Characterizing the 3-D urban morphology transformation to understand urban-form dynamics: A case study of Austin, Texas, USA

2020 ◽  
Vol 203 ◽  
pp. 103881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chunhong Zhao ◽  
Qihao Weng ◽  
Anna M. Hersperger
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Feng Song ◽  
Rongxi Peng ◽  
Zijiao Zhang ◽  
Yixi Li

Extending the concept of the morphological frame: a case study of Tangshan old military airport Rongxi Peng, Zijiao Zhang, Yixi Li, Feng Song* College of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Peking University. 100871 Beijing E-mail: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]*(corresponding author)Telephone Number: +86 132-6990-0350, +86 139-1013-6101* Keywords: China, morphological frame, three-dimensional view, airport Conference topics and scale: Urban form and social use of space/ City transformations/ Stages in territorial configuration   The concept of the morphological frame is important in urban morphology, but it has been discussed much less than other critical concepts, such as the fringe belt and the fixation line.  Passing its features on as inherited outlines, the morphological frame contains not only the linear fixation line, but also ground plan and three-dimensional aspects.  In this research, the linear, ground plan, and three-dimensional morphological frame of Tangshan old military airport during the expansion of the city after the removal of the airport is identified.  The former boundary roads of the airport exert obvious influences on the division of plots.  The former arterial roads also function as a linear morphological frame.  In relation to the ground plan, property rights and plots containing important buildings have an impact on the consequent town plan.  The distinct feature of the morphological frame of the airport is its three-dimensional constraint, i.e. the vertical clearance requirement, which restricted the height of surrounding buildings.  The impact of this institutional limit can last a very long time owing to the high cost of demolishing the old surrounding buildings or adding extra storeys even if the limit ceased to exist with the removal of the airport.  Based on this case study, this paper refines and extends the connotation of the concept of the morphological frame and further discusses the relationship between function and form.   References Conzen, M. P. (2009) ‘How cities internalize their former urban fringes: a cross-cultural comparison’, Urban Morphology 13(1), 29. Conzen, M. R. G. (1969) Alnwick, Northumberland: a study in town-plan analysis (Institute of British Geographers, London). Lin, Y., De Meulder, B. and Wang, S. (2011) ‘From village to metropolis: a case of morphological transformation in Guangzhou, China’, Urban Morphology 15(1), 5-20. Whitehand, J. W. R. (2001) ‘British urban morphology: the Conzenion tradition’, Urban Morphology 5(2), 103-109. Whitehand, J. W. R., Conzen, M. P. and Gu, K. (2016) ‘Plan analysis of historical cities: a Sino-European comparison’, Urban Morphology 20(2), 139-158.


Author(s):  
Miguel Saraiva ◽  
Teresa Sá Marques ◽  
Paulo Pinho

Shopping is much more than a wealth-generator in post-modern societies; it is intrinsically linked with the way people experience the city and an indivisible part of their day-to-day social experiences. Consequently, the literature has gradually recognized that commercial geographies are not just a consequence of economic market logics. It has been proven that there is a relationship between store-types and urban morphology, and that commerce is an important catalyst for urban regeneration and revitalization. Thus, the urban form can also be a cause for the lack of success of a shop. The amount of vacant shops has been signaled as an important problem in urban areas, affecting the structure and the identity of neighborhoods, and reflects the negative effects of the economic-crisis. Strategies to overcome this problem are usually economically-oriented and fail to capitalize on the new-found relationships between store-success and urban morphology. Thus this research wishes to test whether there are indeed correlations between specific morphological features and the existence of vacant shops, and consequently to propose how changes in the urban environment can contribute to overcome, and even prevent, such cases. The geographical distribution of vacant shops in a sample of Portuguese cities was set against morphological variables such as building age or centrality in the network (Space Syntax). Positive association was found, for example, between new developments and vacant shops, questioning the need for more store space in certain areas; and, particularly outside central neighborhoods, between open shops and high ‘choice’ (rather than high ‘integration’) axes.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Rocio Urbina

