This most unusual book is written by an architect, urbanist and historian of baroque gardens, and seeks to distil a lifetime of research and teaching in a single place to examine what lessons may be gained from deep knowledge of a particular locality, and, in particular, an understanding of how it came to be that way. Patrick Geddes (and Geddes, after all, was the founder and first theorist of urban planning) considered it wrong to presume to plan a town without first having understood its evolution, regional setting and distinctive character. Yet it would be a rare planner or council nowadays that would be prepared to assess their Local Plan against such criteria. Geddes thought that the triumvirate of place, work, folk all had equal importance. Yet, preoccupied with the political and business development agendas, social inclusion programmes and statistics now required of planning by government policy, much planning has forfeited that sense of place. As a result of the erosion and sometimes wholesale eradication of identity, many well-meant decisions have had a disastrous impact on a locality; and that, in turn, can have a serious economic consequence.

This book, fundamentally, seeks to interpret and communicate Aberdeen's sense of place, and Brogden – an American – brings a valuable outsider's perspective. He deploys his deep knowledge to explain on a street-by-street or building-by-building basis why that building or street has come to be as it is, and what governed the emergence of the urban form, although it would have helped if the distinctive features of the various urban forms – market-place, shore, close, wynd, street, road, etc. – had been defined. The book roughly follows Geddes’ 1912 Survey of Edinburgh in being a chronological study, beginning with the city's regional setting. Being a more urbane cove than Geddes, Brogden lacks the latter's angry impatience with the careless damage railways had done to Edinburgh, and rather dodges the social issues that infuriated him. Geddes disliked and analysed social exclusion, whereas Brogden passes lightly over how Aberdeen, like all other Scots cities, got its ghettos and why they are where they are.

Aberdeen certainly took just as many bad decisions as Edinburgh and has, as a result, forfeited much more of its historic identity. Brogden, however, is much more concerned with the specificity of architecture and urban spaces than Geddes ever was. Being a classicist by temperament, Brogden puts classical Aberdeen, which has survived reasonably well, at the core of this volume, whereas early modern Aberdeen has been largely obliterated. So, although the book carefully delineates the extent to which the old market-place was formally laid out – designed, if you like – and how carefully its ancient civic buildings were placed in relation to it, the early period is not as thoroughly analysed as the later ones. For example, the author does not inform us of the Aberdeen standard burgh rig dimensions, where the elite or craft districts might have been, or indeed whether any particular areas became identified with any particular crafts as so common on the Continent. His implication is that the surviving arcade in Shiprow was rare in Scots burghs, whereas the majority of significant Scots burghs were extensively arcaded at the centre, the large ones like Edinburgh, Dundee and Glasgow just as much as smaller ones like Dunfermline and St Andrews. So, if Aberdeen had really only had a single example, it might have been worth pondering the reason for the city's exception. Those studying the physical form of urban Scotland during the Renaissance will find more illumination in Charles McKean, Bob Harris and Christopher A. Whatley's Dundee: Renaissance to Enlightenment (Dundee: Dundee University Press, 2009).

With the appointment of improvement commissioners in the late eighteenth century, the book gets into its stride. Brogden correctly flags up the city's ambition. Aberdeen needed not just to modernize, but to accept the entry of turnpike roads from Edinburgh and Peterhead. This required courage and enormous investment (the city went bankrupt in 1817), and resulted in the construction of the mile-long western entrance of Union Street and the creation of the elite King Street. The grandeur of the plans for Union Street and the Denburn bridge had their parallels only in Edinburgh, London and Paris, but their realization was far from straightforward. Competitions were held, architects appointed and ditched and decisions were made ignoring street levels – all with the result that the street sloped rather than achieved the purity of the consistently level urban arena that had originally been intended. Brogden makes the telling point that we assume improvement commissioners would necessarily be competent whereas that was not always the case. Yet, as he relates the tortuous tale, a magnificent Union Street was achieved, with its associated classical western suburbs, its character maintained through the ubiquitous use of machine-cut silver granite and a consistent architecture.

