinity reflects the operation of a
number of factors, in particular the fact that
owner-occupiers influence one another: there
is a ‘neighbour effect’.16 However, areas
vary greatly in the incidence of changes, even
when they have undergone their initial
development at the same time. The lower the
dwelling density of the original development Figure 5. Relationship between the strength
of an area (i.e. the larger the plot size), the of the neighbour effect for house extensions
higher the probability of a dwelling having and original dwelling density in inter-war
an extension. However, if small-scale suburbs in England. 18
changes are examined (changes such as door
and window replacements), the direction of late Victorian and Edwardian periods and on
the relationship is the reverse: the lower the the other hand those that characterize the
dwelling density of the original development, inter-war period. The former are dominated
the lower is the number of small-scale by the bye-law terraced house, the latter by
changes that a dwelling is likely to have. the semi-detached house with its so called
The strength of the neighbour effect is also ‘universal’ plan. Attention has been given to
related to original dwelling density. In the geographical differences in the timing of the
case of the incidence of house extensions, for change, including the time-lag in its adoption
example, the neighbour effect is weak in in areas less accessible to London, and, more
areas developed at low density but strong in recently, to the characteristics of houses that
areas developed at high density (Figure 5).17 are of a transitional type, but the questions of
The evidence suggests that a high-density how and why builders made the change from
pattern of original development is associated one type to another have only raised much
with more imitative behaviour by neighbours curiosity in the last few years. In contrast
than a low-density pattern. This is another Italian architects of the Caniggian school
influence of the morphological frame, but one have focused attention on a ‘typological
that is attributable, it would seem, to the role process’ in which new building types are
that plot size, and perhaps variables viewed as products of a process of learning
associated with plot size, have in the social from the adaptations of previous building
relationships between neighbours. types. There would therefore seem to be
The second strand of current research and scope for exploring links between the
thought promises to increase understanding of Conzenian morphological period and the
another of Conzen’s concepts. While both Caniggian typological process.19
Conzen and those who have followed in his The final aspect of recent research to be
footsteps have tended to place a good deal of considered, broadly speaking the relationship
reliance on the concept of the morphological between decision-taking and urban form, is
period, they have hitherto devoted little concerned inter alia with the way in which
attention to the process by which the forms numerous separate decisions combine to
that are characteristic of one morphological create regularities on the ground. In
period are superseded by those characteristic Conzen’s own work the people who created
of the next. For example, in England there is urban landscapes tended to remain shadowy
a sharp contrast between on the one hand the figures, rarely at the front of the stage.
residential building types that characterize the However, among those who have followed
108 British urban morphology

Conzen there have been some who have decisions are currently being examined in the
focused more attention on the roles of UK. Only rarely has there been deliberate
decision-takers and decision-taking. A facet preservation or conservation of fringe belts as
of this work can be illustrated by briefly entities. Planning policies that have favoured
exploring one line of investigation on fringe the retention of fringe belts in the UK have
belts. 20 generally related to the individual
Fringe belts can arise from markedly components of which they are comprised.
different decision-making processes. Some These policies include those concerning the
arise from the planning of a feature broadly retention of certain types of open space, such
circumferential to an urban area: fortification as playing fields and allotments, and the
zones were common around pre-industrial designation of areas of ecological interest.
cities; and there were numerous cases of Some sites and buildings within fringe belts
amenity zones, parkland belts and green belts are recognized to have historic and
around nineteenth- and twentieth-century architectural significance and are given
cities. But most fringe belts are not statutory protection. However, much of the
contrived. They are products of large survival of fringe-belt features has been
numbers of separate decisions about unplanned. In some cases it reflects the fact
individual sites. Indeed the decision-takers that functions occupying fringe-belt sites lack
frequently had no knowledge of one another alternative sites to which they might move if
and almost invariably no conception of the they are to continue to fulfil their function.
way in which their decisions and those of Nevertheless, there are forces tending to
others would in combination have the effect change dramatically individual fringe-belt
that we refer to as a fringe belt. The factor sites and thereby reduce fringe-belt legibility.
common to those separate decisions may Within the UK there are currently planning
have been an obstacle to the growth of the policies that favour the redevelopment of
housing area, a slump in house-building, the existing urban areas for housing with the
mutual attraction between land uses, or the object of creating more compact cities and
fact that a number of land users located next reducing the amount of rural land developed
to one another merely because of the lack of for housing. Even without such policies, the
alternative sites. Commonly a fringe belt is closure or migration of an organization
the result of a combination of these and other occupying a fringe-belt site will trigger a re-
influences. The consequent regularity has a evaluation of the site, a consequence of
different basis, at least in terms of decision- which may be a planning application to
taking, from that of a planned fringe belt, but redevelop the site for housing. In these
the fact that it is unintended does not, of circumstances the wider significance of the
course, reduce its significance. Like any site within a fringe belt should be a
fringe belt, it articulates the identities of the consideration, although scarcely any UK
different historical zones of a city by planning authorities take this view.
