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China’s rapid and extraordinary urbanisation has resulted in a dichotomy between the urban form of historic districts and that of new urban areas. Unlike the new planning of new urban areas, the optimisation of the thermal environment in historic districts is achieved through an important means of regulating the shading effectiveness of trees in street canyons, without destruction of current buildings in existing districts. In this paper, the sky view factor, an index for evaluating the shading capacity of street canyons, is used to calculate the shading efficiency of trees and reveal their influence mechanism by using a convolutional neural network (SegNet) to segment the Baidu street view images. The results show that: (1) tree shading in Harbin’s historic districts has a significant impact on the thermal environment of street canyons, with an average shade effectiveness of 56.3%; (2) based on geospatial autocorrelation analysis and a typological reconstruction of street canyons, the study reveals that tree shading has significant spatial aggregation characteristics in historic districts and proposes guidelines for the planning and design of different types of street canyon trees. The study provides important data and strategic support for optimising the thermal environment of urban historic districts in Northeast China.

Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics and a seven-category neighborhood typology, this analysis examines the relationship between urban form and household spending. Results suggest that poor households living in urban areas have lower transportation expenditures than their counterparts in sprawling suburbs. Lower transportation costs, however, do not offset high housing prices, with poor households paying particularly high premiums for housing in the densest, most transit-rich neighborhoods. Households above the poverty threshold also benefit from reductions in transportation costs, especially in intensely urban areas. Nevertheless, these low transportation costs are not associated with lower overall expenditures; instead, they countervail high housing premiums, meaning that the most transit-rich neighborhoods do not offer cost savings relative to other neighborhood types. Findings highlight the need to expand the supply of both transit and housing in communities where poor households can leverage affordable transportation options to reduce their combined expenditure burden.

The built environment characteristics associated with walkability range from neighborhood-level urban form factors to street-level urban design factors. However, many existing walkability indices are based on neighborhood-level factors and lack consideration for street-level factors. Arguably, this omission is due to the lack of a scalable way to measure them. This paper uses computer vision to quantify street-level factors from street view images in Atlanta, Georgia, USA. Correlation analysis shows that some streetscape factors are highly correlated with neighborhood-level factors. Binary logistic regressions indicate that the streetscape factors can significantly contribute to explaining walking mode choice and that streetscape factors can have a greater association with walking mode choice than neighborhood-level factors. A potential explanation for the result is that the image-based streetscape factors may perform as proxies for some macroscale factors while representing the pedestrian experience as seen from eye-level.

It remains common for the city to be treated as an undifferentiated unit in urban theory. This review of literature reveals that extant urban theory has been or can be inflected with a greater sense of intra- and interurban difference registering in implications for planning policy and practice pertaining to different substantive concerns and at different geographical scales. The article argues that we need to continue to pay attention to the spatially differentiated character of the urban if we are to advance urban planning thought and practice under contemporary conditions of extended urbanization.

This paper examines the linkages between urban form and city productivity using seven alternative metrics for urban form and applying them to a comprehensive sample of Latin-American cities. While most of the literature has concentrated on the effects of population density (compact vs. sprawling urban development), this paper seeks to assess whether different dimensions of a city’s urban form, such as shape, structure, and land use, affect its economic performance. We found that both the shape of the urban extent and the inner-city connectedness have a statistically significant association with the productivity level of a city.

Understanding the interplay between urban form, traffic volume, and air quality is significant for urban planning and environmental sustainability. However, limited progress has been made in bringing effective urban planning strategies to help control traffic demand and resulting air pollutants. Therefore, this study aims to investigate the interrelation between urban form, traffic volume, and air quality with a spatiotemporal stratified method. The method extracts and preprocesses traffic volume data in spatial (polluted and unpolluted zones) and temporal (periods in holidays and workdays) dimensions. Three decision tree models (random forest, random tree, M5 model tree) and two comparison models (multiple linear regression, artificial neural network) are used to examine the relationships. The final results show that the spatiotemporal stratification approach effectively reveals the interrelations, and the random forest model outperforms the other models. Specifically, highly aggregated roads and industrial areas are more associated with traffic volume in polluted zones. The dominance of waterway and vegetation shows a strong association with traffic volume in unpolluted zones. The degree of association also varies significantly between workdays and holidays. Our spatiotemporal stratified approach reveals heterogeneous relationships between urban form, traffic volume, and air quality and provides insightful references on sustainable urban development.

