The study of urban form in Brazil and Portugal: From a general overview to a focus on Belo Horizonte, Brasilia, and Porto

Abstract

In 2010, the Portuguese-language Network of Urban Morphology (PNUM) was created under the umbrella of the International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF). Over the last 12 years PNUM has been contributing towards the promotion of urban morphology in Brazil and Portugal, fostering collaboration between different researchers in both countries. This paper is in four parts. The first part has an institutional nature, addressing PNUM's origins, main developments, and fundamental characteristics. The second part identifies seminal morphological studies carried out by Portuguese-language researchers, making evident the influence of this intellectual heritage in the creation of PNUM. The wide diversity of present morphological research in Portugal and Brazil (with significant differences between the North, Northeast, Centre-West, Southeast and South regions) is explored in the third part. Finally, the paper addresses some fundamental issues that are being explored by the authors of this paper: i. the definition of urban morphology as a field of knowledge; II. the relationships between the physical and social dimensions of human settlements; III. the challenges of teaching urban morphology as an interdisciplinary field; IV. the innovative contributions to the development of dominant approaches in the field; and, finally, v. the relationships between scientific research and professional practice.