The modern discipline of urban morphology gives us a ground for the comparative analysis of cities, which increasingly includes specific quantitative elements. In this paper, we make a further step forward towards the definition of a general method for the classification of urban form. We draw from morphometrics and taxonomy in life sciences to propose such method, which we name "urban morphometrics". We then test it on a unit of the urban landscape named "Sanctuary Area" (SA), explored in forty-five cities whose origins span four historic time periods: HISTORIC (medieval), INDUSTRIAL (19th century), NEW TOWNS (post WWII, high-rise) and SPRAWL (post WWII, low-rise). We describe each SA through 207 physical dimensions, and then use these to discover features that discriminate them among the four temporal groups. Nine dimensions emerge as sufficient to correctly classify 90% of the urban settings by their historic origins. These nine attributes largely identify an area's "visible identity" as reflected by three characteristics: 1) block perimeterness, or the way buildings define the street-edge; 2) building coverage, or the way buildings cover the land; and 3) regular plot coverage, or the extent to which blocks are made of plots that have main access from a street. Hierarchical cluster analysis utilising only the nine key variables nearly perfectly clusters each SA according to its historic origin; moreover, the resulting dendrogram shows, just after WWII, the first "bifurcation" of urban history, with the emergence of the modern city as a new "species" of urban form. With "urban morphometrics" we hope to extend urban morphological research and contribute to understanding the way cities evolve. Evolution; Urban Morphometrics; Urban Morphology MAIN DOCUMENT REVIEWED
Unprecedented urbanisation processes characterise the Great Acceleration, urging urban researchers to make sense of data analysis in support of evidence-based and large-scale decision-making. Urban morphologists are no exception since the impact of urban form on fundamental natural and social patterns (equity, prosperity and resource consumption’s efficiency) is now fully acknowledged. However, urban morphology is still far from offering a comprehensive and reliable framework for quantitative analysis. Despite remarkable progress since its emergence in the late 1950s, the discipline still exhibits significant terminological inconsistencies with regards to the definition of the fundamental components of urban form, which prevents the establishment of objective models for measuring it. In this article, we present a study of existing methods for measuring urban form, with a focus on terminological inconsistencies, and propose a systematic and comprehensive framework to classify urban form characters, where ‘urban form character’ stands for a characteristic (or feature) of one kind of urban form that distinguishes it from another kind. In particular, we introduce the Index of Elements that allows for a univocal and non-interpretive description of urban form characters. Based on such Index of Elements, we develop a systematic classification of urban form according to six categories (dimension, shape, spatial distribution, intensity, connectivity and diversity) and three conceptual scales (small, medium, large) based on two definitions of scale (extent and grain). This framework is then applied to identify and organise the urban form characters adopted in available literature to date. The resulting classification of urban form characters reveals clear gaps in existing research, in particular, in relation to the spatial distribution and diversity characters. The proposed framework reduces the current inconsistencies of urban morphology research, paving the way to enhanced methods of urban form systematic and quantitative analysis at a global scale.
The sheer complexity and unpredictability characterising cities challenges the adequacy of existing disciplinary knowledge and tools in urban design and highlights the necessity to incorporate explicitly the element of change and the dimension of time in the understanding of, and intervention on, the form of cities. To this regard the concept of resilience is a powerful lens through which to understand and engage with a changing world. However, resilience is currently only superficially addressed by urban designers, and an explicit effort to relate elements of urban form to resilience principles is still lacking. This represents a great limit for urban designers, as the physical dimension of cities is the matter they work with in the first place. In this paper, we combine established knowledge in urban morphology and resilience theory. We firstly look at resilience theory and consistently define five proxies of resilience in urban form, namely diversity, redundancy, modularity, connectivity and efficiency. Secondly, we discuss the configuration of, and interdependencies between, several constituent elements of the physical city, as defined in urban morphology and design, in light of the mentioned five proxies. Finally, we conduct this exploration at five scales that are relevant to urban morphology and design: plot, street edge, block, street and sanctuary area / district.
