Patterns in Morphological Evolution: Comparing Changes in Six Medieval City-Centres in the Low Countries (1720-2020)

To the perceptive observer, similarities in the urban structures and architecture of medieval city centres in the Netherlands, Belgium, and a strip of North-Western France will stand out. Indeed, they have been part of the Low Countries for a long time until separation led them to be governed by different institutional regimes for the past few centuries. This paper offers a novel qualitative method to examine the evolution of urban form through time, based on Kevin Lynch’s urban form elements. It systematically compares the changes in the morphology of the historical centres over the past three centuries with the help of digitised maps. Changes in Lynch’s morphological elements (nodes, edges, landmarks, and paths) are analysed to understand the characteristics of the urban evolution in six cities. In this contribution, we have studied three large cities (Amsterdam, Antwerp, and Lille) and three mid-sized ones (Leiden, Leuven, and Arras), all of which have well-preserved city centres. Our findings are based on a unique way of using well-developed historical cartography for mapping the morphological evolution over time and allow for further in-depth investigation of which trends and events cause these changes.