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This research investigates the evolution of public spaces from the 1940s to today, emphasizing the social and spatial transformations at Taksim Republic Square. Utilizing argumentative and exploratory methods, the study conducts a detailed process analysis using various sources, including historical documents, photographs, and maps. This study’s innovation is the development of a new methodology that examines the social and spatial structure of Taksim Republic Square in ten-year intervals. Typo-morphological analysis provided spatial insights, while photographic analysis offered social perspectives. This methodology enabled both socio-spatial layers and thematic examinations. The results demonstrate how global events have directly and indirectly influenced the urban space and social life of Taksim Republic Square. It is observed that public life perpetually recreates itself through experiences. This study applies to fields such as urban planning, urban design, urban morphology, social anthropology, and social geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractUrban expansion models (UEMs) help unfold the mechanism, future pathways, and relevant repercussions of urban landscape dynamics. Although a plethora of UEMs have been developed, the field of open-access modeling platform for urban expansion simulation still presents gaps in terms of representing urban development events, regulating multilevel urban morphologies, and reflecting underlying regularities of physical urban growth. This study develops an open-access Multiengine Urban Expansion Simulation (MUSE) platform together with software that addresses some of these limitations. MUSE employs patch-based concepts and different patch generation engines to represent urban development events of distinctive types, enabling control over spatial morphology at landscape, class and patch levels. Moreover, MUSE incorporates two general regularities on urban development waves and urban diffusion and coalescence to govern physical urban expansion processes. Experiments in two cities examine MUSE’s ability in simulating realistic urban dynamics, and a series of synthetic experiments verify the operational behavior of the patch generation engines. These experiments show that MUSE can simulate a range of urban expansion types, including infill, edge growth and leapfrog expansion, and various morphologies, such as aggregated, sprawl, fragmented and compact. MUSE can empower practitioners to better project, analyze and understand complex urbanization dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based in interviews as well as analysis of planning documents and media coverage, this article scrutinizes the role of property in urban morphology by tracing two decades of attempts to redevelop Norra Sorgenfri, a partly deindustrialized area almost at the topographic centre of Malmö, Sweden. In this city, urban redevelopment projects are centrally placed within a hegemonic story of Malmö as shedding its industrial past to become a sustainability forerunner. This was the story that Norra Sorgenfri was inserted into, with initial visions underlining its potential as an exciting extension of the inner city. But in targeting this 45 ha piece of land, Malmö also planned to transform a landscape subdivided into a complex pattern of mostly private properties alongside some scattered lots of municipally owned land. Scrutinizing property in Norra Sorgenfri and how particular property owners have reacted to redevelopment efforts, we centre on the significance of this lack of municipal land. Rather than merely asserting that property matters, we thus strive to trace how property matters, to planners striving to realize visions for a future Malmö, to different land-owners in the area, to the unhoused seeking refuge on post-industrial land, and to the authorities tasked with removing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Centre-city neighbourhoods is where residents expect a diversity of residents and an active social life, along with numerous amenities. This study investigates the relationship between the transforming morphology of Over-the-Rhine – a historic centre-city neighbourhood in Cincinnati, Ohio – and its urban social life. Detailed observations and morphological analyses of four new residential projects reveal that typologies that on the face appear urban, in fact promote a suburban lifestyle that prioritizes independence and seclusion and focus on private domestic life, in an urban context. We conclude with a set of strategies to increase the interaction between the private and the public realm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social inequity is a global problem that often acutely materialises in cities, where people with lower incomes have reduced access to open spaces. This article examines how walkable access to open spaces mediated by urban morphology and topography differs for people with contrasting income profiles. Taking Lima as a case study, the spatial analysis adapted GIS tools to consider the steep slopes of informal settlements. The combined mapping and measuring of open space catchments and urban fabric permeabilities shows significant spatial inequities between low- and high-income residents that could not have been captured through traditional spatial analytical methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mass housing estates are one of the main urban landscapes associated with postwar urban development in Western cities. Despite their historic and cultural value, they often suffer from urban obsolescence and require regeneration. Contrasting with the uniformity and similarity they were designed with, these such housing estates have evolved along disparate trajectories since their initial construction 50 years ago. Thus, based on a study using the UR-Hesp methodology to evaluate spatial accessibility—and how it reflects urban quality—in this paper, we employ a retrospective approach to discuss some key ideas regarding urban design strategies for housing estate upgrades. To explore the role of street network spatial accessibility in housing estate evolution, we evaluate where housing estates are located within their urban or metropolitan area (global integration), their relationship with their surrounding area (permeability) and the capacity of their inner spatial structures to promote pedestrian movement (local choice). The study involved 28 mass housing estates in the Spanish cities of Madrid, Barcelona and Zaragoza. