President's Report 2006

As members of ISUF will know, I was elected President for 4 years at the ISUF symposium in London, UK in August 2005. As well as being an acknowledgement of my own contribution to the founding of ISUF, my election as President is a tribute to the role of the Italian morphological school. I wish to thank my colleagues M.P.Conzen and J.W.R.Whitehand for their support in the achievement of this recognition, which has been accomplished despite language barriers, not least my own limited ability to communicate in English.

At the meeting of ISUF’s Council in London, and subsequently in discussions between myself and my Italian colleagues, a number of proposals concerning ISUF’s future development found favour and I propose to limit myself in this my first report to summarizing these.

First, it is proposed that a number of regional groups be set up. Each group might, for example, cover a particular linguistic area. Each would promote, especially among young people, research, meetings and discussion among researchers, practitioners and educationalists across the range of disciplines that contribute to urban morphology. Exploratory discussions among, for example, Canadian, French, Scandinavian and Spanish colleagues suggest support for this idea.

Secondly, a committee, containing a represen-tative of each regional group, should be set up. An important role for this committee would be to choose an appropriate venue for the major biennial meetings of ISUF, from 2007 onwards. Proposals for these meetings should be submitted to this committee according to an agreed format.

Thirdly, the range of ISUF’s publications should be extended to include a regular newsletter or bulletin and a series of monographs. An important function of these publications would be to communicate the progress and results of ISUF’s commissions and working parties.

There is evidence that the first of these proposals is already being adopted spontaneously – for example, the exhibition organized by the Bari School of Architecture in La Valletta last February and the conference organized by the Nordic Network of Urban Morphology in Stockholm, Sweden in September of this year.

I should welcome the views of all members of ISUF on the future development of our association in general and on the proposals that I have outlined here in particular.

Last but not least, in a report that is essentially forward looking, I should like to pay tribute to the former President, Anne Vernez Moudon. Her contribution over the 8 years of her two Presidential terms has provided a major part of the foundation on which we are now seeking to build. I wish to thank her wholeheartedly and I hope she will continue to participate in ISUF’s activities.

Gian Luigi Maffei, Dipartimento di Progettazione dell’Architettura, Università degli Studi di Firenze, Viale Gramsci 42, 50132 Firenze, Italy. E-mail: progcontesto@prog.arch.unifi.it