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Urban Morphology and Design:

Introduction

Article in Built Environment · December 2011

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 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN:  INTRODUCTION
Urban Morphology and Design:
Introduction
OLGU ÇALIŞKAN and STEPHEN MARSHALL
Urban planning has seen a succession of
clashing ideologies and fashions swinging
in and out of favour over the last century,
which are intimately tied up with both
urban morphology and urban design
(figure 1). Camillo Sitte (1899) used a mor-
phological understanding of the urban
fabric to formulate principles for urban
design, or ‘city planning according to artistic
principles’. Then along came Le Corbusier
who castigated those traditional urban fabrics
and proposed his own modernist solutions
(1933). But those modernist solutions in turn
fell out of favour, criticized by the likes of
Jane Jacobs (1961), just as more traditional
townscapes became appreciated once more
for their urban qualities (Cullen, 1961).
Modernist-style urban fabrics continue to
be created and criticized (Trancik, 1986;
Alexander, 2002a, 2002b; Shelton, 2011). In
response, neo-traditional urbanists propose
contemporary designs based on an appre-
ciation of traditional urban fabrics (for
example, Katz, 1994; Krier, 2006).
However, some of the contemporary
approaches, although in principle alert to
the failures of Modernism, may in practice
replicate some of their undesired effects,
not least in the case of large-scale master-
planned developments, gated communities,
and whole new settlements planned from the
top down. In several respects the lessons of
Jacobs and Alexander have not been learned
(Marshall, 2009, pp. 48–49). As far as master-
planned developments are concerned, indeed,
the defining battle between conventional
modernist and neo-traditional approaches
is to a large degree a battle over the urban
fabric (Ibid., p. 3): in terms of the format of
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
streets and spaces, their relation to buildings,
the scale and grain of development, and the
relation to urban context (Hebbert, 2003;
Mehaffy, 2008; Campbell, 2010).
Underlying these arguments is an
implicit premise that better linkage of urban
morphology and urban design produce better
places – and the converse argument, that the
lack of integration leads to less successful
urbanism. This is to say that urban designers
creating urban compositions without a good
understanding of the form and functioning of
the existing urban fabrics risk failing to fulfil
the place-making potential of those who do
integrate their design with a morphological
understanding.
There seems to be unexplored potential
to integrate better urban morphology and
design to help inform better design and
planning practice; and it is this potential
that this issue of Built Environment sets out
to explore. In this opening paper, we first
introduce some current problems concerning
place making in relation to morphology and
design, and sketch out some background to
the fields of urban morphology and urban
design, including a comparison of the scope
of their literature. From here, we articulate
what we believe are the outstanding
challenges, before providing an overview of
the papers in this issue, and finally reflecting
on their implications.
The Problem of Urban Place Making
in Perspective
The problem of urban place making can be
seen manifested in three ongoing challenges
relating to the lack of integration between
381
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN

Figure 1. Contrasting
traditions of the
morphological perspective in
design thinking: classifying
the instance, criticizing the
model, manifesting the
alternative. Top: Same-scale
comparison of the traditional
and Radiant City’s new
modern block patterns by
Le Corbusier (1935). Middle:
Comparison of traditional
and modern urban blocks in
favour of the neo-traditional
alternative by Léon Krier
(1977). Bottom: The comparison
of modernist setting with the
proposed urban fabric of the
‘generic city’ by Rem Koolhaas
(1995) (Sources: Le Corbusier,
1964, p. 164; Krier, 2009, p.
136; Koolhaas et al., 1995, pp.
1126, 1133).

382 BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN:  INTRODUCTION
urban morphology and urban design. We can
refer to these here for convenience as ‘lack of
socio-spatial perspective’, ‘big architecture’
and ‘two-dimensional planning’.