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article engages with the spatialities of platform urbanism by foregrounding where digital platforms are located in cities. Drawing on a geocoded data set of visible, material traces of platformization collected across neighborhoods in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, we consider the influences that characteristics of urban built environments—including existing amenities, urban morphology, and area-level socioeconomic factors—have on platforms' locations. Through a Poisson regression of these variables, we find that the presence of existing urban amenities most strongly explains the locations of material traces of urban platformization on the cityscape at the city block scale. We position platforms themselves as a novel amenity class that extends emplaced utility and lifestyle functions to urban residents. In so doing, we contend that the platformization of urban landscapes constitutes a form of "splintering amenitization," wherein platformized urban amenities demonstrate spatial patterns of colocating with other, existing urban amenities in already amenity-rich areas to the exclusion of amenity-poor enclaves. This, we argue, is important because neighborhoods' abilities to attract amenities are central to how enclaves both position themselves and compete for status within urban spatial hierarchies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the spatiotemporal evolution of urban landscapes in 19 Chinese historic water towns in the northern Zhejiang plain. Utilising historical maps and remote sensing images, we derived 2-D morphological patterns from town ground plans in 1918, 1969, 2000, and 2021 to represent urban landscape fractions (buildings, lands, and waters). Morphology-based landscape metrics reveal three distinct periods of urban landscape dynamics over the past century: stabilisation (1918–1969), accelerated growth (1969–2000), and high-speed growth (2000–2021). Our findings present a diminishing role of rivers in shaping land fragments and urban riverscapes, behind which is the weakening conventional water-human relationship during water towns' modern urbanisation. The results offer insights into shifting water town landscape patterns and regional landscape heterogeneity, prompting further considerations of hydrology-oriented urban design and planning to conserve historic urban landscapes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses informal built landscapes in nine fast-growing global cities across diverse geo-political regions using historical maps, aerial photographs, and field visits. This empirical study investigates the urban form of informal built landscapes, identifying 10 main patterns of urban form in settlements created in the 1970–2020 period. This period was characterized by rapid spatial expansion of informal settlements. These trends raise the question of whether there were common characteristics of informal land occupation, how public sector interventions have changed informal settlements, and whether certain built landscapes were more prominent globally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Special Feature explores the negotiated bureaucratic politics shaping urbanization in South Asia. City drafting refers to the flexible and contextual practices, procedures and policies required to haul diverse property regimes into order and provisionally render urban land clear and settled. The drafted city, we argue, is necessarily provisional and uneven, left open to politicised remapping, redrafting and resettlement by a host of institutionally embedded brokers, bureaucrats, clerks and surveyors each wielding their own political and socio-technical vision of land. These drafting practices, not only shape a politics of uneven urbanisation in South Asian cities, but also help to explain the persistent fractal morphology of urban property in South Asia; spanning categories of public, private, non-private, commons, unauthorised, regularised, agrarian, urban and so on. While the South Asian city is commonly understood through the high-resolution imagery of masterplanners, policymakers and investors, city drafting methodologically focuses on the grounded bureaucratic struggles of the map, plot, record and title, through which claims to property rights, exclusions and access are shaped. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using both "off the shelf" remote sensing software, machine learning and computational algorithms, this article details a new methodology to extract building and urban footprints from historical maps. We applied these methods to create the first dataset of all built-up areas (BUA) in Britain in the early nineteenth century, covering all locations with buildings in England, Wales, and Scotland. The developed methods can now be applied to other maps and regions to provide useful quantitative data for analyzing long-term urban development. The code and data created are made available with this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Nations has proposed Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), of which SDG11 aims to "make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable". This is in line with Urban Vitality's objectives. This study proposes a quantitative framework to evaluate the impact of urban morphology on urban vitality. In this framework, a proxy that is more reflective of economic and human activities is proposed for depicting urban vitality based on geographic big data; then we use a Multi--scale Geographically Weighted Regression (MGWR) regression considering spatial heterogeneity to analyze the different effects of urban form on urban vitality. Taking the Beijing Sixth Ring Road area as the study region, the results indicate that tall, large--area, multi--functional buildings have a significantly positive impact on urban vitality. These areas exhibit single--function buildings and high levels of greenery, leading to inefficient space utilization. Increasing road network density, as well as the density of transportation and public facilities, also positively influences urban vitality. However, commercial density has a negative impact on workday vitality. Furthermore, excessive green space density, a high proportion of the largest green patches, and complex green space borders all contribute to a reduction in urban vitality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Semantic 3D city models have been widely used in computer graphics, geomatics, planning, construction, and urban simulation. While traditional geometric models are used only for visualization purposes, semantic 3D city models contain abundant detailed information, such as location, classification, and functional aspects. Such semantics can facilitate a better interpretation of the built environment by computers. However, the current semantic 3D city models are mostly specific to particular city object types and features, with unclear spatial semantics, which limits their broader applications. This study, therefore, proposes a novel framework called OSMsc, where OSM refers to OpenStreetMap and sc refers to semantic city. The OSMsc framework considers OSM as the primary data source to construct city objects within