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This book explores various ways of identifying and understanding the character of historic townscapes from a systematic and comparative perspective. It outlines several genetic approaches to the study of urban form, grounded in the traditions of geographical analysis but wholly interdisciplinary in their content and implications. It develops a philosophical and methodological basis for the field of urban morphology, stressing the reciprocal relations between town plan, building fabric and land and building utilisation. It views these elements as spatially variable accumulations and selective survivals of forms regulated by shifting patterns of corporate and individual decisions made from one...
Taking a multidisciplinary approach this addresses the academic and practical issues concerning the present and future of the built environment, arguing for its enlightened management in the future of our present-day environment.
Using time as a unifying theme, this book critically analyses many of the key concepts in modern architecture and urban design, such as modernity, innovation, timelessness and sustainability. Drawing on the statements of contemporary architects and with reference to a wide range of sources from history, philosophy, sociology and anthropology, as well as studies in diverse subjects such as science fiction, colonialism and archaeology, the text provides a new perspective on much of the thinking behind contemporary design. In addition, it develops original and practical theories on the meanings of modernity, the variable ageing of the environment, the central role of longevity in sustainability, the significance of authenticity in conservation, and the relationship between collective memory and tradition.
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.
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 reason...
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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.
Change-Transformation And Critique of Urban Spaces Urban Spaces: Typology, Media, Art and New Perspectives
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 struct...