The first concern relates to the perceived
dislocation of urban design from socio-
spatial concerns such as the public good,
social and environmental justice, ecological
sustainability, socio-economic diversity and
fairness (Gunder, 2010). Cuthbert (2007,
p. 177) criticized urban design for lacking
a ‘concerted attempt to link the material
creation or “designing” of urban space and
form to fundamental societal processes’
beyond the enduring market rationale. In
today’s context, urban form can often seem
a simple aggregate of private interests – or
‘form follows finance’ (Lang, 1994). Such a
context based on piecemeal and collage-like
urban (trans)formation patterns comprises
both positive and negative consequences with
regards to morphology and design. While the
process leads to deep fragmentation in the
morphology of cities (Busquets, 2006, p. 9), it
also indicates new opportunities for a better
production of city parts with increased aware-
ness on the intermediate scale of urban form.
The second concern, that of urban design
as ‘big architecture’, applies to contemporary
redevelopment models involving massive
compositions of large floorplate and visually
monumental high-rise office and residential
developments. While this format may be
acceptable from an economic perspective, the
result may be criticized from a morphological
point of view (Scheer, 2008, p. 140; Allies,
2010, p. 20). The creation of these huge ‘pack-
age programmes’ involving uniform architec-
tural treatment and the consolidation of fine-
grained collective forms is identified as one of
the major factors behind the loss of positive
morphological qualities of our districts. The
more urbanism loses its ability to operate
with the complex patterns of property struc-
ture on urban space – ‘the lost art of sub-
division’ – the less open, diverse and coherent
are the urban fabrics turned out (Campbell
and Cowan, 2002; Campbell, 2010, p. 5).
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
A related problem with the point of ‘big
architecture’ results from another miscon-
ception in contemporary urban design, which
considers the design of urban fabric from the
perspective of product or graphic design.
Considering urban form simplistically as a
composite object or geometrized pattern,
this interpretation in urban design over-
emphasizes the surface reality of form (and
therefore disregards the collective quality of
urban form), the potential creativity within
urban types and typologies – ‘novelty for its
own sake’ – and the content-wise possibilities
of the context (figure 2).
The third concern derives from the plan-
ning side of the urbanism. Le Corbusier (1933,
p. 198) classically asserted that city plan-
ning is a three-dimensional – rather than a
two-dimensional – science. The lack of form
and space quality in local development plans
and the enduring ‘two-dimensional land-
use paradigm’ in planning (Hall, 2008, pp.
77–78) is still one of the major problems
for many contemporary planning systems.
As asserted by Walters (2007, pp. 31–41)
the root of the problem goes back to the
early transformation of spatial planning
emerging as an autonomous field by end-
ing its reliance on physical design. Such a
transformation basically signifies the dis-
rupted relationship between policy design
and physical (or ‘physicalist’) planning from
the emergence of systems planning from the
late 1950s planning (see also Taylor, 1998), to
contemporary approaches such as advocacy,
incrementalist, strategic, and environmental
planning (Klosterman, 1985) and social policy
perspectives (Davidoff, 1965). Although such
a transformation may be considered as a
natural evolution of urban planning in the
context of increased socio-spatial and political
complexity, at least from the point of view
of planning theory, it has resulted in a kind
of disconnection between planning and the
normative theories of urban form in design
which mainly considers the substantial
physical nature of human settlements (Talen
and Ellis 2002). The paradigmatic shift in
383
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN
planning has also found its reflection in the
changing mode of representation of space;
the more procedural and conceptual nature
of spatial planning has lost the emphasis on
the perceived quality of the intermediate
scale-urban form. This gap has filled by the
emergence of urban design.
The Agency of Urban Morphology
and Design
Finding its historical roots in the continental
approach of ‘urban architecture’ and function-
alist ‘urbanism’ since the late 1920s (Mum-
ford, 2009), urban design was recognized as a
disciplinary solution for the real gap between
architecture and planning through the 1960s
(Gosling, 2002, p. 7). Currently, urban design
has become recognized as an interdisciplinary
384
Figure 2. Above: The competition
entry by MVRDV (2008): a mixed-
use urban ecological master plan,
Tirana, Albania (first prize). Below:
the design scheme of Lingang
New City, Shanghai, China (gmp–
von Gerkan, Marg and Partner
Architects, 2002). Is there a third
way out for the contemporary
urban design apart from
generically objectifying collective
urban form or total geometric
control for a symbolic formalism?
