Urban Morphology and Citizens’ Life

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Alex C. Michalos

Encyclopedia of Quality of Life and Well-Being Research 10.1007/978-94-007-0753-5_4080

Urban Morphology and Citizens’ Life

(1)School of Architecture, University of Liverpool, Abercromby Square, Liverpool, UK

Fei Chen

Email: fei.chen@liverpool.ac.uk

Without Abstract

Synonyms

Study of urban form;Typomorphology

Definition

Urban morphology is the study of urban form that focuses on the formation and transformation of urban forms of cities, towns, and villages over time; their spatial patterns at different scales; and physical characteristics to inform appropriate urban interventions to promote sustainable urban development. The concepts and approaches to the study of urban form are multidisciplinary. Relevant subject fields are ranging from human geography, urban planning, urban design,

architecture, sociology to cultural studies. Urban morphology is beneficial for urban management, design and planning, urban conservation and regeneration, as well as urban policy-making in general to contribute to social economic and environmentalsustainability.

Description

The earliest influential study of urban form was probably the Nolli Map of Rome produced by Giambattista Nolli in 1748 which vividly represented the spatial structure of the city in two

In addition to the public-private division of urban form, two other classic theories of the study of urban form were the linkage theory and the place theory (Trancik,1986). The linkage theory stressed on the circulation spaces connecting one urban element to another and the spatial sequence of the city. The place theory understood urban form from a humanistic perspective which paid attention to the social andcultural valuesof the physical spaces. Originated from architectural phenomenology, the concept of place is where the study of urban form links to human wellbeing and quality of life, and place-making becomes an ultimate objective in urban design and planning.

In the literature of urban morphology, there are four distinctive approaches to the study of urban form, each of which is rooted in different scholarly traditions and features different sets of ideas and analytical tools (Kropf, 2009). They are the process-typological approach, the historico-geographical approach, the spatial analytical approach, and the configurational approach (Kropf, 2009). The first two approaches were developed by the Italian Typological School and the British Morphological School respectively since the 1950s and the 1960s (Moudon, 1994). The founder of the Italian school was Saverio Muratori who believed that buildings and towns were shaped collectively during the constructive process over time (Muratori,1959). He used the termorganismon the analogy of nature to describe the gradual and spontaneous transformation of urban form and advocated that the history was operational for contemporary development. All building creations came from and should be from historically and locally derivedtypeswhich were ideal forms embedded in local residents’ spontaneous consciousness. His concept was further developed by Gianfranco Caniggia and his colleague Gian Luigi Maffei (Caniggia & Maffei,1979). They paid great attention to ordinary buildings, often constructed without architects, and the surrounding urban tissues, because vernacular types, not only at the building level but also at the urban level bear rich cultural meanings. The examination of the transformation of ordinary types of buildings and urban fabrics could reveal how local residents gradually adapted forms to their changing needs over a long period of time. This process was conceptualized as the typological process. The series of types which have gone through a typological process thus is extremely valuable for the local culture because they were selected and (re)shaped by the culture and the collective. The Italian architects actively applied this theory to design practice in order to fit new development harmoniously with the existing context. The British Morphological School has a disciplinary background in geography. The German geographer M.R.G Conzen’s work, in particular, his pioneer study of the English small town

Alnwick (Conzen,1969) is considered the foundation work of the school. Conzen conceptualised the components of urban form as the town plan,land usepatterns, and three-dimensional building types. The town plan analysis, based on successive historical maps of a city or a town, was proved to be fruitful. The plan analysis focused on the plots, streets, and building-block plans as the two-dimensional components of urban form. Plan units thus can be delimited based on homogenous physical characteristics of the three components. By further incorporating land use and building types, morphological regions can be delimited. The identified boundaries in urban areas are beneficial for urban management and conservation purposes, where different strategies can be adopted for different morphological regions. Building upon case studies from various European cities and towns, Conzen and his fellow scholars developed a set of rich concepts and terminologies to conceptualise phenomena observed in the process of urban transformation in Europe, such as morphological period, morphological frame, fringe belt, and burgage cycle (Larkham & Jones,