Mid-nineteenth-century Aberdeen became larger, with more prominent monuments, and a strongly realized taste for the picturesque, notably in the construction of Trinity Hall, the new Town House and the Citadel. There was also a tendency towards ‘masking’ the older or more industrial parts of the city with new set-pieces: the gracious Market Street (a typical new street in northern European ports improving access between town and harbour) provided a handsome approach to the harbour concealing much behind, whereas the later Rosemount Viaduct – a sweeping curve of majestic tall granite tenements – performed a similar function. This example, however, gives an indication that this book has a tendency to overlook parallels with other Scots cities. This ‘masking’ had been much more fully developed in the first two decades of the nineteenth century in Perth. Brogden then leads into a detailed discussion of what he classifies as ‘architecture for everyman’ – an examination of the architecture of tenements, houses, council houses and cottages, in which the urbanist cedes to the architectural critic, and admiration for a building can lead to overlooking its urban consequence. An acute appreciation of the large 1960s developments, for example, is at the expense of the sometimes catastrophic consequences they had at street level. Indeed, the detailed analyses of individual buildings are rarely matched by any comparable evaluation of the changing streetscape.

It is sobering to realize that however much cities changed for reasons of economy or efficiency, or the eradication of slums and disease, far more change was wrought upon them for ideological reasons after the emergence of the current planning system. Much more of Aberdeen's sense of place would have vanished had all the recommendations of its 1952 Development Plan Granite City been implemented. Just look at what happened to Dundee, which shared the same consultants.

The final chapter, entitled ‘Learning from the city’ focuses upon the studies that Brodgden and his students have made of parts of Aberdeen. This is a crucial section since planning is essentially reactive to ideas and proposals from others. Even where planning departments have taken the initiative, it is usually within set parameters. Senior architecture and planning students are not thus bound and can, therefore, look broader and more holistically. For the reader, the question must be, who would have perceived these opportunities and challenges if the students had not? Geddes would have, as his plan for Dunfermline indicates.

A book like this depends upon good support from the publisher, but that has been variable. The detailed plans of Aberdeen essential to understand the early chapters are absent; many of the building plans lack any text or referencing to enable the reader to understand them; the use of the Harvard referencing system means that the sources of crucial information are simply not provided; and the textual editing leads to several slips – the Edinburgh architect of Gayfield Place was either James Begg or John Baxter (not ‘James Baxter’), and ‘James Telford’ is more likely to have been Thomas. Where was the editor when the not infrequent literals – most delightful of which may be the rendering of Le Corbusier's Paris proposal the ‘Plan Voissin’ – entered the page? Who permitted the inclusion of undated maps, drawings and engravings and illustrations with the most unilluminating captions? It is infuriating to be informed of a type of cottage developed in Kaimshill which the Aberdonians customized to make it particular to the city but provided with neither plan nor illustration. Brogden has recently published a new architectural guide to Aberdeen, so it is a good idea to have it close by to refer to. Indeed, one illustration (4.2) is almost illegible, which the caption does little to illuminate.

So what can the non-Aberdonian gain from this book? Primarily, the book demonstrates how a city's sense of place is made up and evolves; how visions are essential but development can be messy and imperfect; and how urban identity can survive radical change if sufficient care is taken with scale and materials. Finally, if you work at it, the book provides an interesting examination of the changing urban house, and the last chapter highlights the kinds of exploration that day-to-day planning generally overlooks.

Fundamentally, this book has split objectives: on the one hand to examine the emergence and codification of Aberdeen's sense of ‘place’, and on the other an architectural critique of its buildings. The periodic swathes of architectural observation (that sometimes fail to explain its relevance) rather than analysis can slow things down. Yet, as a whole, this volume provides the reader with immeasurably deeper knowledge of how the character of a place like Aberdeen is put together than can be obtained anywhere else (including the recent two-volumed history of Aberdeen). From knowledge should come understanding. At the very least, all those charged with the planning of Aberdeen should be required to read it (which, currently, they are not). Those with a broader interest in urban history will find much of relevance; and it should make Aberdonians and ex-Aberdonians feel at home.