"It is crucial to establish clear principles for managing fringe belts, avoiding adopting a perspective that prioritizes private interests and instead focuses on maximizing public benefit."
"Distinguishing two types of urban greenspace form and the relationship between them will facilitate a deeper understanding of its role in urban planning and design practice".
"The planning of fringe belts remains a contentious issue that warrants further comprehensive discussions".
Over the next four years, our main goal is to make the International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF) more international, diverse, relevant and professional.
"A network in the field of Kurdish urban forms may strengthen regional and international collaborations, increase visibility in the field, and enable previously independent studies to complement each other".
"In response to Ünlü (2026), this viewpoint argues for a critical balance, and that can be illustrated by the preservation of an overall structure while allowing for the continuity of strategic axes."
This Viewpoint broadens the focus of analyses in urban morphology from classification of largely historic-geographical and typo-morphological modes towards formation and transformation of cities in their socio-political and environmental context.
In the context of established historical landscapes, it is more important than ever to balance two opposing forces: the increasing push for change, driven by the complex needs of modern society, and the essential protection and conservation of the unique identity of a place, which is safeguarded by Italian law. This paper presents the results of research that develops a broad and comprehensive framework of knowledge regarding the characteristics of the rural building heritage of the historic landscape of the Upper Valdarno in the Tuscan countryside to be preserved. The working method employed established procedures from the Italian tradition of morphotypological studies of the 1980s, updating them to reflect the country’s changing socioeconomic and legislative context. The initial phase involved identifying building morphotypes and the rules that governed their transformations over time. This allowed the reconstruction of the local morphogenetic process and, through a subsequent analysis, the deduction of structural invariants and generative principles. The combination of these elements has made it possible to prepare a classification of the rural buildings, which the public administration will subsequently use as a basis for developing intervention policies.
Rapid urbanization in the Global South presents substantial challenges for sustainable development. This study conducts a spatio-temporal analysis of urban form morphology in Hanoi, Vietnam as a prime example of an emerging metropolis. A key methodological contribution of our work is the Relative Built-up Density index, a replicable and comparable proxy for urban density. This index integrates high-resolution land cover data with national population and housing census data. Our analysis uncovers a dual morphological trajectory. We observed intense vertical densification in saturated urban districts, often driven by the ‘residentialization’ of former industrial estates, alongside rapid horizontal expansion into suburban areas spurred by policies for New Urban Areas. This dual development has revealed a significant paradox. Although the average floor area per capita has impressively increased, this trend masks a severe housing affordability crisis. The Relative Built-up Density index is a valuable, low-cost tool for monitoring these nuanced changes in data-limited regions in the Global South. Our findings underscore the need for differentiated policy imperatives. The central urban districts require infrastructural retrofitting, whereas the sprawling periphery demands proactive planning to prevent future inequality.
This study examines how typo-morphological characteristics of urban green spaces in Lima's self-built neighbourhoods reflect tensions between informal growth, community needs and equitable access. Surveys of eight parks in Delicias de Villa (2021-22) reveal that, while spaces adapt to topography through mixed forms, limited green coverage and deteriorated infrastructure constrain functionality, prompting informal guerrilla gardens. Three parks lack formal recreational zoning, while institutional encroachment affects two others. Football dominates usage patterns, marginalizing other demographic groups despite connectivity from surrounding commercial/educational facilities. The analysis identifies key design limitations, including unshaded terraces and impermeable edges, that compound spatial inequities, while self-built adaptations demonstrate alternative possibilities. Findings highlight morphological barriers to equitable access; the tension between informal solutions and systemic neglect; and the potential for integrated green networks that combine formal planning with neighbourhood self-organization patterns and hybrid zoning. The study contributes to understanding how physical design mediates social equity in the public spaces of informal settlements.
Understanding urban forms is a necessary part of urban planning and depiction of the historical and regional characteristics of cities. In Slovenia, knowledge about urban morphology is mostly the domain of, first, architects, town planners and urban designers and, secondly, geographers, and some art historians and ethnologists. The first group apply urban morphology to discern traces and trends for future spatial development of cities, while the second apply urban morphology to recognize the characteristics of city structure and their regional specificities. Their common feature is that, at first, both were based on intuitive recognition of urban forms; while, in the second half of the twentieth century, this approach was replaced by an analytical approach, which deals with entire cities, as well as particular morphological elements. Development of digital spatial analyses has enabled greater objectivity and comprehensiveness. Knowledge about urban morphology in Slovenia represents, first, the starting-point for envisioning spatial development and structures of new city quarters, which are integral elements of urbanistic plans; secondly, a key resource of characteristics of urban renewal areas and for plans for safeguarding urban tissues; and finally, a tool for defining urban design regulation. The results of such urban morphological research are an integral part of urbanistic projects, as well as in the depiction of buildings and form of cities and rural settlements.