Against the backdrop of rapidly expanding urban structures, land policies in many countries have been adapted to contain and redirect growth to existing urban structures. However, obstacles remain to measure the effects of policies. In the meantime, geoinformation technologies have given rise to a wide range of approaches to measure and describe urban form. Nevertheless, its application for the assessment of land policy has a high, but not yet fully exploited, potential. It is thus the aim of this research to address and investigate the options of spatial analysis and machine learning in particular to analyse urban form from a land policy perspective. To do so, we develop urban metrics informed by urban planning and land readjustment policies of two countries describing urban form on different spatial levels. We therefore formulate hypotheses on causal relations between policy and form. Based on the metrics, we apply the random forest algorithm to classify the building stock of the region. We then extract the residential areas, those with single-family houses, as this is where the effects of the policy are considered most visible. In a next step, we use random forest to predict the nationality of a building. Through variable importance measures, we identify and discuss urban morphological differences between the two countries and test the hypotheses on effects of land policies. We develop and test the approach for the French-German city-region of Strasbourg using OpenStreetMap data. We identify significant differences in the building coverage ratios, which tend to be higher in Germany. This can be linked to differences in planning regulations. Furthermore, German residential areas appear to be more diverse in urban form. Differences in land readjustment policies have proven to be plausible here, as French policies favour strong actors that develop residential areas more uniformly. In Germany, policies favour fragmented ownership-oriented development of residential areas. The metrics and the applied algorithm for building classification have proven to be robust in terms of data heterogeneity and have shown high levels of accuracy. They could also be successfully used for tracing causal relations.

Global policies promote urban compaction to achieve sustainable development. This article highlights the limits of analysing densification at the city scale and advocates for a more granular approach. The case study of Cape Town shows how overall consolidation has been mainly driven by poor households crowding into already dense neighbourhoods on the urban periphery. This has aggravated historic segregation and intensified urban management challenges. Meanwhile, formal private sector driven densification strengthens the social and economic vibrancy of affluent neighbourhoods. This article argues that uneven residential patterns reflect deep-seated social inequalities that are amplified through labour and property markets. Satellite data also illustrates how Cape Town’s built-up area has changed between 1998 and 2019. Based on geo-spatial analyses, the article suggests that taking these drivers seriously is crucial to promoting a denser and more equitable urban form. Aligning housing policies with spatial transformation and economic development objectives offer possibilities for change.

The ‘urbanising village’ is a uniquely Chinese urban form that emerged during the period of rapid urbanisation in the reform era. The absence of state governance in rural areas relegates considerable decision-making power to village collectives, and the social capital inherited from traditional rural villages may remain in place after villages are urbanised. To explore the role of social capital and its mobilisation in solving the land use challenges posed by the urbanisation of rural settlements, we analysed the growth processes of Huanggang village as a typical example of a ‘collective-led’ self-organised urbanising village in Shenzhen. Qualitative analysis using semi-structured interviews and abundant secondary data provides credible evidence that defining property rights through land titling is not the only way to achieve orderly development, safe and sanitary living conditions and efficient land use in informal settlements. Social capital, measured by networks, norms and trust passed down among long-term acquaintances in rural villages, plays an important role in the development of communities. Village collectives can unite villagers and mobilise their social, cultural and material capital to compensate for the absence of formal governance institutions and government-provided community services. The implications of these findings suggest a new strategic pathway for managing urbanising villages in China and informal settlements in other developing countries.