separating the creations of different
morphological periods. It frequently retains
Conclusion
elements of its rural-urban fringe character
long after it has become embedded within the The particular British school of thought in
urban area, often having a higher ratio of soft urban morphology that some have described
to hard surfaces than would be feasible in an as Conzenian is unambiguously geographical.
area dominated by streets and relatively small It is primarily about how things fit together
residential plots. In these ways an on the ground. It is hard to envisage ideas
unintended fringe belt may contribute as that are more geographical than the fringe-
much to the legibility of a city as a fringe belt concept and the morphological region.
belt associated with a planned feature. They are about how the urban parts of the
The issues that this raises for planning earth’s surface have been configured and
British urban morphology 109

reconfigured. The description ‘morpho- A survey of Whitby and the surrounding area
genetic’ seems apposite, as does the emphasis (Shakespeare Head Press, Eton), 49-89.
on cartographic representation. The entire 8. Conzen, M.R.G. (1960) Alnwick,
approach, but most obviously the mode of Northumberland: a study in town-plan
analysis Institute of British Geographers
conceptualization and the approach to
Publication 27 (George Philip, London), 3-4.
terminology and visual representation, is
9. Ibid., 92-4.
much more German than British. There is no 10. Slater, T.R. (1990) ‘English medieval new
doubt that the history of British urban towns with composite plans’, in Slater, T.R.
morphology would have been very different (ed.) The built form of Western cities
if M.R.G. Conzen had not moved to England. (Leicester University Press, Leicester), 71-4.
Conzen himself was too modest to feel 11. Louis, H. (1936) ‘Die geographische
comfortable with the term ‘Conzenian’. Gliederung von Gross-Berlin’, in Louis, H.
Nevertheless, there is a good deal of current and Panzer, W. (eds) Landerkundliche
interest in the type of research that could Forschung: Krebs-Festschrift (Engelhorn,
reasonably be described by that term. Some Stuttgart), 146-71.
of it undoubtedly has relevance beyond its 12. Conzen, M.R.G. (1962) ‘The plan analysis of
an English city centre’, in Norborg, K. (ed.)
parent discipline of geography. Indeed,
Proceedings of the IGU symposium in urban
arguably some of the most exciting
geography Lund 1960 (Gleerup, Lund), 383-
developments in urban morphology more 414.
generally are those at the interfaces of 13. Whitehand, J.W.R. (1988) ‘Urban fringe
geographical urban morphology and belts: development of an idea’, Planning
architecture and planning. So the title of this Perspectives 3, 47-58.
paper is emphatically not an attempt to ring- 14. Whitehand, J.W.R. (1977) ‘The basis for an
fence a particular domain of urban historico-geographical theory of urban form’,
morphology, but it does refer to an approach Transactions of the Institute of British
to the city that, in the course of the twentieth Geographers, NS2, 400-16.
century, developed distinctive features, many 15. Conzen, M.R.G. (1988) ‘Morphogenesis,
morphological regions and secular human
of which are influencing current research.
agency in the historic townscape, as
exemplified by Ludlow’, in Denecke, D. and
Notes Shaw, G. (eds) Urban historical geography
(Cambridge University Press, Cambridge),
1. This paper was presented to the Eighth 255-61.
International Seminar on Urban Form held in 16. Whitehand, J.W.R. (2001) ‘Changing
Cincinnati, Ohio, USA, 6-9 September 2001. suburban landscapes at the microscale’,
2. Schlüter, O. (1899) ‘Uber den Grundriss der Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale
Städte’, Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft für geografie 92, 171–7.
Erdkunde zu Berlin 34, 446-62. 17. Whitehand, J.W.R., Morton, N.J. and Carr,
3. Schlüter, O. (1899) ‘Bemerkungen zur C.M.H. (1999) ‘Urban morphogenesis at the
Siedlungsgeographie’, Geographische microscale: how houses change’,
Zeitschrift 5, 65-84. Environment and Planning B: Planning and
4. Fritz, J. (1894) ‘Deutsche Stadtanlangen’, Design 26, 514.
Beilage zum Programm 520 des Lyzeums 18. Based upon field surveys by C.M.H. Carr,
Strassburg (Strassburg). M.D. Horne, N.J. Morton, O.M. Sanders and
5. Geisler, W. (1918) Danzig: ein J.W.R Whitehand, 1992/94 and local
siedlungsgeographischer Versuch (Kafemann, authority building control records.
Danzig). 19. Maffei, G.L. and Whitehand, J.W.R. (2001)
6. Conzen, M.R.G. (1932) ‘Die Havelstädte’, ‘Diffusing Caniggian ideas’, Urban
unpublished Staatsexamen dissertation, Morphology 5, 47-8.
University of Berlin. 20. Current work at the University of
7. Conzen, M.R.G. (1958) ‘The growth and Birmingham by M.I.W. Hopkins, N.J.
character of Whitby’, in Daysh, G.H.J. (ed.) Morton and J.W.R. Whitehand.