The spatial analytical approach refers to Michael Batty’s work at University College London which usesGIS, cellular automata, agent-based modelling, and fractals to understand the spatial structure and dynamic of cities. In this approach, physical forms and uses are deliberately blurred at different spatial scales, because Batty and fellow scholars consider use or activity distribution in theurban environmentwould coincide with built-up areas. This approach does not intend to predict or describe accurate morphological changes but to indicate the basic mechanism of city growth. The approach has received great attention in recent years along with the new data-driving research field fueled by various open and big data sources. Relevant research examines various data sets to uncover hidden patterns, unknown correlations, customer preferences and spatial qualities etc (De Mauro, Greco, & Grimaldi, 2016; Laney, 2001). With appropriate data, this approach is particularly useful in terms of real-time urban management (e.g. transportation system monitoring, City Dashboard) and evidence-based urban planning and design (e.g. improvement of infrastructure and services, crime prevention, quality enhancement of streets).

The configurational approach refers to Bill Hillier and Julienne Hadson’s space syntax theory that links the spatial structure with the generic function of movement and visual permeability to predict pedestrian density and land uses (Hillier & Hanson,1989). This approach shares similar

understanding of urban form with the linkage theory mentioned earlier. For these scholars, physical form is the arrangement of spaces, and can be identified by its relative position in the whole system of configuration. Movement and people’s perception of the relative position ofherein relation to thereare thus the way to discover the spatial system. The functional and human perceptual aspects endow the space syntax theory a humanistic dimension. In their research, the space syntax scholars argued that the configurational characteristics of street network were strongly correlated with behavior patterns and economic potentials. Similar analytics to space syntax include multi-centrality assessment (Porta et al., 2008), Route Structure Analysis (Marshall, 2016), and Place Syntax (Ståhle, 2012) etc. The latter tool added attractions such as density or transit points to the spatial model to get better predictions of pedestrian flow and land use potentials (Ståhle, 2012). However, the aesthetic quality and cultural meaning of urban form are obviously disregarded in both the spatial analytical and configurational approaches.

While the four approaches of urban morphology focusing almost exclusively on the physical aspect of urban form, Moudon (1994) mentioned the work of the French Versailles School which

developed the Muratorian and Conzenian philosophies with a close link to the social production of spaces, as defined by the urban theorist Henry Lefebvre (1991). The powerful concept of

typomorphologyperhaps was firstly mentioned by Jean Castex and Philippe Panerai within the French school (Castex & Panerai,1982), which is the reciprocity of the process-typological and historico-geographical approaches. Typomorphology, as evidenced from their publications (Castex,

of urban form is closely linked with citizens’ lives, and the design and planning tools can help sustain the city’s cultural identity.

Not specifically referring to typomorphology, theNew Urbanists’form-based code is another string of thoughts linking traditional building types and urban patterns to contemporary design and

planning practice. The New Urbanism movement, also called Smart Growth, emerged in the USA in the 1990s (Katz,1994) by a group of neo-traditionalists, and they advocated for the characteristics of traditional urban spaces of European cities as opposite to the Modernist car-oriented design

principles. The transect-based SmartCode (DPZ &Co, 2007), traditional neighborhood pattern and transit oriented development are the three key concepts promoted by the New Urbanists. Their significant influences in the US and worldwide evoke fierce debates and criticisms which either support or against their approaches and practices. The criticism mainly lies in the commercialisation of the traditional images or types employed in their practice work, the unsustainable development of towns in green fields, social exclusion and standardisation of design codes etc (Al-Hindi & Till, 2001). Nevertheless, their practice demonstrates the usefulness of urban morphology in directing changes of our physical environment.

So why are urban form and the study of urban form related to citizens’ lives? We need to refer back to the place theory and the concepts developed in the French School that urban form is essentially a product of the social political economic forces in a given context. In human history, urban form has always been influenced and determined by natural, political, economic, social, religious,

technological, and cultural factors, which present in most cases with varying weights. Only in very rare cases, one of the factors may be missing entirely in the process of shaping urban form ((Kostof, 1991, Morris, 1994). Urban form emerges as a consequence of the conflictive process among historical actors in society and changes along the shift of interests among social actors. The

aforementioned factors may change as well to reflect the changing human needs. It is therefore clear that urban form is never independent from society but a result of human interventions to nature, which sometimes is in a piecemeal manner and sometimes radical through central planning and implementation at vast scales. For instance, the agora area of Athens was shaped by the traffic flow along the Panathenaic way to the Acropolis over hundreds of years. Miletus and the Chinese city Chang’an both shared a grid pattern but the patterns were embodied very different political and social ideologies. The odd shape of Regent Park in London was determined by the boundary of land ownership. Chinese classic gardens were designed following the cultural philosophy of Taoism, and so on so forth.