The study of street network patterns is beneficial in understanding the layout or physical form of a city. Many studies have analyzed street network patterns, but the similarity and/or difference of street network patterns across a country or region are rarely quantitatively understood. To fill this gap, this research proposes a quantitative analysis of street network patterns nationwide. Specifically, the street network patterns across a country or region were first mapped, and then the relationship between such patterns and various landscape factors (calculated based on global open data) was quantitatively investigated by employing three regression models (ordinary least squares, spatial lag model, and spatial error model). Not only the whole region of China but also its subregions were used as study areas, which involved a total of 362 prefecture-level cities and 2081 built-up areas for analysis. Results showed that (1) similar street network patterns are spatially aggregated; (2) a number of factors, including both land-cover and terrain factors, are found to be significantly correlated with street network patterns; and (3) the spatial lag model is preferred in most of the application scenarios. Not only the analytical method and data can be applied to other countries and regions but also these findings are useful for understanding street network patterns and their associated urban forms in a country or region.

The distance between home and school considerably influences the probability of children’s walking or biking to school (termed Active School Travel) which is a significant opportunity to promote their daily physical activity. This study investigated the shortest routes from home to school of primary school students and how the route distance can be shortened at the household level in Nanjing, China. We found that gated urban form results in significantly roundabout routes to school. In 2016, China issued the Opening and Prohibiting Gated Communities policy, subsequently the Healthy Cities Initiative, etc. which may leverage cities towards more healthy and sustainable transformations. In the light of these policies, we hypothesised that providing through access as management option, and opening new entries as reengineering option, would shorten school travel distance with minor costs. The scenario analysis shows that such management and reengineering adaptions would provide shorter and potentially less exposed routes for students. This study identifies how the existent urban form works against active school travel, and proposes how salutogenic pathways may be created in the gated urban form. The study, with transferability to other cities, can assist urban designers and policy makers in piloting urban (re)form incrementally and pragmatically to prompt active travel to schools.

If we agree with Ananya Roy’s claim that planning’s epistemic roots are grounded in liberalism—which is riddled with inherent ethicopolitical tensions—then it might be worth our while to explore some of the spatial consequences of this grounding. The implementation of Vienna’s Ringstrasse serves as an excellent case example for such an exploration. On the one hand, it consists of an array of monumental public buildings that resemble material expressions of freedom and individuality. Yet, for this development to be realized in the first place, some form of intervention was necessary despite liberalism’s subscription to noninterventionism. Lessons learned from revisiting the Ringstrasse project might then prove illuminating for our contemporary era of “hyperliberalism.”

Urban form at the district scale is defined as a unique combination of the following basic spatial objects: road networks, plot patterns and building configurations. In particular, a plot represents one of the most important basic spatial objects of urban form. In recent theoretical and empirical work from downtown districts in Tokyo, it was found that (1) plot sizes and frontages approximately follow a log-normal distribution and (2) the parameters can be primarily estimated by building density (the number of buildings per unit area) and road network density (total length of road networks per unit area). High demand for housing and commerce in a district requires as many buildings and their plots as possible. However, this may generate many small and narrow plots, which makes the residential environment worse in terms of ventilation, sunlight and accessibility to a road. Hence, the ratio of the number of plots that cannot satisfy minimum criteria regarding their sizes and frontages should be as small as possible, taking into consideration the variation in plot sizes and frontages. Therefore, the rationale for the building and road network densities presented here will be discussed by considering the variation in plot sizes and frontages through a stochastic approach. Allowing for plot sizes that are smaller than the minimum plot size regulation as well as for plot frontages that are narrower than the minimum plot frontage regulation (these minimum criteria being determined by Japanese building codes), the maximum building density and optimal road network density will be obtained. These findings are expected to provide urban planners with a theoretical basis to discuss the validity of these two density values (based on the deterministic approach that assumes uniform urban form) in terms of evaluating the policy effect, such as minimum plot size and frontage regulation.