the specified study area, construct semantic connectors, enrich spatial semantics, and generate the CityJSON-formatted model. The case studies demonstrate that semantic 3D city models constructed by OSMsc are free from geometric and semantic errors, applicable to any city worldwide, and have potential for urban studies, such as urban morphology and urban microclimate analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The outdoor thermal comfort of an urban area gets affected by different aspects, such as the urban materials and urban morphology (building-canopy & trees-canopy). This paper aims to investigate the effect of such different aspects on urban surface thermal performance using in-situ measurements and to predict the same by coupling a simple single-layer urban canopy model (SLUCM) with a surface energy balance model (SEBM). The asphalt road is the hottest (45°C), with a heating rate of 5.26°C/hour during the day. The building canopy shading creates a 2.8°C between the air temperatures. The results indicate the importance of green areas for cooling urban spaces due to their lower warming and surface shading from tree canopy as 7.3°C of the temperature difference between surface and air temperature reduced to 3.2°C. Averaging all the analysis, the model evaluates the surface temperature with R2 = 0.8824, mean bias = 1.86°C, MAE = 2.59°C, and RMSE = 5.13°C. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study proposes an exploratory urban morphology agent-based model (ABM) to simulate the combined impact of the establishment of hub facilities that urban residents can conveniently access, policies for promoting human interactions around them, and the introduction of trams amidst dispersed habitations in peripheral urban areas. The proposed model offers a new perspective on ways to improve the urban environment. It describes a shift from dispersed habitation to concentrated habitation in a bottom-up manner through behavioural changes at the micro level, which lead to productive human interactions in an urban setting. Specifically, the model experimentally demonstrates a trade-off between increased human interactions caused by the introduction of hub facilities that attract a diverse range of activities, and policies that promote such interactions and development amongst dispersed habitation. Additionally, the model suggests that the direction of urban growth is a consequence of collective action, implying that collaborative efforts can facilitate its improvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sub-Saharan Africa, paratransit is the primary means of mobility where accessibility to its bus terminals offers access to diverse societal opportunities. This study accounts for the capacity of bus terminals, population demand, the geographic separations between demand and supply locations, and pedestrian response to congestion in the Greater Kumasi area of Ghana. We found that access to bus terminals is low averaging 0.5 bus terminals per 10,000 people, underpinned by random distribution, low capacity, and high demand. Incorporation of urban morphology showed that high-dense settlements have better accessibility, while moderatedense and low-dense settlements have comparable accessibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study intends to explore the morphogenesis of Dire Dawa through comparative analysis. Several scholars have claimed that central and northern Ethiopian cities share a common urban form tradition, and this study compares the morphogenesis of Dire Dawa, located on the country's eastern border, to this morphological thought. The research employs a comparative analysis technique of Dire Dawa's morphogenesis based on Conzenian urban form elements. The findings reveal that the spatial organization of the case areas of the city deviates significantly from the conventional morphological philosophy of northern and central Ethiopian cities. Thus, the establishment of new ones and the redevelopment and extension of existing urban quarters must consider urban form philosophy in the nation along with the identity and conservation of urban form features. This will enable a well-managed morphological blending that might incorporate significant new concepts with existing local knowledge without having undesirable consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nairobi has historically been a laboratory for a diverse range of public housing estate typologies. Through a morphological approach, this paper analyses how Nairobi's estates have been transformed by resident's informal extensions and what impact the erstwhile typology had on their pattern of extensions. Using the concept of building culture, it identifies five socio-spatial logics used by the residents, namely disguising, enclosing, disclosing, embedding, and replacing. Nairobi's housing estates have a future if the accumulated lessons of over six decades of public housing estates can be applied and when the existing building logics are harnessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Introduction to Space Syntax in Urban Studies" by Akkelies van Nes and Claudia Yamu is a comprehensive textbook that explores the theories and methods of space syntax in urban planning and architecture. The book provides a structured and pedagogical approach to make the complex concepts of space syntax accessible to a wider audience. It covers topics such as network analysis, visibility analysis, the relationship between buildings and streets, data collection and analysis, theoretical representations of the built environment, and practical applications of space syntax. The book is a valuable resource for both academic research and practical applications in urban planning. [Extracted from the article]

The forces that drove the birth of Kwun Tong new town in Hong Kong are not comprehensively understood. Previous historical narratives have magnified the impact of industrialization or laissez-faire liberalism. This article looks at the formation of Kwun Tong new town from the perspective of migration and employment, and reveals that employment acted as a catalyst to resettlement. The production of space theory and investigation of British colonial archival documents, proposal maps, and aerial photographs reveal that new town planning unfolded relative to spatial coding in Ngau Tau Kok and urban practice in Shek Kip Mei, showing historical continuity. The social and political dynamics of immigrants and how they interactively influenced the built-environment and resettlement are highlighted in this article. Under morphological analysis, critical changes in urban form provide other angles from which to understand how the new town was shaped. In addition, morphological analysis provides a spatial dialectics, filling the research gap of town planning in Hong Kong in the 1950s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper is focused