Recent work on ‘anti-adaptive’ neighbourhoods has highlighted a number of common features, including scale of design, number of designers, mono-functionality, percentage of public space, planning rules and system of ownership. This article aims to provide a more general conceptual analysis of adaptability and anti-adaptability in terms of degrees of individual choice, where an individual’s choice set is understood as a combination of individual freedoms, both physical and normative, and of individual normative powers. Individual choice is constitutive of adaptability, and its ‘non-specific’ value helps to explain why adaptability is itself seen in a positive light. Thus, the article points to a potentially unifying explanatory factor that can help us to better understand the various common features of anti-adaptive neighbourhoods highlighted in the recent literature. The final part of the article discusses some of the implications of this reasoning for policy and design.

最近关于“反适应性”社区的工作突出了一些共同特征，包括设计规模、设计师数量、单一功能、公共空间的百分比、规划规则和所有权制度。本文旨在根据个人选择的程度对适应性和反适应性提供更一般的概念分析，其中个人的选择集被理解为个人自由（身体自由和规范自由）以及个人规范权力的组合。个人选择是适应性的组成部分，其“非特定”价值有助于解释为什么适应性本身被视为积极的一面。因此，这篇文章指出了一个潜在的统一解释因素，可以帮助我们更好地理解最近文献中强调的反适应社区的各种共同特征。文章的最后一部分讨论了这种推理对政策和设计的一些影响。