(Source: By courtesy of MVRDV
and gmp © Heiner Leiska)
field of study, practised by those from
architectural and planning backgrounds
(Lang, 1994, Moudon, 1992). Urban design
is sometimes seen as a specialized side
discipline or sub-discipline of planning, or
an extension of architecture; or up to a point
could be considered a discipline (if not quite
a profession) in its own right, with a range of
journals and periodicals dedicated to it.1
While urban design was progressing on
its own track, another interdisciplinary
research field on urban space and form has
been developed simultaneously in differ-
ent European schools. Although their con-
ventions have been based on a small number
of leading authors, those approaches have
represented different urban morphology
schools in time (Moudon, 1997). With an
increasing amount of interest gathering
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN:  INTRODUCTION
around the issue, internationally, urban
morphology has been highly institutional-
ized around the organization of ISUF (Inter-
national Seminar on Urban Form) with its
own academic journal, Urban Morphology
since 1997. The main asset of the new
research field was that it had provided a
systemic conceptual framework and various
techniques of spatial representation to under-
stand urban form and formation in relation
to the constitutional elements of urban
form: the building, the plot and the street
(after Conzen, 1969; Caniggia and Maffei,
1979; Kropf, 1996). This could be said to
be particularly useful in those approaches
emerging in reaction to conventional Modern-
ism, for three reasons: first, the interest in
pre-existing context; second, the attention
to traditional units of design such as the
street and even the plot (which open-plan
Modernist layouts often did without); and
thirdly, to do with understanding what it was
that worked in traditional urban fabrics, that
was lost in Modern ones.
Although arising in a sense independently,
as separate responses to modern urban
planning, the links between urban morph-
ology and urban design have often been
present, at least implicitly, and in some
cases, explicitly. Such connections can be
observed in different schools through urban
design history in which many designers
analysed and drew normative conclusions
out of the existing forms and patterns (figure
1). Among them, the most obvious relation
can be viewed in the neo-traditionalist and
neo-rationalist design schemes like those of
the Krier brothers (Krier, 2009; Krier, 2006),
Katz (1994), Duany and Plater-Zyberk (1991)
and Calthorpe (1993). From a morphological
point of view, the originality of their design
thinking derives from the design models
which are the products of a ‘systemic’
typological understanding of traditional
urban forms (Krier, 1979). In this sense, the
endeavour to comprehend the nature of
urban form can be considered as an intrinsic
phase of any urban design process as looking
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
at the already established conditions to
define, accordingly, design problems and
relevant design responses (Erickson and
Lloyd-Jones, 2001, pp. 3–4).
Despite the fact that there has been always
a built-in relation between urban morphology
and design in urbanism, it has not always
been easy to see an explicit concern to
systemize such a link between these two
domains from a theoretical (conceptual and
methodological) perspective. To gain an
insight into the scope of the field of urban
morphology and design, we provide a brief
overview of their respective literatures.
The Literature
According to the Urban Morphology reading
list compiled by Peter Larkham (2002), with
a total of 469 publications, there are ten
major research fields determined in urban
morphology (Larkham, 2002). Among them,
the topic of ‘townscape, planning and man-
agement’ covers 9 per cent of all publications
(figure 3). It is in this category that we
might expect to find dedicated urban design
literature located, at least in terms of design
as a process and professional activity. That
said, other topics – such as history and
morphological elements (including streets
and blocks and the like) are also closely
related to the interests of urban designers.
In order to reveal more directly the specific
position of urban design in the literature of
urban morphology, we now re-analyse and
re-classify Larkham’s original list of 469
references into four categories: researches on
general design theory; contemporary urban
design practice; design history; and mor-
phological researches which are not related
to urban planning and design. In this context,
we recognize a very subordinate position for
planning and design considerations in urban
morphological research which corresponds to
only about 10 per cent of the whole literature
(figure 4).