on the interdisciplinary and cross-cultural paradigm of 'habitat' – as the anthropological and ecological interdependency between domestic space and its environment. Since the mid-twentieth century, our built environment has faced a long totalizing, planetary urbanization process, which urges us to review the old conventional urban-architectural categories we use to describe and understand our cities and countryside. Faced with the urgency of a more inclusive understanding of our built environment, this paper sheds more light on the paradigm of Habitat as an interdisciplinary urban lexicon, as it gained momentum in post-war urban thinking and has influenced urban design ever since. The paper holds that the post-war discussion on Habitat represented a unique moment in which interdisciplinary thinking on the built environment became central. The paper shows alliances and resonances between the post-war CIAM's discourse on Habitat and other coeval sociological and philosophical studies to delineate a complex theoretical framework. Beyond the parameters and boundaries that have been considered and presumed conventionally within ordinary urban design and social science, the paper focuses on the complex interdisciplinary meanings, interpretations, and translations regarding the paradigm of post-war Habitat as a complex social and spatial notion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing urban morphology trajectories influence how planning interventions shape future development. Here, we use six purposefully selected neighborhoods, encompassing 10,519 individual properties, to analyze parcel-specific land use, zoning, and property boundary change over seven decades, to better understand the transformation of Brisbane, Australia. Our findings demonstrate the difficulty of overcoming the path dependency of urban morphology when attempting to deliver a contemporary goal of densifying existing urban areas. We highlight the need to tailor land use policy to specific neighborhoods by considering the differences in their existing urban morphology. This is particularly relevant when seeking to achieve densification in both regular, gridded neighborhoods and post–World War II suburbs with motorway infrastructure, neighborhood units and internal, curvilinear streets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban residential redevelopment projects in Seoul, South Korea gradually replaced the deteriorating low-rise residential fabrics with high-rise, high-density apartment complexes. Despite flat-type being the dominant style for apartment buildings, compact tower-type buildings popularised in the late 1990s to maximise density in terms of floor area ratio, ensure open green spaces and provide favourable views. However, as tower-type buildings possessed several deficiencies, such as non-southern orientation, difficulties in cross-ventilation, and comparatively higher construction costs, a compromise emerged in the 2000s. In succession, various morphologically modified and intentionally deformed buildings and their accompanying site planning configurations emerged to overcome the shortcomings of the newly built high-rise apartment complexes. This study aims to (1) track the evolving apartment building morphology and (2) identify different layout configurations in accordance with the transformed building types, specifically those constructed in redeveloped and reconstructed housing projects. Diverse building modification and relevant arrangement strategies are primarily oriented to the internal residents' interests, while the public dimension outside the complex is inconspicuously underestimated. Thus, it is crucial to further perceive and promote awareness of the public space in ways that counterbalance the dominantly privatized pedestrian environment and neighbourhood-scape based on systematic comprehension of apartment buildings and their layout morphologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following article focuses on the morphological development of Estonian village structures during the last several hundred years using a comparative qualitative map analysis based on historical maps and plans. The results show that the different stages in the genesis of Estonian village structures can be described by distinct characteristics that are still distinguishable in modern landscapes. Understanding how these forms have changed throughout history has the potential to guide future spatial planning decisions in the Estonian countryside. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By moving beyond the walls of monumental religious architecture, this article adopts a city-lens approach to the investigation of lived Buddhism in the third century cities of northern Gandhara. Based on the evidence available for the city of Barikot (Swat, N Pakistan), the layered complexity of urban religiosity is approached here through a contextual analysis of the built-up environment and intra-site spatial distribution of religious artefacts. By focusing on the interaction of three distinct urban realms (household, inter-household, Buddhist saṃgha) in two specific urban spaces, domestic spaces and urban temples, an argument is made for both the existence of a multi-layered household religiosity with compartmentalised forms of religious communication as well as for the appropriation of urban forms of religious communication by the urban Buddhist communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work studies urban form and function in Hispanic American colonial port cities. By combining different research questions and points of view, new insights are given into matters such as the origin of their urban grids, the development of their fortifications throughout the colonial era, and the military versus trade function they accomplished. The focus is on Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, with other Hispanic colonial cities also included in the discussion. The field work is based on primary literature about colonial laws and ordinances and the reports of several viceroys in the eighteenth century as well as a wide array of secondary literature in different languages. The results show that, while these cities fulfilled an important role as trade nodes, this function was second to their military role. However, both functions are found to be interdependent in a number of ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Measuring building setbacks and heights along streets is important for evaluating the variability of streetscape skeletons, the 3D spaces of streets defined by the arrangement of surrounding buildings. Its evaluation requires computing the streetscape width, defined as the front road width of a building plus the setbacks of both sides of the front roads, the building heights and the ratio of the streetscape width to the building height, known as the streetscape width-to-height