This paper extends the debate over the Italian school of process typology, particularly as it relates to the identification of the substratum type as the matrix of the process of building in the human environment. Why traditional towns have such a form that appears to us as an organism? Are those structures «irrigular»? Regarding those settlements that have been growing organically, and by providing empirical evidence, from the case studies, on the links between the urban form and its topographical conditions, one can set a geometry for Portuguese tarditional cities, its origins and formation. Location types and internal structure, are repeated so often that broad suggestive generalisations are valid.

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Urban Form, Topography, Urban Morphology