Now let us turn to see how urban mor-
phology features within the urban design
385
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN
literature. According to the bibliographic
research done by Mike Biddulph (2003),
among 1230 books, articles and reports, the
share of the publications which are directly
related to urban morphology is only 7 per
cent of the total (figure 5). So, just as urban
design was a minority concern of urban
morphology literature, urban morphology
is a minority concern of the urban design
literature. Despite this, the existence of a
positively identifiable overlap indicates a
386
Figure 3. The distribution of
sub-themes in the literature
of urban morphology. (Source:
After Larkham, 2002)
Figure 4. The proportion
of urban morphological
literature relating to design.
(Source: Based on analysis
of original list of references
compiled by Larkham, 2002)
real potential for a closer link between the
knowledge bases of these two fields.
The Outstanding Challenge
Taking the already emerging mutual interests
of both fields into consideration, we see a real
opportunity to realize the latent potential of
better integrating urban morphology and
urban design, addressing the implicit premise
that this will lead to better place making.
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN:  INTRODUCTION
Figure 5. The distribution of
sub-themes in the literature
of urban design (Source: After
Biddulph, 2003)
Recognizing the contemporary critiques
of urban design and place making noted
earlier, our intention is not to promote a pure
‘physicalist’ approach to urban design theory
while aiming for a closer relation between
design and morphology. Rather, we suppose
that contemporary urban design can truly
transcend such a critique by interacting with
urban morphology, which deals with urban
form as a collective product – an aggregate
of design interventions and user activities
in a social context. From this perspective,
urban morphology offers a highly potent
platform and theoretical foundation to
urban design to increase its effectiveness
in a broader perspective. In turn, urban
design as the design dimension of place
making in general presents a prolific insight
to urban morphology in the endeavour of
understanding the productive forces behind
the built environment.
In this context, there is an outstanding
challenge to explore ways of better linking
urban morphology and design not only
theoretically, but how this understanding
can be applied to urban design and planning
practice. There is an opportunity to relate
more strongly concepts of morphology such
as tissue, composition, topology, pattern and
type (Leupen et al., 1997; Moudon, 1997;
Kropf, 1996, 2009) to the instruments such
as urban design frameworks, form-based
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
coding and planning regulations (Hall, 1997,
2008; Biddulph and Punter, 1999; Carmona,
1999, 2001; Parolek et al., 2008; Punter and
Carmona, 1997; Larkham, 2005; Walters, 2007;
Samuels, 2008; Marshall, 2011). In such a
way, contemporary urban design and plan-
ning could benefit from more explicit mor-
phological understanding and application in
creating complex urban fabrics. The impulse
for this exploration is partly pragmatic: to
help improve the ultimate product of urban
design, that is the urban fabric. But it is
also an opportunity to forge better links
theoretically and conceptually between
morphology and design in the urban context,
and by extension, the broader theoretical
question of the sometimes seemingly mysteri-
ous relationship between analysis and design.
This Issue
This issue of Built Environment explores the
ways in which urban morphology and design
may be better integrated, with particular
concern for how the concepts and methods
of urban morphology can be used to support
better urban design and planning. This
does not mean that we are advocating any
particular urban design approach – such
as a traditionalist or contextual approach
– but rather that we seek ‘morphologically
informed’ approaches whether these be
387
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN
traditionalist, supra-modernist or any other
urban design approach. We are interested
in questions such as: how can a stronger
approach to physical form be (re)established
in relation to spatial planning, through better
morphological understanding? How can the
morphological way of thinking about the
urban fabric – including its spatial context
and temporal dynamic – be used to influence
acts of design? And on which methodological
and conceptual bases can we construct
a morphology-led planning and design
approach in urbanism?
This issue aims to provide fresh insights
into these questions, by reporting on recent
and ongoing research and practice. Herein,
we present six papers providing snapshots of
‘works in progress’ extending understanding
on conceptual, empirical and procedural
fronts. Very broadly speaking, the first two
papers synthesize and extend the conceptual
territory; the next two look at detailed case
studies in relatively unexplored contexts,
and the final two explore the new procedural
horizons of metropolitan scale morphology
and ‘morphogenetic’ urban design.
