ancient cities

cities (cf. intraurban physiognomy). Depending on
research interests, such reorganization can involve
a variety of processes of change that operate at different
spatial scales, from individual buildings to
morphological transformations of city blocks,
neighborhoods, and quarters. The internal differentiation
of cities traditionally shows morphological
elements of residential, commercial, and
industrial functions. In inner-city areas and especially
close to central city core, the pressure to
reorganize the interior space of the city has been a
continuous process; the result is that a distinctive
morphological element is created that contains a
mixture of residential, commercial, and industrial
functions. This transformation of urban space has
been considerable since the mid-1970s. The vitality
of the central city core has been reemphasized.
Themes such as the quality of urban living (gentrification,
consumption palaces, and sophisticated
entertainment) and enhanced social control over
both public and private spaces have assumed widespread
importance to the internal structure of the
city and to urban landscapes.
The study of urban landscapes has been closely
linked to the urban morphological frame. Especially
in British urban morphological studies, three of the
most important research lines are the nature and
amounts of urban landscape change, the agents
involved in the processes of change, and the management
of that change. The traditional research
line has connected the analysis of the town plan to
the development of the urban landscape. Here the
Conzenian townscape is full of layers of past urban
development indicating how cities as entities have
developed as physical configurations of streets,
spaces, and many types of physical structures, and
how urban societies have worked out their lives
following the experiments of their predecessors.
According to Conzen, the historical layers of urban
landscapes represent accumulated experience and
are thus a precious asset and valuable tool for conservation
planning. This asset is threefold. First,
different landscape features and physical structures
of the various parts of cities help people to identify
with places. Preferences for particular cities or
parts of cities (like parks, commercial cores, or
entertainment areas) are especially bound up with
the physical appearance of buildings and other
landscape features. Second, it helps the individual
and society to orient themselves in time, in the
Urban Morphology
897
sense that the urban landscape provides strong
visual experience of the history of an urban area
and makes concrete the different experiences of
time. Third, the combination of forms created by
different elements in old, established urban landscapes
and by the spatially oriented networks of
social relations have aesthetic value.
In the second line of research, the study of
urban landscapes has been linked to the types of
agents and the specific organizations and individuals
responsible for their creation. The object
of study within the morphogenetic tradition has
not been the agents themselves as much as it has
been the form and places created by the agents.
More current research since the 1990s has
addressed the planning and management issues of
the urban landscape. Historical and culturally
sustainable values and reactions against modern
architecture and large-scale redevelopment
processes have provided favorable starting points
of such investigations. Urban morphological
research, though, has continued to delimit urban
landscape units and their significance for urban
landscape management and conservation planning.
This research has been successfully carried
out on commercial cores, industrial waterfronts,
and residential areas.
Urban morphological approaches have been an
important root of urban studies. The study of
physical qualities of the urban structure is one of
the oldest branches of urban geography, especially
in Europe, where the research on townscapes and
morphological regions has occupied a permanent
place. Most of these studies have been highly
descriptive, and this led to criticism in 1960s and
1970s against the urban morphological approach
at a time when different approaches, such as
structuralistic and humanistic approaches,
appeared in urban geography and many urban
geographers found more interesting themes to
attract their research activities. In spite of this,
urban morphology research has expanded in the
1980s and 1990s, with its main concern being
urban landscapes.
The growth of research on the physical form of
urban areas has occurred in several disciplines
simultaneously—in (urban) geography, planning
and planning history, urban design, (landscape)
architecture, and urban history. In urban geography,
critical and humanistic approaches have