Intense debate among prominent planners today has its roots in disagreements that go back more than a century -but recent research may point the way to resolving some old disagreements
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Urban Morphometrics (UMM) is an expanding area of urban studies that aims at representing and measuring objectively the physical form of cities to support evidence-based research. An essential step in its development is the identification of a suitable spatial unit of analysis, where suitability is determined by its degree of reliability, universality, accessibility and significance in capturing essential urban form patterns. In Urban Morphology such unit is found in the plot, a fundamental component in the morphogenetic of urban settlements. However, the plot is a conceptually and analytically ambiguous concept and a kind of spatial information often unavailable or inconsistently represented across geographies, issues that limit its reliability and universality and hence its suitability for Urban Morphometric applications. This calls for alternative methods of deriving a spatial unit able to convey reliable plot-scale information, possibly comparable with that provided by plots. This paper presents Morphological Tessellation (MT), an objectively and universally applicable method that derives a spatial unit named Morphological Cell (MC) from widely available data on building footprint only and tests its informational value as proxy data in capturing plot-scale spatial properties of urban form. Using the city of Zurich (CH) as case study we compare MT to the cadastral layer on a selection of morphometric characters capturing different geometrical and configurational properties of urban form, to test the degree of informational similarity between MT and cadastral plots.Findings suggest that MT can be considered an efficient informational proxy for cadastral plots for many of the tested morphometric characters, that there are kinds of plot-scale information only plots can provide, as well as kinds only morphological tessellation can provide. Overall, there appears to be clear scope for application of MT as fundamental spatial unit of analysis in Urban Morphometrics, opening the way to largescale urban morphometric analysis.
Research in Urban Morphology has long been exploring the form of cities and their changes over time, especially by establishing links with the parallel dynamics of these cities' social, economic and political environments. The capacity of an adaptable and resilient urban form to provide a fertile environment for economic prosperity and social cohesion is at the forefront of discussion. Gentrification has emerged in the past few decades as an important topic of research in urban sociology, geography and economy, addressing the social impact of some forms of urban evolution. To some extent, these studies emphasise the form of the environment in which gentrification takes place. However, a systematic and quantitative method for a detailed characterization of this type of urban form is still far from being achieved. With this paper, we make a first step towards the establishment of an approach based on "urban morphometrics". To this end, we measure and compare key morphological features of five London neighbourhoods that have undergone a process of piecemeal gentrification. Findings suggest that these five case studies display similar and recognisable morphological patterns in terms of their built form, geographical location of main and local roads and physical relationships between street fronts and street types. These initial results, while not implying any causal or universal relationship between morphological and social dynamics, nevertheless contribute to; a) highlight the benefits of a rigorous quantitative approach towards interpreting urban form beyond the disciplinary boundaries of Urban Morphology and b) define the statistical recurrence of a few, specific morphological features amongst the five cases of gentrified areas in London.
This chapter deals with those aspects of the design of cities that have been shown to affect quality of life. Whilst direct causal relationships between physical space and well-being are often difficult to establish, physical space certainly does play a significant part in shaping the way we engage with it, informing the individual and collective sense of attachment to our own environment; this will become increasingly important, with the urbanization process predicted to grow, a significant part of which in conditions of informality. The aim of this chapter is to gather relevant and recent research that highlights advances in the study of the reciprocal effect between urban form and urban life and use this to compile an agenda for future thinking, research and practice in the field of socially sustainable urban design.The thrust of this agenda is centered on the concept of control. Since urbanization is an ongoing phenomenon and life in cities is now the norm for the vast majority of people, the traditional role of design needs to be reconsidered to give way to more collaborative and flexible forms of conceptualization, creation, occupation and management of space. This is important in order to relieve pressure on land and institutions, and instill an overall proactive and reciprocal attitude towards space itself, and space as a form of collective and social life.The chapter will highlight that urban quality of life rests on four core themes of: material well-being; emotional and personal development; interpersonal relationships; and physical well-being. These themes provide an organizational framework for exploration of how they are manifest at the metropolitan, neighbourhood and pedestrian levels of scale. KeywordsCities, urban form, control, urban design, quality of life, metropolitan scale, neighbourhood scale, pedestrian scale. Email author OutlineFrom an overview on recent trends in urbanization, we will introduce the notion of control as a key to read the following text and in particular we will: 1. contextualize the concept of control in relation to the fields of both quality of life (QoL) and urban form. In fact, the literature in both domains shows that there is a mutually reciprocal relationship between aspects of quality of life and urban spatial structure; 2. review established and recent research on the relationships between QoL and urban form, structured around metropolitan, neighborhood and pedestrian scales, which illustrates the centrality of control in shaping our cities and allowing quality of life to be fulfilled within them; 3. propose a conceptual framework for socio-spatial urban design, which is sensitive to the relative importance of predictive/structural and loose/flexible urban elements in the production and management of urban space, and their critical role in affording their users a sense of control; 4. suggest the need for a reconceptualization of city form away from an assemblage of material and spatial elements towards a more integrated sense of a city as a mutually d...
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