Vehicle kilometers traveled (VKT) has been widely used in regional planning as a key sustainability performance indicator. Many regional growth plans for reducing work trip VKT have been proposed, with a focus on land use development in employment centers. Despite the potential impact of urban form on the reduction of VKT, the fundamentals of how this takes place remain unclear. This study analyzes the relationship between urban form, VKT, and mode shares by examining office commuting patterns in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) through a structural equation modeling approach. The model supports the substantial impact of urban form on the reduction of VKT; however, it indicates that such an impact is made mostly through shifting modes, rather than directly on reduced travel distances. This model is then used to evaluate critically a regional growth plan for the GTHA, finding that strategies focusing solely on increasing land use densities in employment centers are not likely to reduce regional VKT significantly without also easing commuting auto dependency. Thus, it is recommended that more sustainable travel alternatives for workers in employment centers should be provided to achieve a sufficient reduction in VKT.

Unprecedented urbanisation processes characterise the Great Acceleration, urging urban researchers to make sense of data analysis in support of evidence-based and large-scale decision-making. Urban morphologists are no exception since the impact of urban form on fundamental natural and social patterns (equity, prosperity and resource consumption’s efficiency) is now fully acknowledged. However, urban morphology is still far from offering a comprehensive and reliable framework for quantitative analysis. Despite remarkable progress since its emergence in the late 1950s, the discipline still exhibits significant terminological inconsistencies with regards to the definition of the fundamental components of urban form, which prevents the establishment of objective models for measuring it. In this article, we present a study of existing methods for measuring urban form, with a focus on terminological inconsistencies, and propose a systematic and comprehensive framework to classify urban form characters, where ‘urban form character’ stands for a characteristic (or feature) of one kind of urban form that distinguishes it from another kind. In particular, we introduce the Index of Elements that allows for a univocal and non-interpretive description of urban form characters. Based on such Index of Elements, we develop a systematic classification of urban form according to six categories (dimension, shape, spatial distribution, intensity, connectivity and diversity) and three conceptual scales (small, medium, large) based on two definitions of scale (extent and grain). This framework is then applied to identify and organise the urban form characters adopted in available literature to date. The resulting classification of urban form characters reveals clear gaps in existing research, in particular, in relation to the spatial distribution and diversity characters. The proposed framework reduces the current inconsistencies of urban morphology research, paving the way to enhanced methods of urban form systematic and quantitative analysis at a global scale.

Urbanization affects population growth, as people move from rural to urban areas. In Indonesia, this movement has led to the creation of settlements called kampung kota. Kampung and kota are different forms of settlements, but the lifestyle in kota can indirectly affect the lifestyle in kampung. As the millennial generation has attracted growing attention, it has been noted that the lifestyle of millennials has begun to influence urban lifestyles more generally. The large number of millennials who have settled in kampungs has caused change to the forms of the kampung, as seen in their structure and layout and the allotment of space when zoning is carried out. Based on a literature review, observation of urban lifestyles in the kampung and interviews with people living in kampung Kebon Kacang, Jakarta, and kampung Kukusan, Depok, sought to find changes in the forms of the kampung kota, which follow the needs and lifestyles of the millennial generation.

Standard address data are essential geographical information that play an important role in urban management. However, due to the complex structures of Chinese addresses, poor address quality has long been a problem in China. Although several measures were established to improve the address quality, nonstandard address data are still common in new urban areas. To investigate the potential causes of the geographical disparities in address quality, in this paper, we hypothesize that the sprawling urban form caused by rapid urban expansion in China has hindered the generation of standard addresses in new urban areas. To test this hypothesis, the spatial pattern of address quality in Shenzhen, China, is analyzed, and the potential causal paths relating urban expansion, urban form, and address quality are examined using structural equation modeling. The results indicate poorer address quality in new urban areas in Shenzhen. Rapid urban expansion has an indirect negative relation with the address quality. In addition, both road compactness and land use compactness have a direct positive effect on address quality, but the latter is insignificant. In this case, to facilitate improvements in address quality, a plan with dense and small blocks is suggested in the planning of new urban areas.