This paper explores the correlation between street morphological complexity and aesthetic judgement perceived at street view level through the eyes of architectural and urban design experts. A literature review identified seven criteria commonly used to articulate the concept of aesthetics in street elevations, namely: rhythm, proportion, visual balance, colour coherence, material coherence, street edge continuity and street landmark. Panoramic views of 10 street elevations worldwide representing these criteria were selected to assess the correlation between visual aesthetics and complexity exposed by their urban forms. The panoramic street images were then visually manipulated through the 'add' and 'remove' technique and categorized into two groups based on the presence or absence of the aesthetic criteria. The disparity between these groups concerning changes in their visual complexity was calculated mathematically by employing Image) software. A t-test revealed a significant relationship between the presence of aesthetic criteria and their respective morphological complexity in street landscapes. Moreover, a quantitative association between landscape beauty and visual complexity was identified. The research revealed the strong correlation between street elevation aesthetics and morphological complexity. It adds a quantitative tool in the toolbox of architects and urban designers, assisting them to assess their novel design solutions for enhancing street elevation visual quality.
When the Chinese 'Opening Up Reform' of 1979 founded the city of Shenzhen, previously-occupied rural lands that fell within newly-established urban borders were densely built up to bear the housing pressure created by the rising city. The resulting settlements were known as 'Urban Villages', informal clusters of concrete buildings that today house 12 million people - half of the local population - distributed in 300 villages within the planned city. As an alternative to the tabula rasa demolitions that most villages face for typological substitution today, this paper proposes a typo- morphological analysis based on the remote study of built types and the drawing of a typological map, as a valuable approach for assessing the spatial capital of these areas. Presented as a case study of Shixia, an urban village under high redevelopment pressure, the drawing of the map is possible through an online survey of satellite images, eye-level street views, recent tour footage, and a study of the settlements' urban development. The study highlights the physical proximity between historical artifacts and informal apartment buildings, a morphological characteristic underpinning the concluding discussion on the renovation project for Shixia, carried out via the demolition of the informal urban fabric.
This study analyzes the transformation of Lisbon’s urban form following the 1755 earthquake, emphasizing how post-disaster reconstruction negotiated tensions between centralized authority and social equity – a framework that remains underexplored in Lisbon’s post-disaster urbanism studies. Through combining archival cartographic analysis with Geographic Information System (GIS), this study georeferenced and vectorized key pre-and post-1755 earthquake maps (Tinoco’s 1650 plan and a 1786 plan from an unknown author). This method resolves projection inconsistencies and metric disparities in historical units, enabling precise spatial comparisons of pre-and post-seismic urban configurations. The analysis reveals three aspects: (a) the 1755 event marked a paradigmatic shift from the traditional medieval urbanism, characterized by ecclesiastical and noble landmarks, to Enlightenment-inspired grid planning under Manuel da Maia and Eugénio dos Santos. This shift prioritized secular infrastructure and urban trade efficiency; (b) the Marquês de Pombal’s regime reduced the number of churches in Baixa by 47.1 per cent and secularized church lands through his anti-clerical policies, reflecting the Enlightenment-driven separation of state and religious power; (c) despite social reforms – Santos’ economic diversification and Maia’s public health initiatives – Lisbon’s reconstruction enhanced technocratic authoritarianism, with strategies for middle-class empowerment serving state-centric economic renewal rather than effective democratization. This research advances post-disaster urbanism studies by demonstrating how post-disaster urban transformation mediates power reconfigurations. It also provides a historical example for contemporary planners navigating tensions between centralized authority and social equity. The Lisbon case underscores that even Enlightenment-informed urban reconstruction risks intensifying social stratification when governance prioritizes economic renewal over performative democracy.
Urban morphology examines the spatial organization of the built environment alongside social processes, offering researchers a rich diversity of subject matter by enabling the examination of various urban-related topics. However, the absence of a bibliometric analysis of studies conducted in this field to date can lead to both inefficiencies for researchers and challenges in identifying gaps to position their work. A bibliometric analysis of the literature would provide researchers with a comprehensive framework, enabling them to discern trends in the field from its origins to the present. This study aims to analyze the features and development of publications in urban morphology over time. A total of 3,850 publications obtained from the Web of Science database were subjected to bibliometric analysis. Data analysis was conducted using Bibliometrix and VOSviewer software. The results indicate that publications in the field of urban morphology began increasing in the 2000s, while citation rates experienced a rapid rise after 2015. Climate-related topics, such as climate change, urban heat islands, and land surface temperature, have emerged as dominant themes in the field. Additionally, numerical methods and systems like GIS, remote sensing and space syntax are frequently employed in morphological studies. GIS has been identified as one of the foundational themes in the field, while space syntax, public space, accessibility, urban growth, urban heat islands, climate and remote sensing are recognized as potential motor themes. Machine learning has surfaced as a topic gaining traction, whereas cellular automata and fractal dimension have been identified as losing popularity. This study’s bibliometric analysis of publications in urban morphology provides a valuable resource for researchers, offering insights into trends in the field and guidance for positioning new studies effectively.
