Journal - Abstracts vol.13 nr.1 (2009)

J. W. R. Whitehand, The structure of urban landscapes: strengthening research and practice

Methods of articulating the historico-geographical structure of urban landscapes are fundamental to urban morphology and have considerable, but insufficiently recognized, potential in planning. M. R. G. Conzen made a major contribution to their development, notably between the late 1950s and the late 1980s. He demonstrated in traditional British towns and cities how the way in which the urban landscape is historically stratified, reflecting the distinctive residues of past periods, gives rise to a hierarchy of morphological regions or urban landscape units. In the past 20 years, there have been applications and adaptations of Conzen’s methods, and demonstrations of their potential in conservation and heritage planning, in other types of urban areas and other parts of the world, including the Far East. However, it is essential that urban morphological regionalization is grounded in sensitivity to the dynamics of the urban landscape and, especially in comparisons of different urban areas, that there is awareness of the level of resolution at which urban landscape units are delimited. Carefully applied, this method can make an important contribution to meeting a major challenge facing urban morphology today: the provision of sound bases for comparative research and its application in planning practice.
Michael P. Conzen, How cities internalize their former urban fringes: a cross-cultural comparison

Studies of urban fringe belts have multiplied in recent years, demonstrating the validity of this morphological concept in a variety of regions around the world. Yet there have been few direct attempts at a comparative assessment of the concept’s performance in the different cultural settings in which it has been applied. This paper seeks to contribute to this goal, by examining the fringe-belt structure of several cities drawn from contrasting urban cultural traditions in Europe and the New World. Not surprisingly, certain commonalities emerge, but there are also large differences in the number, scale, complexity, and even basic geometry of fringe belts apparent in this eclectic examination. These differences go well beyond simple explanations of site circumstances, size, and function of the city within the urban hierarchy, and result from essential contrasts in urban social values, property rules, and planning traditions. The analysis leads to speculations about the efficacy and limits of the fringe-belt concept to identify and account for variations in the texture of urban form across urban areas in diverse cultural contexts.
Hélène Noizet, Fabrique urbaine: a new concept in urban history and morphology

The concept of fabrique urbaine can be described as a socio-spatial process of development of ordinary towns and cities. Practices and representations of the residents and other users of urban areas must be first analysed as a series of historical moments, which may be termed ‘social temporalities’. Then the spatial structure of the town, especially its plots, the aggregation of plots into street blocks, and the street system, can be precisely described, but with its own temporalities, and only as the final result of the history of the inhabitants. The link between social history and urban morphology is in important respects indirect: social temporalities are not conscious steps in the process of the development of the urban fabric. Nevertheless, there is a dialectical interaction between these two orders of facts. This method of articulating the historical development of urban areas is illustrated by studies of French cities.