Abstract
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.
Highlights
In the age of urbanisation, urban planning and design still struggle to offer reliable models to address the challenges of the 21st century (Cuthbert, 2007; Romice et al, 2020), while the discipline’s shift towards an evidence-based approach and a ‘new science of cities’ is still in its infancy (Batty, 2012: S15)
The high variety of measurable urban form characters, defined as a characteristic of one kind of urban form that distinguishes it from another kind, used in urban morphology literature is fragmented across numerous unrelated sources, and despite several attempts to systematise it (Caniggia and Maffei, 2001; Conzen, 2004; Dibble et al, 2017; Larkham and Jones, 1991), a comprehensive overview is still lacking
We can identify two approaches: one refers to the urban form character’s scale, as for example the sequence Object, Composition, Neighbourhood, District, Municipality and Region in Schirmer and Axhausen (2015); the second refers to the Element’s nature, as for example in Song, Popkin and Gordon-Larsen’s (2013) Permeability, Vitality, Variety, or in Bourdic et al.’s (2012) Intensity, Distribution, Proximity, Connectivity, Complexity, Diversity, Form.We propose that the first step in the classification of urban form characters follows the nature of the measure itself, which is captured in the Index part of its Name
Summary
The high variety of measurable urban form characters, defined as a characteristic (or feature) of one kind of urban form that distinguishes it from another kind (adapted from Dibble et al, 2017 and Sneath and Sokal, 1973), used in urban morphology literature is fragmented across numerous unrelated sources, and despite several attempts to systematise it (Caniggia and Maffei, 2001; Conzen, 2004; Dibble et al, 2017; Larkham and Jones, 1991), a comprehensive overview is still lacking This gap of knowledge creates uncertainty as to which research areas are covered and which need further research. To overcome terminological inconsistencies among the urban form characters adopted in different studies, we comprehensively redefined them (see ‘Classification of urban form characters’ section) On these new definitions, we designed a classification framework of such characters, based on their nature and the spatial unit they belong to. We tested such framework in the classification of all urban form characters initially extracted from literature, discussed the emerging gaps and redundancies and suggested further developments
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