First up, to help establish a conceptual
baseline for the investigations in this issue,
Karl Kropf presents a survey of recent
applications of urban morphology in the
practice of urban design and planning. In
doing so, he considers the relationships
between urban form, morphology and
design, exploring the sense in which urban
morphology describes the substance of urban
form, the material with which the urban
designer works. Kropf explores a range of
themes, relating some selected urban design
practices to wider narratives about urban
morphological theories and traditions. From
the perspective of a theoretician and design
practitioner, Kropf addresses a new definition
of urban designer as modern craftsman.
Next up, Stephen Marshall and Olgu
Çalışkan explore fundamental conceptual
relationships between urban morphology
and design. While doing that, we examine
the basic distinctions in the cognition and
388
action in morphology and design, reveal
their common assumptions and then develop
a joint framework which is based on the
distinction between the domain of abstraction
and the physical fabric, and their change
over time. The framework eventually leads
to a set of suggestions for a better integration
between the two fields, and in particular, how
better morphological understanding could
lead to better urban design.
Tony Hall and Paul Sanders then address
the application of urban morphological
understanding to the design of large-scale
city developments in specific locations. They
first review some existing approaches in
Europe and South Africa, before presenting a
case study from Brisbane which demonstrates
some of the challenges of inserting new urban
design into an existing urban fabric. The
authors suggest an alternative framework
based on historical morphological studies
which they suggest points the way to a
general approach to the design of large-scale
city development that could be incorporated
within the planning process internationally.
From the same perspective of design
control in planning, Tolga Ünlü then examines
the morphological nature of piecemeal
urban changes in rapidly transforming
urban fabrics, through the example of the
city of Mersin, Turkey. Demonstrating the
progressive transformations of urban fabric
at the level of plot, block and tissue, Ünlü’s
empirical analysis demonstrates the effects
of a planning system that allows piecemeal
change to the urban fabric via partial plan
modifications, without any strategic design
control.
We then move to the metropolitan scale.
Peter Bosselmann reports on the use of
morphological analysis as a tool for im-
proving understanding of the form of the
metropolitan landscape. He traces the urban
transect to its roots in bio-geography and
applies transects as a longitudinal sampling
method to the design of the metropolitan
landscape, demonstrated through design
exercises relating to the Pearl River Delta and
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN:  INTRODUCTION
the San Francisco Bay Area. These illustrate
the experience of existing conditions and
how – through tentative design proposals –
future local conditions can be conceived that
address ‘sustainable development’ strategies
applicable to an entire urbanized region.
Finally, Michael Mehaffy describes recent
developments in so-called ‘morphogenetic’
or form-generating urban design tools and
strategies. These involve some kind of code or
specification for creating urban components
rather than (as with a plan) a direct
specification of a particular final product.
Mehaffy offers a critical assessment of the
field’s aims, challenges and opportunities,
examined through the contrasting approaches
of Patrik Schumacher’s ‘parameticism’, Peter
Eisenman’s generative methods, Christopher
Alexander’s patterns and ‘adaptive morpho-
genesis’, and generative codes in relation to
New Urbanism. Mehaffy concludes with a
discussion of opportunities for the further
development of promising new ‘morpho-
genetic’ design tools and approaches.
Taken together, these papers reflect a
combination of conceptual and practical
issues relating both to traditional and new
‘morphological’ approaches that can inform
urban design. While each paper draws its
own conclusions, we can reflect here on a
number of implications for planning in the
built environment more widely that arise
from the journal issue papers taken together.
A first point relates to the provenance
and very existence of planning. The modern
town planning movement – as something
going beyond simply ‘big urban design’ –
embodies the fundamental idea that a town
is not just a ‘designed object’ (the creation of a
designer) but is almost like a living, growing
‘organism’, adapted to its environment.