Furthermore, according to the Affordance Theory (Heft,1988), a particular pattern of urban form or a type affords certain patterns of behavior, and meets some aesthetic tastes more easily than it affords others. There is a need to recognize potential functions of a particular urban pattern to facilitate certain activities such as social interaction and participation, and prevent some others such as crime and vandalism. The functions of urban form, in a boarder sense, are not only to

chance to afford local citizen’s needs and better facilitate place-making. Here, typomorphology needs to be mentioned again because it is a powerful approach to find out the relevant urban patterns or types for the creation of spaces in the future. Gokce and Chen’s (2018a, 2018b) recent work examined the relationship between the typological process and people’s sense of place and provided empirical evidence for this claim. They found out, in the Turkish context, that residents from those neighborhoods which had been gone through a more continuous development have stronger sense of place then residents who resided in neighborhoods of which the urban form transformed

dramatically (Gokce and Chen, 2018a). Their work also discovered the relevant physical

characteristics that need to be considered in the identification of typological process and therefore are useful for design practice in Turkey and wider cultural areas (Gokce and Chen, 2018b). Clearly, to make urban morphology useful for design, planning and urban management, the study needs to extend from the physical dimension to the holistic human-environmental relationship in multiple dimensions. According to Mathew Carmona and others (2003), the perceptual, social, visual, functional, and temporal dimensions are important aspects to study. First, environmental perception refers to human sensory systems reacting to the environmental stimuli of visual, vocal, chemical, tactile, thermal, and kinetic senses. Using such senses, human receives and processes information about the environment in order to orient oneself and distinguish one place from the other. The senses help them build up acognitive mapfor the understanding of the environment (Lynch, 1960). A legible pattern of urban form both in terms of wayfinding and symbolism is desirable in urban intervention. Urban identity is also considered important associations to urban form that can reflect people’s personal identity and social relationships which in turn benefits place making (Watson & Bentley, 2007).

Second, social study of the urban environment focuses on the supportive and constrictive role of urban form to social activities, especially the functionality of public spaces. It is self-evident that the more welcoming, safe, and interesting the public space is, the more likelysocial interactionsare promoted and social mix andsocial cohesionfacilitated. Third, research in the visual dimension of urban form has a long tradition. Visual qualities of rhyme, pattern,harmony, balance, andbeauty have certainly been concerns of urban development that serves the basic human aesthetic need. A lot of debates in design and planning practice were about whether aesthetics was purely subjective. It is agreed that aesthetic treatment of buildings or wider urban patterns lies in the responsiveness to the context so it is not entirely subjective (Cullingworth, 1991).

Summary

The above briefly reviews the theories and approaches of urban morphology as a body of knowledge in understanding the characteristics of the physical environment, its formation and transformation over time. Several schools of thoughts and approaches have emerged in separate disciplines such as human geography, architecture, planning, and sociology. They provide useful concepts and tools for the study of urban form. Nevertheless, exploration is needed to elicit more benefits of urban

morphology by testing the combination and reciprocity of these approaches in various contexts and practice scenarios. These approaches also need to stretch beyond the physical dimension to embrace other aspects related to human experiences and perceptions. The study of the complex human-environmental relationship in general feeds back to urban intervention including urban design, planning, conservation management, urban regeneration, and policy-making. Through creating quality urban environment and appropriate urban management, they ultimately improve citizens’ quality of life and wellbeing.

Cross-References

New Urbanism Sense of Place Spatial Analysis

Spatial Planning (Europe) Sustainable Development Urban Design

References

Al-hindi, K. F. & Till, K. E. (2001). (Re)Placing the New Urbanism debates: Towards an interdisciplinary research agenda.Urban Geography,22,189-201.

Caniggia, G., & Maffei, G. L. (1979).Composizione architettonica e tipologia edilizia, lettura dell'edilizia di base(1st ed.). Venezia, Italy: Marsilio Editori S.P.A.