ratio. However, measuring building setbacks and streetscape widths with geographical information systems (GIS) workstations remains theoretically and technically challenging because conventional methods fail to define the ambiguous boundaries of streetscape skeletons. To address this issue, we developed a new method for defining and measuring building setbacks and streetscape widths automatically and in a consistent way. A new basic spatial unit was also developed for evaluating the variability in building setbacks, heights, streetscape widths and streetscape width-to-height ratios not only in plots focusing on classical urban morphologies but also along streets focusing on a pedestrian perspective. The method contributes practically to the measurement and evaluation of streetscape skeletons in a bottom-up way at fine intervals without the need for setting predetermined spatial units. Measuring building setbacks and heights along roads is important for evaluating the variability of streetscape skeletons. However, measuring these in an actual complex urban space without vagueness on a GIS workstation is difficult. We have developed a new method for defining and measuring building setbacks and streetscape widths automatically. A new basic spatial unit for evaluating streetscape skeletons is proposed focusing on the plot geometry and a pedestrian perspective. The method contributes to the evaluation of streetscapes in a bottom-up way at fine intervals without setting predetermined spatial units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with both the affective and material dimensions of encounters among people, and between people and the city, during the COP26 summit in Glasgow, focusing on protest activities that aimed to engage the broader public. The discussion draws from my participation in, and observations of, two protests, the Youth Activist Climate March and the Climate Activist March, and observations of changes in public open spaces in Glasgow for COP26. Fieldwork street photography was instrumental in this study for discovering diverse encounters that were sometimes too transient to register through observations alone. It was deployed as a heuristic method, drawing from personal 'in the moment' experiences of the protests, as well as theories of public space and urban morphology, with the aim to discover how changing interactions between bodies and material spaces temporarily reconfigured Glasgow's public realm. By making material/social relationships more transparent, this paper aims to address shortcomings in protest literature through addressing the material specificity of urban space. I argue that the diversity of Glasgow's urban spaces enabled varied engagement with protest activities, among protesters, and between protesters and onlookers, and as a result created an overall inclusive, affective experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Framed within the context of contemporary place making and the urban tourism destination, a novel trans-disciplinary approach to mapping and interpreting gentrification and cityscape change is presented. A combination of multi-scalar cartographic and visual techniques, including Google Street View (GSV) and geo-tagged images (Photo Sphere), is applied within the setting of Valletta, Malta, to convey cartographically the dynamism of urban transformations and detect tourism-led gentrification in a rapid way through the identification of the visual and aesthetic markers of gentrification. Utilising a critical approach, such map-making can inform and transform the understanding of the processes underpinning urban change and their cartographic and visual representation. It identifies and highlights issues of image and street-level 'realities' for both (re)imagining and marketing place. Individual tourists are able to access and utilise GSV and other mobile digital imaging and cartographic tools, as well as social media, to create their own, potentially counter, place-imaginaries and interpretations of urban change, thereby encouraging and/or discouraging visiting the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Srinagar city experienced significant expansion especially during the last four decades, which has negatively impacted its aquatic resources and their functioning. The present study aims to assess the impact of the urban growth on the natural drainage network of the Srinagar city from 1971 to 2020. The changes in the morphometry of natural drainage and urban morphology were quantified through the selected indicators. Four sample sites were selected from the study area for detailed ground validation of the quantified changes. Our results reveal that there has been almost a fourfold increase in the built-up area, taking place in all the directions, primarily in the form of edge expansion that has largely encroahed the urban streams. The findings further indicate that on the whole drainage system of the city has lost almost 15% of its total capacity. The effects of increasing built-up warrant immediate attention to initiate conservation measures for the natural drainage network of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his 2000 book, Between Camps, and its 2005 follow-up, Postcolonial Melancholia, Paul Gilroy described postcolonial melancholia—a failure to mourn the loss of imperial prestige—and conviviality—the messy and banal navigation of fractally complex but increasingly less meaningful lines of difference in the city—as two opposing but related characteristics of the British urban experience at the dawn of the century. Nowhere is this more evident than in the neighbourhoods of riverine East London, whose identity and urban morphology have been shaped by the river running through them, upriver to the heart of the imperial metropolis and downriver to Britain's extensive colonies and postcolonies. In these long-standing arrival quarters, the structure of feeling includes two elements in tension with each other: a mode of lament expressing a form of morbid attachment to the perceived greatness of the imperial age, whose ghostly afterlife is etched in the monumental architecture of London's boroughs and inscribed in the names of its streets and buildings; and a fragile emergent form of convivial coexistence that finds resonance in alternative narratives of the imperial past. Gidley's article addresses these issues through data from long-standing research engagement with Bermondsey and Deptford on the southern shore and with Barking on the northern shore of the Thames. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Characterizing accessibility to healthcare is complex, requiring the consideration of geography, socioeconomic and cultural factors. The Three-Step Floating Catchment Area (3SFCA) was used to account for population demand, the capacity of health facilities, and the geographic separations between locations of demand and supply in the Greater Kumasi, Ghana. The results show that accessibility to healthcare is low, about 2.34 physicians per 10,000 persons. The facilities have favorable geography: high number, detailed coverage, and proximity, but plagued with low numbers of physicians and high demand. The study synthesized analytical results with questionnaire survey to better characterize accessibility to healthcare by geography. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Exploring the driving factors behind urban polycentricity is of paramount significance for advancing the implementation of urban polycentric strategies. In this, paper takes 41 cities in the China's Yangtze River Delta region are taken as the research objects, and the degree of urban polycentricity is measured using non-parametric and social network methods. Then, the geographic probe method is applied to reveal the driving factors of the spatial differentiation of urban polycentricity. The research results showed that (1) the distribution of hot and cold spots of the urban polycentricity index was roughly the same between 2006 and 2015, while and the distribution of hot and cold spots of the urban polycentricity index varied greatly between 2015 and 2020. (2) In 2010, the proportions of the secondary and industry tertiary industries and the topographic relief were the main driving factors of urban polycentricity. By 2020, the population size and topographic relief were the key drivers of urban polycentricity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban morphology is important in a broad range of investigations across the fields of city planning, transportation, climate, energy, and urban data science. Characterising buildings with a set of numerical metrics is fundamental to studying the urban form. Despite the rapid developments in 3D geoinformation science, and the growing 3D data availability, most studies simplify buildings to their 2D footprint, and when taking their height into account, they at most assume one height value per building, i.e. simple 3D. We take the first step in elevating building metrics into full/true 3D, uncovering the use of higher levels of detail, and taking into account the detailed shape of a building. We set the foundation of the new research line on 3D urban morphology by providing a comprehensive set of 3D metrics, implementing them in openly released software, generating an open dataset containing 2D and 3D metrics for 823,000 buildings in the Netherlands, and demonstrating a use case where clusters and architectural patterns are analysed through time. Our experiments suggest the added value of 3D metrics to complement existing counterparts, reducing ambiguity, and providing advanced insights. Furthermore, we provide a comparative analysis using different levels of detail of 3D building models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies present a confluence, although rarely discussed, of urban morphology and urban green infrastructure (UGI), considering their growing concern for green space planning and management during landscape revitalisation. This research thus explores their under-investigated associations: the significance of the fringe belt (FB) as both a morphological concept and physical entity for UGI planning. Following the direction of this intersection, it explores the implications for urban landscape revitalisation, taking a UNESCO cultural-historical city Quanzhou (China) as a case study. The case study follows a historico-geographical approach to landscape analysis. The collected information is synthesised into the ArcGIS platform to create diachronic models to support the analysis. It presents interconnections of the uncoordinated redevelopment of inner FB, disintegration of the green-space system, and socio-spatial and environmental problems in Quanzhou. An integrated spatial strategy is recommended to retain the connectivity, accessibility, and multifunctionality of its inner FB as UGI for landscape revitalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The second wave of COVID-19 triggered crises in India and resulted in a regional scale lockdown (March 2021), exempting specific economic sectors from economic misery. A national lockdown was announced during the first wave of this pandemic (March, 2020), resulting in a dramatic improvement in air quality. The present study explored whether the regional lockdown has an equal influence on air quality in various urban morphological units as the national lockdown. Results show that the regional lockdown in 2021 improved air quality by 32% more than the national lockdown in 2020. The rate of air quality improved between pre-lockdown and during a nationwide lockdown was 33%, 41% and 15% in industrial, commercial, and residential zones, respectively, but 53%, 46% and 43% during the regional lockdown. Because of the regional lockdown, air quality has improved at a quicker pace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While informal street vending is defined by its location in urban public space, the spatialities of street vending are often reduced to generic context. Applying an assemblage approach, we analyse the spatial logic of street vending in metropolitan Manila at multiple scales. Findings show how intensities of trading are unevenly distributed, and geared to urban morphologies, pedestrian flows, redundant spatial niches, codes of control and competing appropriations of public space. This empirical work expands our understanding of informal urbanism and provides a framework for more effective urban design and planning practices that protect livelihoods of the urban poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Kaifeng is a well-known ancient capital in Chinese history. However, existing knowledge of its urban history derives primarily from historical documents rather than archaeology. In the last decade, archaeologists, including several authors of this article, have conducted many systematic excavations in Kaifeng city and unearthed large amounts of cultural material. Based on these materials, this article attempts to reconstruct the history of Kaifeng's urban development beyond text, explores the local depositional features and summarizes experience of urban archaeology. Our investigation suggests that the urban space of Kaifeng has been continuously used for over 1000 years, while its city boundaries, political core zones and central axis have remained relatively unchanged; the flood deposits make it possible to conduct fieldwork under the 'Pompeii premise'. Additionally, our experience suggests that an holistic design, an applied multi-disciplinary approach, and coordination with city administrators, constructors and residents are key to successful urban archaeology programs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature is increasingly approaching the participation of households in the delivery of urban