Morphological Research in Planning, Urban Design and Architecture

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 reasons for this gap. One of the reasons is the lack of significant examples of how the bridging process can happen. The book addresses this specific issue. It gathers a number of cases, developed in the last years in different geographical contexts – from Latin America to Eastern Asia – that exemplify how to move from scientific research to professional practice. Each case, or set of cases, is presented in one chapter. The first part of each chapter presents the morphological view of his/her author(s) on the process of city building; the second part exemplifies how this author moves from reading to design.