Carmona, M. (2010a). Contemporary public space: critique and classification, part one: Critique. Journal of Urban Design,15,p.123-148.

Carmona, M. (2010b). Contemporary Public Space, Part Two: Classification.Journal of Urban Design,15,pp.157-173.

Carmona, M., Heath, T., Oc, T., & Tiesdell, S. (2003).Public places, urban spaces: The dimensions of urban design. Oxford: Architectural Press.

Castex, J. (1979). Space as representation and space in practice: A reading of the city of Versailles. Lotus International, 24(3), 84–94.

Chen, F., & Thwaites, K. (2013).Chinese urban design: The typomorphological approach. Surrey, UK: Ashgate.

Conzen, M. R. G. (1969).Alnwick, Northumberland: A study in town-plan analysis. London: Institute of British Geographers.

Cullingworth, J. B. (1991). Aesthetics in US planning: from billboards to design controls.Town Planning Review,62,399-413.

De Mauro, A., Greco, M., & Grimaldi, M. (2016). A formal definition of big data based on its essential features. Library Review, 65(3), 122–135.https://doi.org/10.1108/LR-06-2015-0061 DPZ & CO. 2007. SmartCode V9.0. http://www.smartcodecentral.com/index.html accessed on 31st July 2019

Gokce, D., & Chen, F. (2018a). Sense of place in the changing process of house form: Case studies from Ankara, Turkey.Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 45(4), 772-796. doi:10.1177/0265813516686970

Gokce, D., & Chen, F. (2018b). A methodological framework for defining ‘typological process’: the transformation of the residential environment in Ankara, Turkey.Journal of Urban Design, 1-25. doi:10.1080/13574809.2018.1468215

Heft, H. (1988). Affordance of children’s environments: A functional approach to environmental description.Children’s Environment Quarterly, 5(3), 29–37.

Hillier, B., & Hanson, J. (1989).The social logic of space. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Katz, P. (Ed.). (1994).The new urbanism: Toward an architecture of community. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Kostof, S. (1991).The City Shaped: Urban Patterns and Meanings Through History,London, Thames and Hudson Ltd.

Kropf, K. (2009). Aspects of urban form.Urban Morphology, 13(2), 105–120.

Laney, D. (2001). 3D data management: Controlling data volume, velocity, and variety. Retrieved 30 July, 2019, from

https://blogs.gartner.com/doug-laney/files/2012/01/ad949-3D-Data-Management-Controlling-Data-Volume-Velocity-and-Variety.pdf

Lang, J., & Moleski, W. (2010).Functionalism revisited: architectural theory and practice and the behavioral sciences. Surrey, UK/Burlington, VT: Ashgate.

Larkham, P., & Jones, A. (1991).Glossary of urban form(Historical geography research series, Vol. 26). Norwich, UK: Geo Books.

Lefebvre, H. (1991).The production of space(trans: Nicholson-Smith, D.). Oxford: Blackwell. Lynch, K. (1960).The image of the city. Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press

Marshall, S. 2016. Line structure representation for road network analysis.Journal of Transport and Land Use,9,29-64.

Morris, A. E. J. (1994).History of urban form: before the industrial revolutions,London, New York, Pearson Education.

Moudon, A. V. (1994). Getting to know the built landscape: Typomorphology. In K. A. S. Franck & H. Lynda (Eds.),Ordering space: Types in architecture and design(pp. 289–311). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Muratori, S. (1959).Studi per una operante storia urbana di venezia. Rome, Italy: Istituto Poligrafico Dello Stato, Libreria Dello Stato.

Panerai, P., Castex, J., Depaule, J. C., & Samuels, O. V. (2004).Urban forms: The death and life of the urban block(trans: Samuels, O. V.). Oxford: Architectural Press.

Porta, S., Crucitti, P. & Latora, V. 2008. Multiple centrality assessment in Parma : a network analysis of paths and open spaces.Urban Design International,13,41-50.

Ståhle, A. (2012) Place Syntax Tool (PST), in Angela Hull, Cecília Silva and Luca Bertolini (Eds.) Accessibility Instruments for Planning Practice. COST Office, pp. 173-178.

Trancik, R. (1986).Finding lost space: Theories of urban design. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.