Purpose This study aims to question the fact that density has been considered only as an instrument of calculation to be used on regulation mechanisms, without taking into consideration other variables related to density. The paper proposes a framework consisting of four determining factors for urban analysis that have to be considered before starting a densification process: connectivity and permeability of network, mixture of uses, relation to urban morphology and public spaces for each district. The methodological analysis was carried out for the case of the district of Gruta de Lourdes, Quinta Normal, located in northwest Santiago, which has started a densification process the recent years. Design/methodology/approach The present discussion aims to obtain objective parameters to determine if urban development allows livability and a balanced relationship with actual urban form and diversity. There appear to be four determining factors of urban analysis: connectivity and network permeability, the mixture of uses, public spaces and urban form development. The district of Gruta de Lourdes will be used to delve into these parameters to place the debate around density in objective terms. To look in depth at each of the criteria for evaluating densification processes, various methods were selected for quantifying the observed variables: to evaluate connectivity and integration of a neighborhood with the rest of the city, the spatial configuration analysis “Space Syntax” will be used; to evaluate mix of uses, mixed-use index, or ratio of non-residential use will be used; urban morphology, plot size, housing density (dw/ha), lot coverage and floor area ratio will be used; public spaces, the percentage dedicated to each of these in m2/inhab. Findings The results allow us to conclude that it is necessary to plan densification processes via an analysis that promotes connectivity, mixture of uses, urban morphology and the available public spaces to understand density as a multivariable phenomenon. In addition, we conclude that the case study district, Gruta de Lourdes, can withstand greater demand for housing as long as the context is taken into account. A possible option to asset the densification potential could be the “infill” strategy, which aims to be a type of intervention that does not change the structure of the neighborhood as new buildings are positioned among existing ones, maintaining the form of the streets and the structure of plot divisions. Originality/value The value of the paper is to contribute to the discussion on how to renovate central areas in Latin American cities looking at variables such as connectivity, mixture of uses, urban morphology and public spaces, which are directly related to density. Moreover, the paper contributes to discuss new ways to analyze and measure densification, toward planning a district’s renovation. In addition, the quantitative methodological approach to the densification processes gives a new understanding of how to determine density. Finally, the paper reveals an opportunity to rethink the inner city toward new approaches to renovation developments.


Author(s):  
Chih-Hung Chen ◽  
Chun-Ya Chuang

Urban form in special geographical conditions: a case study in Kenting National Park. Chih-Hung Chen¹, Chun-Ya Chuang¹ ¹Department of Urban Planning, National Cheng Kung University E-mail: [email protected] Keywords: Kenting National Park, special geographical conditions, Historico-Geographical approach, morphotope Conference topics and scale: City transformations     Since the land surface is heterogeneous, the natural landscape as an essential element in contemporary morphological studies becomes the initial factor in the formation of a settlement. Moreover, the interaction with natural landscape, built form and the boundary matrix can illuminate ecological perspective on the form of the city. (Scheer, 2016) To understand the urban form under special geographical conditions, a case study is conducted in Kenting National Park, which is a tropical area with rich landscape such as moutains, lakes and rivers, plains, basins, and surrounded by seas. An analytical approach based on Historico-Geographical approach (Kropf, 2009; Oliveira, 2016) is applied in this paper. After identifying the scope of 42 settlements, there are three outer shape types such as compact, scattered, linear. Then, three kinds of morphotopes (Conzen, 1988) can mainly be figured out by comparing the combination between streets, buildings and plots: i) Detached, duplex houses on small plots along the access road; ii) Attached buildings on small plots along the main road; iii) Villas or hotels on large plots along the main road. Finally, the relationship between the larger plan units (Conzen, 1960) and the geographical conditions shows that the homogeneous configuration of plan units corresponds to the certain landscape. On the other hand, this article seeks to find out the impacts and changes caused by special geographical conditions in consequence of the landscape affects not only the formation of urban form but the evolution because its influence on socio-economic conditions.     References Conzen, M. R. G. (1960) Alnwick, Northumberland: A study in Town-plan Analysis (Institute of British Geographers, London). Conzen, M.R.G. (1988) ‘Morphogenesis, morphological regions, and secular human agency in the historic townscape, as exemplified by Ludlow’, in Urban Historical Geography. Recent progress in Britain and Germany, 253-272. Kropf, K. (2009) ‘Aspects of urban form’, Urban morphology 13(2), 105-20. Oliveira, V. (2016) Urban Morphology (Springer International Publishing, Switzerland), 102-111. Scheer, B. C. (2016) ‘The epistemology of urban morphology’, Urban Morphology 20, 5-17.


2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 22-30
Author(s):  
Pamela Sitko ◽  
Avar Almuhktar

A city can be difficult to analyse. However, approaches such as urban morphology (the study of urban form) can assist with understanding what the city is by reflecting how urban form is influenced by interdependent social, governance and economic factors that contribute to building resilience. To illustrate how urban morphology can be used as an approach for understanding disaster resilience in cities, a case study of informal settlement upgrading impacted by a flood in Bangkok, Thailand is presented. A study of the Bang Bua Canal in Thailand’s capital city is used throughout the paper to demonstrate how disaster resilience can be analysed by using four morphological layers. The paper identifies key dimensions of resilience within each morphological layer. The dimensions highlight patterns of social, governance and economic influence on the built environment. Generalisable lessons from using morphology as an approach for understanding disaster resilience include: that resilience can be a way of building upon the existing capacities of low-income neighbourhoods; the concept is a positive when it helps neighbourhoods ‘bounce forward’ and that, crucially, resilience can act as a bridge between development and disasters. Key words: disaster, resilience, urban morphology, Bangkok, upgrading


