On the origin of spaces : morphometric foundations of urban form evolution
Dibble, Jacob and Prelorendjos, Alexios and Romice, Ombretta and Zanella, Mattia and Strano, Emanuele and Pagel, Mark and Porta, Sergio (2019) On the origin of spaces : morphometric foundations of urban form evolution. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design, 46 (4). pp. 707-730. ISSN 0265-8135 (https://doi.org/10.1177/2399808317725075)
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Abstract
The modern discipline of urban morphology gives us a ground for the comparative analysis of cities, which increasingly includes specific quantitative elements. In this paper, we make a further step forward towards the definition of a general method for the classification of urban form. We draw from morphometrics and taxonomy in life sciences to propose such method, which we name ‘urban morphometrics’. We then test it on a unit of the urban landscape named ‘Sanctuary Area’ (SA), explored in 45 cities whose origins span four historic time periods: Historic (medieval), Industrial (19th century), New Towns (post-WWII, high-rise) and Sprawl (post-WWII, low-rise). We describe each SA through 207 physical dimensions and then use these to discover features that discriminate them among the four temporal groups. Nine dimensions emerge as sufficient to correctly classify 90% of the urban settings by their historic origins. These nine attributes largely identify an area's ‘visible identity’ as reflected by three characteristics: (1) block perimeterness, or the way buildings define the street-edge; (2) building coverage, or the way buildings cover the land and (3) regular plot coverage, or the extent to which blocks are made of plots that have main access from a street. Hierarchical cluster analysis utilising only the nine key variables nearly perfectly clusters each SA according to its historic origin; moreover, the resulting dendrogram shows, just after WWII, the first ‘bifurcation’ of urban history, with the emergence of the modern city as a new ‘species’ of urban form. With ‘urban morphometrics’ we hope to extend urban morphological research and contribute to understanding the way cities evolve.
ORCID iDs
Dibble, Jacob ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1787-210X, Prelorendjos, Alexios, Romice, Ombretta ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5776-5632, Zanella, Mattia, Strano, Emanuele, Pagel, Mark and Porta, Sergio;-
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Item type: Article ID code: 61294 Dates: DateEvent1 May 2019Published24 August 2017Published Online9 July 2017AcceptedSubjects: Fine Arts > Architecture Department: Faculty of Engineering > Architecture
Faculty of Science > Mathematics and StatisticsDepositing user: Pure Administrator Date deposited: 19 Jul 2017 12:48 Last modified: 17 Sep 2024 00:35 URI: https://strathprints.strath.ac.uk/id/eprint/61294