ancient cities

898 Urban Morphology
connected urban form and landscape to economic
restructuring via globalization, to postmodern
architecture, and to qualitative techniques that
interpret urban space. Whitehand suggests that
within geography alone, three distinct types of
advances in urban morphological research have
been apparent: (1) the computer-aided analysis
and representation of urban physical form,
(2) urban morphogenetics, and (3) the exploration
of the social significance of urban landscapes.
The first research advance is quite prominent in
geoinformatics and the use of global information
system (GIS) tools in geography. Although geoinformatic
methods are used more often to analyze
physical features of the environment, the spatial
data and the GIS-based modeling expand the possibilities
for quantitatively analyzing the urban
form and the landscape of the built-up urban
environment.
In light of the dynamics of urban geography
during the past decades, which includes successive
approaches from positivist to structuralist
and humanistic, it is necessary to reevaluate the
philosophical and methodological bases of contemporary
urban morphology. The most prominent
and longest-established research themes
concern the transformation of city form and
urban spaces and the development and management
of urban landscapes. Today urban morphological
studies are more interested than before in
the agents of change. Current research is probing
the influence of land and property owners, architects,
developers, and individual residents on
urban landscape. Studies of a variety of individuals
and organizations involved in land-use development
are similar to the institutional approach
where urban form is a result of interests of different
agents and of division of power in local conflicts.
Those researchers who have focused
attention on the agents of change see conflicts
endemic to the processes of development, particularly
those occuring within existing urban areas.
In this context, future urban morphological analyses
should aim to understand the values and ideologies
of different kinds of institutions (agents),
and the decision-making processes of these institutions,
concerning urban space and life.
Dealing with the concept of the urban landscape,
urban morphology is closely related to those
research practices that, in many sciences, have
adopted qualitative methodologies to understand
the social meaning of urban landscapes and to
interpret symbolic qualities of urban space. Utilizing
linguistic and semiological methods any city can be
read as texts, a narrative of signs and symbols. Such
interpretations are different from the idea of landscape
as a mathematical or statistical construct.
Instead the focus of interest has often been the
ideological basis or power relations (cf. landscapes
of power) of creations in the landscape. Consequently,
architecture and urban design, key elements of the
visible townscape, have developed significant relationships
with urban political economy and with
producers, consumers, and exchangers of urban
space.
Urban morphology has a long history of models,
concepts, and approaches created to understand
the development of urban form and urban
landscape. Moreover, it has maintained some of its
main themes of research for a century and processed
those themes according to the current needs
of research. At the same time, urban morphological
studies have engaged in practices in other urban
disciplines and continue to pursue an elusive leading
paradigm for morphological urban analysis.
Harri Andersson
See also Land Development; Social Production of Space;
Urban Agglomeration; Urban Design; Urban
Geography; Urban Planning
Further Readings
Knox, Paul. 2006. Urban Social Geography. An
Introduction. 5th ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Larkham, Peter J. 1998. “Urban Morphology and
Typology in the United Kingdom.” Pp. 159–77 in
Typological Process and Design Theory, edited by
A. Petruccioli. Cambridge, MA: Aga Khan Program
for Islamic Architecture.
Vance, James E., Jr. 1990. The Continuing City. Urban
Morphology in Western Civilization. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Whitehand, J. W. R. 1987. “Urban Morphology.”
Pp. 250–76 in Historical Geography: Progress and
Prospect, edited by M. Pacione. London: Croom
Helm.
———. 1994. “Development Cycles and Urban
Landscapes.” Geography 79(1):3–17.