Author(s):  
Renyang Wang ◽  
Qingsong He ◽  
Lu Zhang ◽  
Huiying Wang

Enhancing urban vitality is a key goal for both the government and ordinary urban residents, and creating this vitality is emphasized in China’s urban development strategy. Enhancing urban vitality through the rational design of urban forms is a leading topic of Western urban research. An urban growth pattern (UGP) reflects the dual characteristics of a static pattern and the dynamic evolution of the external urban form. It affects urban vitality by influencing the spatial allocation of internal structural elements and patterns in the adjacent location. The cellular automata (CA) mode can effectively simulate the aggregation process of urban growth (infilling expansion or edge expansion). However, it does not simulate the diffusion of urban growth, specifically the evolution of outlying expansion. In addition, CA focuses on learning, simulating, and building knowledge about geographic processes, but does not spatially optimize collaborative land use against multiple objectives or model multi-scale land use. As such, this paper applies a coupling model called the “promoting urban vitality model,” based on cellular automata (CA) and genetic algorithm (GA) (abbreviated as UV-CAGA). UV-CAGA optimally allocates cells with different UGPs, creating a city form that promotes urban vitality. Wuhan, the largest city in Central China, was selected as a case study to simulate and optimize its urban morphology for 2025. The main findings were as follows. (1) The urban vitality of the optimized urban form scheme was 4.8% higher than the simulated natural expansion scheme. (2) Compared to 2015, after optimization, the simulated sizes of the newly increased outlying, edge, and infilling areas in 2025 were 6.51 km2, 102.69 km2, and 23.48 km2, respectively; these increases accounted for 4.90%, 77.32%, and 17.68%, respectively, of the newly increased construction land area. This indicated that Wuhan is expected to have a very compact urban form. (3) The infilling expansion type resulted in the highest average urban vitality level (0.215); the edge expansion type had the second highest level (0.206); outlying growth achieved the lowest vitality level (0.199). The UV-CAGA model proposed in this paper improves on existing geographical process simulation and spatial optimization models. The study successfully couples the “bottom-up” CA model and “top-down” genetic algorithm to generate dynamic urban form optimization simulations. This significantly improves upon traditional CA models, which do not simulate the “diffusion” process. At the same time, the spatial optimization framework of the genetic algorithm in the model also provides insights related to other effects related to urban form optimization, such as urban environmental security, commuting, and air pollution. The integration of related research is expected to enrich and improve urban planning tools and improve the topic’s scientific foundation.


1970 ◽  
Vol 2 ◽  
pp. 30-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bayes Ahmed ◽  
Muhammad Rakibul Hasan Raj ◽  
KM Maniruzzaman

Dhaka City has undergone radical changes in its physical form, not only by territorial expansion, but also through internal physical transformations over the last decades. These have created entirely new kinds of fabric. With these changes, the elements of urban form have changed. Plots and open spaces have been transformed into building areas, open squares into car parks, low land and water bodies into reclaimed built-up lands etc. This research has its general interest in the morphologic change of Dhaka City. It focuses on the spatial dynamics of urban growth of Dhaka over the last 55 years from 1952-2007. In the research, the transformation of urban form has been examined through space syntax. The aim behind using this technique is to describe aspects of relationships between the morphological structure of man-made environments and social structures and events. To conduct this research, Wards 49 and 72 of Dhaka City Corporation were selected as the study areas, of which Ward 72 is an indigenous and Ward 49 is a planned type of settlement. Being a planned residential area, the syntactic measures from this morphological analysis are showing quite unchanged and high values in all phases for Ward 49 and the physical characteristics of Ward 72 (Old Dhaka) still represent the past. The syntactic values are found to be higher for Ward 72 and than Ward 49. Higher values indicate that the street network is highly connective among each other. Time affects differently the layout of cities and the architecture of buildings. Of the many human creations, street systems are among the most resistant to change. This has been emphasized in this study, thereby facilitating the comparison of urban layouts across space and time. The interpretation of history in the light of quantitative accounts, as demonstrated in this study, will be of value to urban planners and urban designers for the future planning of modern Dhaka City.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jbip.v2i0.9554  Journal of Bangladesh Institute of Planners Vol. 2, December 2009, pp. 30-38


2021 ◽  
pp. 107808742110215
Author(s):  
Felipe Link ◽  
Andrés Señoret ◽  
Felipe Valenzuela

Current urban neoliberalism processes have shaped and changed contemporary cities, including the local scale’s built environment and social relations. This article aims to study how such transformations affect local sociability by analyzing the effects of neighborhoods’ morphology and socio-demographic characteristics on different forms of interactions and how they affect the sense of belonging. Taking the Metropolitan Area of Santiago, Chile, as a case study, we gathered secondary data on urban morphology and surveyed ten neighborhoods to measure sociability patterns. The results obtained from multilevel logistic regression models show that time living in the neighborhood and public pedestrian space is the most critical factor affecting neighborhood sociability. Moreover, instead of local ties, public familiarity is the form of sociability with the most substantial effects on a sense of belonging. We conclude that recent neighborhoods, formed by neoliberal urbanization, tend to discourage neighborhood sociability and a sense of belonging.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document