Standing on the shoulders of giants: a critique of Haslam (2018)

Abstract

Town-plan analysis has evolved through detailed research in the course of well over half a century. Previous scholarship has provided a carefully defined, nested hierarchical terminology which has served the subject well. In this journal Jeremy Haslam has attempted to introduce a new term. His examples, which are meant to elucidate his new concept of ‘ensemble’ are marked by a failure to understand what large-scale maps do and do not show and a less than careful attitude to documentary sources. This paper provides a critique of Haslam’s paper and suggests that ‘ensemble’, as he defines it, does not add anything to the methodologies and concepts of town-plan analysis.