services through the lens of co-production. However, there has been no in-depth exploration of the relationship between incremental changes in the urban fabric (urban typologies and morphologies) and the forms of adaptations of co-produced water and sanitation services (WSS). The paper draws on three planned neighbourhoods in Hanoi to examine these incremental changes by considering the transformation of the neighbourhood at different scales and the consequent evolution of the sociotechnical arrangements for the delivery of water and sanitation services. By exploring forms of reconfiguration of the built environment and embedded water infrastructures, the paper outlines the possibility of an alternate reading of service co-production initiatives as incremental spatial practices, with an emphasis on the role of technology in allowing transformation processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the 1970s, the existing historical building stock gained more value. Monument protection was gradually introduced in the urban planning process as were its methods and instruments. Approaches for an urban development based on the existing building stock were made in both former german countries, GDR (German Democratic Republic) and FGR (Federal Republic of Germany), even if the extent was different. Especially with the regeneration of the historical old towns in the GDR beginning in late 1989, early 1990, the preservation of urban architectural heritage formally became an integrated part of urban development strategies in united Germany. The adaption and development of instruments to protect and develop historical city centres is part of the research project 'Stadtwende', funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. Surveys based on the results of qualitative expert interviews and archive research show that the 'turn' (Wende) in 1989 had an impact on the development of a planning practice that took the existing building stock into account. With regard to recent trends the paper shows the historical genesis of the preservation of urban heritage in urban planning and asks to what extent it could support a resource-saving urban development today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban environments face the serious challenge of complying with relatively tight constraints regarding land and tenant density. In fact, this has become a key constraint in both current and future urban designs. Moreover, wellbeing is strongly influenced by urban planning and design decisions. The objective of this study was to examine the effect of spatial parameters on the wellbeing of potential dwellers through VR experiments. The research incorporated two experiments that were conducted in a VR laboratory, by manipulating virtual twins of an existing urban environment. The first experiment focused on increased density levels combined with commerce and vegetation, while the second one focused on variant morphologies within a fixed density level. The results indicate that morphology, density, vegetation, and commercial activity have a significant impact on people's wellbeing. The findings of this research emphasize certain design principles that could improve urban designs that are part of densification processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary city is (re)produced in fragments through numerous typological variations. However, the current practice of spatial planning has yet to suggest effective control mechanisms to steer the piecemeal (trans)formation of cities. This paper argues for parametric modelling as a method of guiding fragmentary developments towards the pluralist production of coherent urban fabrics. Following the parametric definition of the basic morphological codes, the paper discusses the computational capacity of parametric modelling to simulate multiple variations in local fabrics and their consecutive integration within a larger context. The proposed model is tested in the context of Istanbul, Turkey. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a new method to create spatial data using a generative adversarial network (GAN). Our contribution uses coarse and widely available geospatial data to create maps of less available features at the finer scale in the built environment, bypassing their traditional acquisition techniques (e.g. satellite imagery or land surveying). In the work, we employ land use data and road networks as input to generate building footprints and conduct experiments in 9 cities around the world. The method, which we implement in a tool we release openly, enables the translation of one geospatial dataset to another with high fidelity and morphological accuracy. It may be especially useful in locations missing detailed and high-resolution data and those that are mapped with uncertain or heterogeneous quality, such as much of OpenStreetMap. The quality of the results is influenced by the urban form and scale. In most cases, the experiments suggest promising performance as the method tends to truthfully indicate the locations, amount, and shape of buildings. The work has the potential to support several applications, such as energy, climate, and urban morphology studies in areas previously lacking required data or inpainting geospatial data in regions with incomplete data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is aimed at introducing the readers of Planning Perspectives to the Hispanic International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF-H), a network for urban studies from morphological perspectives in Spanish-speaking countries. The platform is framed within the context of the research carried out at ISUF and its relationships with other schools and traditions of urban forms. The paper considers the themes and approaches presented at the ISUF-H conferences in Toledo (2016), Zaragoza (2018), Guadalajara-Mexico (2019), Barcelona (2020) and San José-Costa Rica (2021). In general, the diversity and vitality of research in the Spanish language is confirmed with the emergence and renewal of the themes and methodologies of analysis and eclectic approaches – with those of architects and urban planners dominating over those of geographers and specialists from other disciplines; this, in turn, demonstrates that barriers in the multidisciplinary dialogue remain and are an important challenge. Retrospective views and diagnoses based on the analysis of urban forms coexist with forward-looking views that consider current urban processes. The challenges of the ISUF-H are, therefore, akin to those of the ISUF, but also complementary, since they acknowledge the need to promote inclusive and multidisciplinary views over sectorial ones and to expand the anglophone field to include research carried out in Spanish-speaking countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the new concept of 'ambiente urbano', as emerged at the turn of the