Despite the significant role of social sustainability in the sustainable development agenda, there is a lack of research to clearly define and fully operationalise the concept of urban social sustainability. The aim of this study is to contribute to the existing literature by developing a comprehensive measurement scale to assess urban social sustainability at the neighbourhood level. We argue that urban social sustainability is a multidimensional concept that incorporates six main dimensions of social interaction, sense of place, social participation, safety, social equity and neighbourhood satisfaction. Failure to consider each of these dimensions may lead to an incomplete picture of social sustainability. Validity, reliability and dimensionality of the urban social sustainability scale are examined using factor analysis. We also illustrate the application of the urban social sustainability scale by investigating the influence of quality of design, as one of the least studied factors of urban form, on different dimensions of social sustainability. The paper uses data collected from the household questionnaire survey in a sample of 251 respondents from five case study neighbourhoods of Dunedin city, New Zealand. This study provides new evidence on the significance of improving neighbourhood quality of design and its positive and significant relationship with different dimensions of social sustainability and the overall social sustainability.

The importance of the plot (also referred to as ‘property’) as one of the fundamental elements of urban form is well recognized within the field of urban morphology. Despite the fact that it is often described as the basic element in the pattern of land divisions, which are essential as organizational frameworks for urban form, studies offering comprehensive descriptions and classifications of plot systems are quite scant. The aim of the paper is to introduce a classification of plot systems into typologies based on five European cities, in order to distinguish particular spatial differences and similarities in terms of their plot structure. The proposed typologies are developed using unsupervised k-means cluster analysis based on numeric attributes derived from central theories in urban morphology. The introduced typologies are essentially configurational, allowing collective systematic properties of plot systems to be captured. Numeric attributes include plot differentiation (or plot size), plot frontage and compactness ratio, corresponding to essential qualities of plot systems such as the capacity to carry differences in space, the ability to operate as interface between street and building and providing a framework for evolution of built form over time. All three attributes are translated into configurational measures in order to capture the context of the plot system, rather than the parameters of individual plots. The combination of these deductively defined variables with algorithmically defined classification methods results in seven plot types that can be used to scale up traditional urban morphological analysis to whole city regions and conduct substantial comparison of patterns within, but also between these regions. Further, it also makes it possible to describe commonly recognized plot patterns and discover new ones.

A building lot represents one of the most important basic spatial objects of urban form because building lots are basically adjacent to road networks and combine to make an exact whole with no left...

Understanding the spatial pattern of energy consumption within buildings is essential to urban energy planning and management. This study explores the spatial complexity of residential energy usage intensity, with a focus on urban form and geomorphometry attributes. Using spatial regression models, we find that while vegetation and isolation have more local impact on energy intensity, urban porosity and roughness length have consistent spillover effects on building electricity usage intensity in Chicago. In addition, these relationships are seasonally varied. The results highlight the importance of spatially explicit policies and clear urban design and form frameworks for improving urban energy efficiency.

This review analyzes literature regarding urban heating and urban heat islands (UHIs) in dryland cities. This topic is of widespread importance in the era of climate change since many global cities are in arid, semiarid, or Mediterranean regions. We first analyze the literature on dryland UHIs, finding major differences with those for temperate cities. We then review research on cooling strategies involving vegetation, built form, and materials. Finally, we consider planning dimensions. Overall, we find that the most sustainable cooling approach for dryland cities is likely to combine low-water tree species with dense, shade-producing built form and high-albedo materials.