Historically, this relates to the idea of ‘survey
before plan’, as pioneered by Patrick Geddes
(whose use of the transect is discussed here
by Bosselmann), which continues to be
echoed in contemporary approaches which
we could call ‘morphology before design’
(represented especially in Kropf; Hall and
BUILT  ENVIRONMENT   VOL  37   NO  4
Sanders; Marshall and Çalışkan). As such,
one could argue that the emergence of the
town planning movement can be seen as
arising from the historical conjunction of
urban morphology with urban design.
The papers in this issue also contribute
to arguments about the basic nature and
purpose of planning – is planning an
art or a science; a technical or a political
exercise? Kropf interprets urban design as
a craft, but also notes the use of modern
morphological indicators; the technical nature
of planning is also seen especially in terms of
morphological representation (Bosselmann)
and ‘morphogenetic’ tools (Mehaffy). Then
again, we also see a role for morphology to
assist with planning regulation (Ünlü; Hall
and Sanders). Meanwhile, Mehaffy’s analysis
reveals tensions between urban design (and
by extension planning) as a form of artistic
expression, and as a means of solving
problems of place making.
It is not surprising that the ideology and
technology of representation also features
in this issue. After all, in a fundamental
sense a plan is a technical form of repre-
sentation, which takes us to the root of the
meaning of planning in a historical sense
(Turner, 1996). Today, rather than just
two-dimensional paper plans, we have a
plethora of representational and analytic
tools, from GIS to simulation models;
expanding use of data modelling, mapping
and simulation technologies in urban
studies has already addressed the increasing
scope and efficiency in urban morphology.
Representing large units of complex urban
environments (Bosselmann) has a serious
potential to free the urban morphologist from
the very conventional ‘handcrafted’ tradition
of cartographic scrutiny and unveil the
interpretative power of their analytical mind
in pattern recognition. There is definite
potential that a more efficient revelation
of compositional rules of existing urban
fabrics by urban morphology could find its
reflection in more successful interpretations
of the rules for designed urban forms
389
 URBAN  MORPHOLOGY  AND  DESIGN
through emerging morpho-generative design
processes (Mehaffy).
Then there is the issue of scale, which is
woven through the conceptual territories of
both urban morphology and urban design
(Kropf). The papers in this issue run from
the scale of plots and blocks (Ünlü; Hall
and Sanders) to the metropolitan scale
(Bosselmann). These papers raise questions
about how interventions at any given scale
affect the urban morphology at other scales,
which in turn relates to the wider planning
issue of what is the desired scale of unit of
planning. The concept of town planning, after
all, implies the town as ‘the’ unit at which to
carry out design or planning; but the papers
in this issue raise the possibility of planning
interventions at smaller and larger scales –
which are both ongoing challenges.
This in turn relates to a final challenge,
that of ‘top down’ planning versus ‘bottom
up’ urbanism. On the one hand, we can
see the prospect of the urban fabric being
created through ‘generative’ urban codes
and processes (Mehaffy) or the possibility
of ‘planning’ control being applied to both
informal and formal design interventions
(Marshall and Çalışkan). These could
represent a kind of bottom-up urbanism
as an alternative to conventional master
planning or ‘town design’. On the other
hand, Ünlü’s analysis of morphological
change in the absence of strategic planning
demonstrates some of the effects of allowing
piecemeal change. This points to the need
for more research into the different kinds
of emergent effects – whether positive or
negative – arising from different kinds of
‘uncoordinated’ incremental processes or
deliberately programmed generative codes.
This relates to questions of both the optimal
kind and scale of planning intervention.
In each of these cases, we can see potential
for synergies between approaches, but also
the sense of clear alternative paths ahead
which might become the ideological battles
of urban morphology and design of the
future.
390
NOTE
1. Dedicated periodicals include Urban Design,
Journal of Urban Design, Urban Design International;
and other urban design related journals include
Urban Design and Planning (Proceedings of the
Institution of Civil Engineers) and the Journal of
Urbanism. Other urban design related journals
published at either national or international level
are Architecture + Urbanism in Japan, Urbanistica
in Italy, Stedebouw & Ruimtelijke Ordeningin in
the Netherlands, Architektur + Wettbewerbe in
Germany, Revue Urbanisme in France, Planlama in
Turkey.
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