by David Bernard O’Sullivan
This chapter reviews a selection of work in the study of urban form at a micro-scale. My purpose is twofold. First, I am concerned to show that many approaches to urban morphology have tended to separate structure and process, often concentrating on one to the exclusion of the other. The modelling approach which I propose in chapter 5 attempts to address this weakness. Second, as discussed in chapter 2 (see especially figure 3 on page 35), I want to use urban morphology — predominantly at the scales identified by Moudon (1997) in the passage quoted in section 1.1 — as a source of ideas about spatial elements which can be used in the construction of proximal spatial models of cities.
As a result of these twin foci I do not spend time on any of the more broad brush stroke histories of the city (Mumford 1961, for example), nor on those approaches which fit ‘the city’ into much wider perspectives (Castells 1989, Harvey 1978, for example). Also, I am not concerned with models which may be broadly labelled operational land use–transportation models (Torrens 2000, reviews many of these). As a result, most of the work considered here originates in the geography, planning and architecture literature, at the scale of Montello’s (1993) vistal or environmental spaces, rather than at the scale of regional models, although this focus does not mean that the modelling approach developed in the next chapter could not be applied at those larger scales.
As a result of these twin foci I do not spend time on any of the more broad brush stroke histories of the city (Mumford 1961, for example), nor on those approaches which fit ‘the city’ into much wider perspectives (Castells 1989, Harvey 1978, for example). Also, I am not concerned with models which may be broadly labelled operational land use–transportation models (Torrens 2000, reviews many of these). As a result, most of the work considered here originates in the geography, planning and architecture literature, at the scale of Montello’s (1993) vistal or environmental spaces, rather than at the scale of regional models, although this focus does not mean that the modelling approach developed in the next chapter could not be applied at those larger scales.
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Urban Fractals, Souce:
Batty, M. and Longley, P. (1994) Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function, Academic Press, San Diego, CA and Londonand alsoChapin, F. S. Jr. and Weiss, S. F. (1962), Factors Influencing Land Development, Chapel Hill, Institute for Research in Social Sience, University of North Carolina |
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