In Townscape (1961), later issued as The Concise Townscape, the British architect and illustrator Gordon Cullen set out a visual approach to the design of towns based on how they are experienced by a person moving through them. He introduced serial vision, the unfolding sequence of views revealed as one walks, and analysed the placing of elements, enclosure and the play of here and there. Through sketches he showed how variety, surprise and intimacy give streets and squares their character. The method drew on the Picturesque tradition and reacted against the blankness of much modern layout.
It gave urban designers a working language for the visual and experiential qualities of streets and spaces, shaping British and international practice. Townscape kept the case for intricacy and human-scaled sequence alive against modernist abstraction.