Excess commuting, which concerns the differences between the actual commute and the optimal (minimum) commute afforded by a given distribution of jobs and housing, i.e., urban form, has been extensively studied across disciplines. In the existing excess commuting framework, the optimal commute considers commuting efficiency but overlooks commuting equity, which is defined as the variation in commuting cost across workers before and after the optimisation. The framework also overlooks the variation in commuting frequency across workers for a period of interest, which also affects the overall commuting cost for the period. In this paper, we propose a novel excess commuting framework using a Greedy-Initialisation-based Genetic Algorithm, where the optimal commute accounts for commuting efficiency and equity and commuting-frequency variation simultaneously. We illustrate and calibrate the framework using one-month metro smart card data in Shanghai. Comparing with two other existing models, the Greedy-Initialisation-based Genetic Algorithm can generate a commuting pattern that balances commuting efficiency and commuting equity, which the existing commuting framework and corresponding algorithms cannot.

An increasing number of studies have examined neighbourhood built environment attributes associated with cycling. Some of them suggest non-linear relationships between built environment attributes and cycling. This study examined the strength and shape of associations of cycling for transport with objectively measured built environment attributes. Data were from 9146 Australian adults who took part in the 2009 South-East Queensland Travel Survey. Participants (aged 18–64 years) completed a 24-hour travel survey, in which they reported modes of travel. Residential density, Walk Score and a Space Syntax measure of street integration were calculated at a neighbourhood level using geographic information systems. Multilevel logistic regression analyses examined associations of bicycle use with each built environment attribute, which was modelled continuously and categorically. All continuous measures of the built environment attributes were associated with bicycle use. Each one-decile increment in residential density, Walk Score, and street integration was associated with 13%, 16%, and 10% higher odds of bicycle use, respectively. However, the associations appeared to be non-linear, with significant odds ratios observed only for the higher categories of each built environment attribute relative to the middle category. This study found that adults living in high-density neighbourhoods with more destinations nearby and well-connected streets were more likely to cycle for transport. However, medium-level density, access to destinations and street connectivity may not be enough to facilitate bicycle use. Further studies are needed to investigate urban design threshold values above which cycling can be promoted.

The City of Pasadena adopted new metrics for measuring transportation impact in 2015 that promote sustainable transportation and urban form. This paper describes the process by which conventional impact measures were replaced with metrics for sustainability and describes experiences with implementation of the metrics, development of companion elements, and monitoring performance. The integrated approach to planning, development review, and system management in use in Pasadena provides both a model framework for other cities and highlights the issues that can be encountered when using metrics that are less familiar to the public and decision makers.

The concept of density lacks the ability to explain the diversity of physical elements of urban form such as building lot sizes. Thus, urban planners tend to discuss the validity of density values without taking into consideration the variation of building lot sizes due to the limited data available on building lot shapes. Our objective is to discuss the potential of building density and road network density in order to estimate the size distribution of building lots at the district scale in downtown Tokyo. The study finds that (1) building lot sizes approximately follow the lognormal distribution whose parameters, mean, and variance are formulated by gross building density, the coefficient of variation of building lots, road network density, and average road width by removing large building lots and (2) the value of the coefficient of variation is approximately equal to one. As a practical problem, we discuss how to determine the maximum building density by considering the variation of building lot sizes. It was found that the maximum building density can be determined based on a stochastic approach. These findings are expected to provide urban planners with a theoretical basis for discussing the validity of density values.

The rationale behind this article is an identified need for enhancing research on the relationship between the physical and the social aspects of the city of Nicosia through the lens of spatial history. Building on Baker’s categorizations of approaches to space in historical research and a syntactical, morphological approach to historical subjects, this article proposes an integrated methodology for researching historical space that may prove important to inform forms of urban segregation patterns. The article maintains that the analysis of the relationship between the physical, material form of a city and social processes at distinct historical periods may be key to understanding patterns of socio-spatial phenomena as well as for interpreting historical data of how people were distributed in cities and what they actually did in urban spaces at particular points in time.

