Recently, the phenomena of economic boom during the 1990s have led to the physical restructuring within the old centre of Surabaya. The changes is inevitable, thus the real issue is how to find the elements of persistent, constraining development to some degree that could be applied to influence future development. The objective of the research is to understand the impact of intervention, and to find the typo-morphological framework in the European and the Chinese quarters, from 1787 to 2005 for future development. A synchronic and a diachronic method is applied to understand the old town centre historical development, and the relationship between building type and urban fabric. The result shows three different degrees of persistent. The town plan of the Chinese and the European districts show a notable persistence. However the land utilization is less persistent especially in the European district such as the first and the second city wall were replaced by roads, and the first and the second fort were replaced by open space and residential uses. Finally, the buildings fabric shows a drastic change such as most of the nineteenth century Indische buildings have been replaced by the 1920s modern buildings.