J.W.R. Whitehand and the Historico-geographical Approach to Urban Morphology

J.W.R. Whitehand and the Historico-geographical Approach to Urban Morphology PDF

Author: Vítor Oliveira

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-10-09

Total Pages: 138

ISBN-13: 3030006204

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Over recent decades, the historico-geographical approach to urban morphology has been prominent in the debate on the physical form of our cities and on the agents and processes shaping that form over time. With origins in the work of the geographer M.R.G. Conzen, this approach has been systematically developed by researchers in different parts of the world since the 1960s. This book argues that J.W.R. Whitehand structured an innovative and comprehensive school of urban morphological thought grounded in the invaluable basis provided by Conzen. It identifies the development of several dimensions of the concepts of “fringe belt” and “morphological region” and the systematic exploration of the themes of “agents of change,” “comparative studies” and “research and practice” as key contributions by Whitehand to this school of thought. The book presents contributions from leading international experts in the field addressing these major issues.

Twentieth-Century Suburbs

Twentieth-Century Suburbs PDF

Author: C.M.H Carr

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2014-04-08

Total Pages: 236

ISBN-13: 113641164X

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Garden suburbs were the almost universal form of urban growth in the English-speaking world for most of the twentieth century. Their introduction was probably the most fundamental process of transformation in the physical form of the Western city since the Middle Ages. This book describes the ways in which these suburbs were created, particularly by private enterprise in England in the 1920s and 1930s, the physical forms they took, and how they have changed over time in response to social, economic and cultural change. Twentieth-Century Suburbs is concerned with the history, geography, architecture and planning of the ordinary suburban areas in which most British people live. It discusses the origins of suburbs; the ways in which they have been represented; the scale and causes of their growth; their form and architectural style; the landowners, builders and architects responsible for their creation; the changes they have undergone both physically and socially; and their impact on urban form and the implications for urban landscape management.

Morphological Regionalization

Morphological Regionalization PDF

Author: Muzaffer Ali Arat

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-06-01

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 3031335090

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This book is about how to make the method of morphological regionalization, proposed in the early 1960s, more useful and practicable for planning, urban design and architecture. This book is about cities; more precisely, about how cities can be characterized based on the main elements of urban form. It provides a systematic way of description and explanation of the historico-geographical structure of the urban landscape. It offers a step-by-step methodology for the identification of morphological regions as a key tool for planning practice and townscape management. The book is divided in seven parts. The first part is the introduction, motivation, research goal and objectives, and the structure of the book. The second part of the book offers an overview of urban morphology, urban morphological approaches, the concept of morphological region and its past applications worldwide. The third part is the methodological procedures for the implementation of this morphological approach to cities. The fourth and fifth parts are the implementation of this methodology into two case studies, Istanbul and Antequera. The sixth part offers a discussion of results. And, finally, the seventh part is constituted by a set of conclusions.

Urban Morphology

Urban Morphology PDF

Author: Vítor Oliveira

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2016-03-30

Total Pages: 208

ISBN-13: 3319320831

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This is a book about cities or, more precisely, about the physical form of cities. It starts presenting the main elements of urban form – streets, urban blocks, plots and buildings – structuring our cities and the fundamental actors and processes of transformation shaping these elements. It then applies this analytical framework to describe the evolution of cities over history as well as to explain the functioning of contemporary cities. After the initial focus on the ‘object’ (cities) the book describes how different researchers and different schools of thought have been dealing with this object since the emergence of Urban Morphology, as the science of urban form, in the turning to the twentieth century. Finally, the book tries to identify what are the most important (and specific) contributions that Urban Morphology has to offer to contemporary cities, societies and economies.

The Mathematics of Urban Morphology

The Mathematics of Urban Morphology PDF

Author: Luca D'Acci

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-03-23

Total Pages: 556

ISBN-13: 3030123812

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This edited volume provides an essential resource for urban morphology, the study of urban forms and structures, offering a much-needed mathematical perspective. Experts on a variety of mathematical modeling techniques provide new insights into specific aspects of the field, such as street networks, sustainability, and urban growth. The chapters collected here make a clear case for the importance of tools and methods to understand, model, and simulate the formation and evolution of cities. The chapters cover a wide variety of topics in urban morphology, and are conveniently organized by their mathematical principles. The first part covers fractals and focuses on how self-similar structures sort themselves out through competition. This is followed by a section on cellular automata, and includes chapters exploring how they generate fractal forms. Networks are the focus of the third part, which includes street networks and other forms as well. Chapters that examine complexity and its relation to urban structures are in part four.The fifth part introduces a variety of other quantitative models that can be used to study urban morphology. In the book’s final section, a series of multidisciplinary commentaries offers readers new ways of looking at the relationship between mathematics and urban forms. Being the first book on this topic, Mathematics of Urban Morphology will be an invaluable resource for applied mathematicians and anyone studying urban morphology. Additionally, anyone who is interested in cities from the angle of economics, sociology, architecture, or geography will also find it useful. "This book provides a useful perspective on the state of the art with respect to urban morphology in general and mathematics as tools and frames to disentangle the ideas that pervade arguments about form and function in particular. There is much to absorb in the pages that follow and there are many pointers to ways in which these ideas can be linked to related theories of cities, urban design and urban policy analysis as well as new movements such as the role of computation in cities and the idea of the smart city. Much food for thought. Read on, digest, enjoy." From the foreword by Michael Batty

