Urban morphology

[1] The study seeks to understand the spatial structure and character of a metropolitan area, city, town or village by examining the patterns of its component parts and the ownership or control and occupation.

In geography, urban morphology as a particular field of study owes its origins to Lewis Mumford, James Vance and Sam Bass Warner.

Complexity science has provided further explanations showing how urban structures emerge from the uncoordinated action of multiple individuals in highly regular ways.

[3] Urban morphology approaches human settlements as generally unconscious products that emerge over long periods, through the accrual of successive generations of building activity.

There is thus a tendency to use morphological techniques to examine the ordinary, non-monumental areas of the city and to stress the process and its structures over any given state or object, therefore going beyond architecture and looking at the entire built landscape and its internal logic.

Linkage theory focuses on lines formed by streets, pedestrian ways, linear open spaces or other linking elements that physically connect the parts of the city.

Muratori attempted to develop an 'operational history' for the cities he studied (in particular Venice and Rome), which then provided the basis for the integration of new architectural works in the syntax of the urban tissue.

Stemming from this view are contributions such as Gianfranco Caniggia's, which conceptualise the city as an organic result of a dynamic procedural typology, which see political-economic forces as shaping a built landscape already conditioned by a particular logic, set of elements, and characteristic processes.

Thomas (concerned with migration), Robert E Park and Ernest Burgess, attempted to analyse the morphology of Chicago in order to solve these problems.