TY - JOUR
T1 - The spatial distribution and frequency of street, plot and building types across five European cities
AU - Berghauser Pont, Meta
AU - Stavroulaki, Gianna
AU - Gil, Jorge
AU - Marcus, Lars
AU - Olsson, Jesper
AU - Sun, Kailun
AU - Serra, Miguel
AU - Hausleitner, Birgit
AU - Dhanani , Ashley
AU - Legeby, Ann
N1 - Accepted Author Manuscript
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Typologies have always played an important role in urban planning and design practice and formal studies have been central to the field of urban morphology. These studies have predominantly been of a historical-qualitative nature and do not support quantitative comparisons between urban areas and between different cities, nor offer the precise and comprehensive descriptions needed by those engaged in urban planning and design practice. To describe contemporary urban forms, which are more diffuse and often elude previous historic typologies, systematic quantitative methods can be useful but, until recently, these have played a limited role in typo-morphological studies. This paper contributes to recent developments in this field by integrating multi-variable geometric descriptions with inter-scalar relational descriptions of urban form. It presents typologies for three key elements of urban form (streets, plots and buildings) in five European cities, produced using statistical clustering methods. In a first instance, the resulting typologies contribute to a better understanding of the characteristics of streets, plots and buildings. In particular, the results offer insight into patterns between the types (i.e. which types are found in combination and which not) and provide a new large scale comparative analysis across five European cities. To conclude, a link between quantitative analysis and theory is established, by testing two well-known theoretical propositions in urban morphology: the concept of the burgage cycle and the theory of natural movement.
AB - Typologies have always played an important role in urban planning and design practice and formal studies have been central to the field of urban morphology. These studies have predominantly been of a historical-qualitative nature and do not support quantitative comparisons between urban areas and between different cities, nor offer the precise and comprehensive descriptions needed by those engaged in urban planning and design practice. To describe contemporary urban forms, which are more diffuse and often elude previous historic typologies, systematic quantitative methods can be useful but, until recently, these have played a limited role in typo-morphological studies. This paper contributes to recent developments in this field by integrating multi-variable geometric descriptions with inter-scalar relational descriptions of urban form. It presents typologies for three key elements of urban form (streets, plots and buildings) in five European cities, produced using statistical clustering methods. In a first instance, the resulting typologies contribute to a better understanding of the characteristics of streets, plots and buildings. In particular, the results offer insight into patterns between the types (i.e. which types are found in combination and which not) and provide a new large scale comparative analysis across five European cities. To conclude, a link between quantitative analysis and theory is established, by testing two well-known theoretical propositions in urban morphology: the concept of the burgage cycle and the theory of natural movement.
KW - built density
KW - cluster analysis
KW - land division
KW - network centrality
KW - Typo-morphology
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85071720653&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2399808319857450
DO - 10.1177/2399808319857450
M3 - Article
SN - 2399-8083
VL - 46
SP - 1226
EP - 1242
JO - Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
JF - Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science
IS - 7
ER -