last century in Venice. Painters, photographers, and writers contributed to the elaboration of this concept, partly reflected into the new term 'Venezia minore'. Born out of the conflict initiated in 1885, due to urban modernization projects, these notions were initially based on spatial identity and focused on the less known corners of the city, fostering their conservation. Following 1910, however, architects start applying these concepts to the field of urban design, as shown in the social housing settlement of Sant' Elena, in the city's periphery. In the 1940s, there was an attempt to mirror the old into the new, by recreating urban patterns, presumably typical of the old city of Venice. It was until the publication in 1948 of the book Venezia minore analysing in terms of morphology the urban context, that this story was fully elaborated. Highlighting unknown fragments of Venetian contemporary urban history and integrating them to the planning history of the city, this article overcomes the usual antithetical reading of conservation against sanitary planning, throwing light to the Italian concept of ambiente and tracing its history up to the 60s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classification of urban functional areas plays an important role in urban planning and resource management. Although previous studies have confirmed that different urban functional areas have different morphological structures and Land Surface Temperature (LST) characteristics, these two types of characteristics have rarely been fully integrated and used for functional area classification. In this paper, a new framework for classifying urban functional areas is proposed by combining urban morphological features and LST features. First, metrics are constructed from three levels, namely, building, road and region, which are used to portray urban morphology; LST is retrieved using thermal infrared remote sensing to reflect LST features with four metrics: the average temperature, maximum temperature, temperature difference and standard deviation of temperature. Then, the functional areas are classified into four categories: service/public land, commercial land, residential land and industrial land. A random forest algorithm is used to effectively fuse the features of these two categories and classify the functional areas. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is tested in the study area of Shenzhen City, Guangdong Province. The results show that the combined classification accuracy of the proposed classification method is 0.85, which is 0.26 higher than that of the classification model based on urban morphology and 0.1 higher than that of the classification model based on LST features. The proposed framework verifies that the integration of LST features into urban functional area classification is reliable and effectively combines urban morphology and LST features for functional area classification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The morphology of the urban habitat displays the outcomes of agonistic, competing interests. Often, conflicts focus on the symbols that in the city eulogise the prevailing groups and celebrate their achievements. Modifying the urban morphology, therefore, is among the ways ruling groups and their achievements can be contested, with the subaltern attacking signs, symbols and images that remind them of their subordination. This paper looks at mythic (or systemic) violence, and at signs and symbols embedded in the city, it then refers to the defacement and toppling of monuments (discussed in City, Volume 24, Numbers 3–4, June-August 2020) and concludes with an analysis of such recent actions as contentions around social time, struggles over memory and temporality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jeremy Whitehand died suddenly in June 2021 just short of his 83rd birthday. He was a world-leading figure in urban morphology and his disciplinary home was urban geography, but he was a founder-member of the Planning History Group (forerunner of IPHS). This appreciation explores his work and the centrality of a planning history perspective in his approach to studying urban form. In retirement he was making headway in introducing this research-based, historically-informed perspective into planning and urban decision-making through UNESCO, in the UK, in Romania and especially in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The population analysis unit (PAU) is the basic unit employed in studies of urban populations. The commonly used PAUs are mostly administrative divisions, regular geographic grids. However, these units are different from urban forms, and cannot be used to consider the characteristics of population distributions and flow changes. In this study, we proposed a method for constructing a fine population analysis zone (FPAZ) based on the population aggregation pattern and urban form elements. First, considering the spatial structure of a city and the fine-grained demands of population analysis, the basic analysis unit was divided according to the functional heterogeneity of the population activity region at the micro-scale by combining urban form elements. Next, a population aggregation preference model was established by considering the spatial distribution characteristics of the local aggregation of the urban population flow and long-term stability characteristics depending on the dynamic changes in entrances and exits. Finally, we divided the FPAZ combined with the microstructural elements. Experimental results showed that compared with other types of PAUs, the FPAZ was more consistent with the urban morphology and was an appropriate and general spatial unit for expressing the accurate characteristics of population distributions and changes at the micro-scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite ongoing efforts to encourage the use of urban morphology tools into current practice, uptake remains limited. Shortcomings are largely attributed to time and resource intensive methods of historical settlement transformation study. However, developments in quantitative morphological approaches offer new possibilities for efficiency and easier adoption of research tools in practice. This paper proposes the use of typo-morphology methods to inform the adoption of form-based design guidance in neighbourhood master plans. The aim of the study is to develop a comprehensive yet flexible method for form-based character assessment (FBCA) of residential streets. The resulting FBCA classification identifies streets where compliance with form-based design rules could be tightened. The FBCA method is empirically tested in the context of the local neighbourhood plan for Radlett, Hertfordshire in the United Kingdom, offering reflections from practice on the usefulness and limitations of the method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]