A Course in Urban Morphology

Abstract

This chapter describes a course in urban morphology, based on the book ‘Urban morphology. An introduction to the study of the physical form of cities’, recently published by Springer (Oliveira in Urban morphology, an introduction to the study of the physical form of cities. Springer, Dordrecht, 2016a, Springer, Dordrecht). The course, and this chapter, is in seven parts: the elements of urban form, the agents and processes of urban transformation, cities in history, contemporary cities, different approaches in the study of urban form (including the historico-geographical approach, the process-typological approach, space syntax and spatial analysis), the relation between scientific research and professional practice and, finally, the relations between urban morphology and other fields of knowledge of a social, economic and environmental nature. The course has been taught, in different formats, in different universities in Brazil, China, Portugal and Spain. The chapter addresses a number of theoretical, methodological and procedural issues in teaching this course.