Typology and urbanism: Introduction

New Urban News Technical Page by Andres Duany, Michael Morrissey, and Patrick Pinnell

Every human settlement, from wilderness to metropolis, contains structures standing out in their singularity in that place. Others in the same locale recede from individual prominence. The latter do so either by being diffident in their architectural expression or by being essentially like others in the vicinity. Sorting experience into such patterns of visual prominence — landmark or background structures, expressive or muted architecture — is something people do instinctively in order to be able to know where they are and move around in a place.

Another human instinct is to find or make places suitable to the various activities of life. Because many activities, both everyday ones and those of high ritual, are repetitive, there is a tendency for the places found or made for them to be similar. Both out of use-specificity and out of repeated encounters, another set of patterns emerge which render a given place, at a given time, more easily usable and legible. Familiarity breeds meaning.