Urban Morphology

Urban morphology is the study of urban forms and of the agents and processes responsible for their transformation over time. Urban form refers to the main physical elements that structure and shape the city including streets, squares (the public space), street blocks, plots, and buildings, to name the most important. The word “morphology” was first proposed by Goethe, the German writer and thinker, who devoted part of his work to biology. Goethe used the word “morphology” to designate the science that deals with the essence of forms. Although it was proposed as a branch of biology, the general and abstract nature of morphology enabled its application in many different fields, and at the end of the 19th century in central Europe, it started to be used in the study of cities. Urban morphology had a golden age in the first three decades of the 20th century, and then it lost importance, as urban functions and urban structures become the major concerns of urban geographers. In the second half of the 20th century, there were again innovative contributions to the study of urban form, stimulated by the activities of geographers and architects. Some of these individual contributions led to the development of schools of thought, fed by an increasing number of researchers in different parts of the world. Nowadays, four dominant schools of thought in urban morphology can be identified, with their own theories, concepts, and methods to address the physical form of cities and, as such, their impact on the social, economic, and environmental aspects of life in cities. The article is divided into thirteen sections. After this brief introduction and the presentation of some pioneer texts and general overviews on this field of knowledge, it moves to the presentation of works on the elements of urban form, on agents and processes of transformation, and then to the identification of some key works on the history of urban form. The article then shifts the focus from the “object” (the city) to the “researcher,” addressing classics in urban studies and four dominant approaches in urban morphology: historico-geographical, process-typological, space syntax, and spatial analysis. After addressing books and papers on the main theories, concepts, and methods proposed by these approaches, the article focuses on works on how these are applied in professional practice and on their relationship with wider environmental, social, and economic dimensions of cities.