Conserving and Managing Historical Urban Landscape

Conserving and Managing Historical Urban Landscape PDF

Author: Xiaoxi Li

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2023-01-01

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 9811942226

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This book focuses on urban morphology and its application to urban conservation and management. The rapid disappearance of historical urban landscapes, especially in developing countries, is largely attributed to the lack of historic awareness and broad-brush demolition and redevelopment in urban development. The book provides a new, integrated morphological approach that enables fine-grained and cross-scale examination of urban form based on both its historicity and socio-economic potential, with the aims of informing more responsive and context-specific conservation and management of historical urban landscapes. The robustness of this new approach and the feasibility of its application to urban conservation practice are tested and demonstrated by three case studies in drastically different cultural contexts, namely Ludlow, a medieval town in the UK, Chinatown in Singapore and a historic quarter in Nanjing, China. Combining historico-geographical and configurational approaches, the book also makes a significant breakthrough in terms of coordinating and synthesizing different traditions of urban morphology, which has been a key challenge to this field over the past decades. In addition, by using multi-source data, ranging from conventional cartographic maps to computer-generated and open online data, the integrated approach innovatively relates qualitative and quantitative aspects of urban form and links the qualitative and quantitative analyses of formal structure. As an interdisciplinary study merging geography, urban history, urban planning and design, this book is to be primarily used as a reference book for graduate students and scholars in various fields who are interested in urban form and urban conservation and management. In addition, it offers practitioners in urban planning and design a useful tool for managing changes in historical urban landscapes. Lastly, it contributes to developing a common platform to facilitate dialogues among various stakeholders and participants in urban conservation practice.

Morphological Research in Planning, Urban Design and Architecture

Morphological Research in Planning, Urban Design and Architecture PDF

Author: Vítor Oliveira

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-02-25

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 3030664600

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This book is about the relation between scientific research and professional practice on the built environment. The physical form of cities is structured in different elements of urban form. Each of these elements, and the way they are combined into distinct patterns, is shaped by various agents and processes of change. Planning, urban design and architecture are practice-oriented activities that have a significant impact on these elements. Yet, this ‘action’ on the physical form if cities tends to be separated from scientific ‘knowledge’ on this complex object. In fact, none of these activities is strongly related to urban morphology, the science of urban form. There are many reasons for this gap. One of the reasons is the lack of significant examples of how the bridging process can happen. The book addresses this specific issue. It gathers a number of cases, developed in the last years in different geographical contexts – from Latin America to Eastern Asia – that exemplify how to move from scientific research to professional practice. Each case, or set of cases, is presented in one chapter. The first part of each chapter presents the morphological view of his/her author(s) on the process of city building; the second part exemplifies how this author moves from reading to design.

Teaching Urban Morphology

Teaching Urban Morphology PDF

Author: Vítor Oliveira

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2018-04-25

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 3319761269

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This book brings together contributions from some of the foremost international experts in the field of urban morphology and addresses major questions such as: What exactly is urban morphology? Why teach it? What contents should be taught in an urban morphology course? And how can it be taught most effectively? Over the past few decades there has been a growing awareness of the importance of urban form in connection with the many dimensions – social, economic, and environmental – of our lives in cities. As a result, urban morphology – the science of urban form, and now over a century old – has taken on a key role in the debate on the past, present and future of cities. And yet it remains unclear how urban morphologists should convey the main morphological theories, concepts and techniques to our students – the potential researchers of, and practitioners in, the urban landscapes of tomorrow. This book is the first to address that gap, providing concrete guidelines on how to teach urban morphology, complemented by EXAMPLES OF EXERCISES FROM THE AUTHORS’ LESSONS.

The Morphology of Urban Landscapes

The Morphology of Urban Landscapes PDF

Author: André Bideau

Publisher: Dietrich Reimer

Published: 2021-09-24

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9783496016489

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The urban morphology investigates settlement and urban forms. These do not change overnight, but in a process that follows certain principles. There is hardly anything more complex and contradictory than a city. Precisely because of this complexity, there is little agreement on definitions and procedural methods. This applies in particular to urban planning, which is not only concerned with analysis, but also with the design and transformation of cities. A variety of different urban morphological approaches exist today. The authors from the areas of research and practice investigate the relevance of the morphological perspective in the field of contemporary urban landscapes. They link historical roots and current approaches and explain the relationship between analysis and design.