The History of Urban Development is designed to give the student an overview of the entire process of urbanisation from prehistory until today, in both Western and Asian contexts. It adopts the position that while a history of urban development and design is ideological - ie., there is no coherent development of urban development products in relation to each other - there is a coherent history of development in terms of economy and society. Urban design originates primarily in these conditions, although there is an arbitrary aesthetic continuity to some of the chosen details. The course therefore theorises the economic forces and social conditions driving development as a method of explaining how urban form comes about. It seeks to explain some of the fundamental differences between the forces - economic, physical, socio-cultural and environmental - that influence urban societies of Asian and European origin.