Urban Morphology: A Perspective from Space (Second Edition)

Dear Colleagues,

Urban Morphology is a discipline born in the early Fifties of the 20th century as a tool for understanding the problems of the modern city. For the first time, the boundaries of the city clearly exceeded those of the historical one, which was no longer necessarily located in the “center”. For the first time, the logic through which the city had been built for millennia was thrown into crisis. It was the city of the new mass society, the society of large consumption, vehicular traffic, zoning. New methodological and conceptual tools and new theories were therefore necessary to gain understanding in order to guide the transformation processes. Today, once again, society is radically changing. It is the global society of the 21st century. The society of “networks”, of multilayer relationships, of data-driven processes, of ecology. An increasingly smart society that is rapidly transforming the spaces of its vitality, that is the city itself. We are perhaps witnessing the greatest urban phenomenon in human history and certainly the greatest socio-cultural and economic revolution of the modern era.

New tools are therefore needed to understand urban phenomena. A new theoretical–methodological framework, a new “horizon of meaning”, must therefore be defined to understand the complexity of the contemporary city. In this framework, Urban Morphology, due to its eminently “operational” nature, its potentially transdisciplinary character and its strong link with the world of scientific research, stands as a fundamental discipline for the knowledge and transformation of the 21st century city. It is no coincidence that all researchers, all public administrators and all professionals who deal with urban transformations are working in search of these “tools”. It is no coincidence that, throughout the world, there are numerous schools that deal with morphology. However, it needs to change radically.

The main goal of this issue is, on the one hand, to define the boundaries and disciplinary tools of a research that now boasts more than seventy years of history. On the other hand, to understand how these borders and these tools are transforming themselves to respond, effectively and dynamically, to the needs of society and the contemporary city.

The themes of technological innovation, smart transition and trans-disciplinarity are some of the new aspects that must become part of morphological research. Together with the environmental and ecological ones, they certainly constitute one of the major test benches of the new morphological discipline. However, it is not simply a matter of broadening the disciplinary horizon of Urban Morphology. It is a question of defining new theoretical-methodological bases and new analytical tools on which to ground the city's transformation project. In other words, it is a matter of building a new morphological discipline able of intercepting the needs of the new globalized society and translate them into physical places. A discipline that this issue tries to redefine through the contributions of leading experts in the sector, in the awareness of being able to provide a useful scientific basis for understanding and transforming the city in the 21st century.

University of Parma, Department of Engineering and Architecture/KAEBUP_Knowledge Alliance for Evidence Based Urban Practices. Co-Funded by the Erasmus + Program of the European Union.

Dr. Marco Maretto
Dr. Nicola Marzot
Guest Editors

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• urban morphology
• public space
• urban design
• new technologies
• trans-disciplinarity

• Urban Morphology: A Perspective from Space in Land (15 articles)