Compact urban form has been applied as a strategy to reduce the loss of green space that occurs from development, but the impact of this policy on the provision of green space still presents many uncertainties. This research investigated the statistical relationship between urban form indicators and the loss of vegetation biomass to understand the response of quality green space provision to changes in urban morphology. A methodology combining multi-source data assimilation, statistical analysis, and spatial analysis was adopted for the Yangtze River Delta cities of China. First, six urban metrics were selected to describe the shape and layout of urban patches in each city, and the total biomass loss index was then introduced as a parameter. The values of urban metrics and total biomass loss index were calculated for the 50 Yangtze River Delta cities. Second, ordinary least squares regression and geographically weighted regression analyses were then used to establish a quantitative relationship between total biomass loss index and urban form indicators. The results revealed an extremely negative correlation between total biomass loss index and the three urban variables of Richard compactness, density gradient, and the Gini coefficient; moreover, the parameter estimates for the three variables in the geographically weighted regression model were local and varied over space. Third, the mechanisms by which the urban form influences biomass loss were discussed and different urban form planning strategies for particular urban areas were suggested. In conclusion, compact urban form in a clustered layout of urban areas with a dense central agglomeration was verified to be ecologically superior and conducive to green space protection. For the physical interpretation of the statistical relationship between urban morphology and vegetation loss, the interface effect of urban agglomeration on vegetation merits further study.

This paper examines whether hygiene priming influences urban density perceptions. Research shows many perceptions are influenced by priming, an implicit memory effect wherein exposure to one stimulus affects response to another. This paper examines whether urban density perceptions are similarly malleable, particularly with respect to hygiene primes. The results, which may have considerable planning implications, suggest they are not. If density perceptions could be primed, this could open up an array of subconscious-oriented interventions to modify them. In contrast, if density perceptions are relatively stable, as this research suggests, it may mean efforts to modify density patterns will meet resistance.

The city has featured as a central image in utopian thought. In planning the foundation of the new and ideal city there is a close interconnection between ideas about urban form and the vision of the moral good. The spatial structure of the ideal city in these visions is a framing device that embodies and articulates not only political philosophy but is itself an articulation of moral and cosmological systems. This paper analyses three different utopian moments in three different historical epochs – Tommaso Campanella’s City of the Sun (1602), the Choson dynasty foundation of the city of Seoul (1395) and the modernist utopian urbanism of the controversial Le Corbusier (1887–1965). In this analysis attention is drawn to the cosmological and moral visions articulated in these three ‘images of the city’ (Lynch). The opposition between rationalistic/mechanistic and religious/traditional urban design can prove to be an oversimplification that obscures the complex interrelations between the moral geometry and the natural alignments of the ideal urban form.

For years, researchers and practitioners have worked toward measuring urban form, but a gap still remains in the research to quantify how urban and suburban place-types affect economic, social, and environmental outcomes at small geographic scales. To provide such analysis, this paper describes the development of a place typology and sustainability performance measurement framework for all census tracts in California. This study found there were clear trade-offs between urban and suburban living. Compared with suburbs, the households in urban places benefited from a 57.9% reduction in annual vehicle miles traveled, 37.2% lower transport-related greenhouse gas emissions per capita, and saved more than US$2,675 in annual transportation costs, while consuming less electricity (39.9%) and water per capita (63.8%). However, the cost of urban homeownership was 40% higher, despite rents being 18.5% cheaper. And although obesity and cardiovascular disease rates were 10.3% and 8.9% lower in urban places, asthma rates were 7.5% higher. From 1970 to 2015, urban housing decreased from 34% to 21%, whereas statewide it dropped 7.5%. Despite ambitious climate action and smart growth goals, the majority of growth in California continues to be in low-density suburban/rural areas, responsible for 80% of the state’s total household carbon emissions. This analysis and place typology could prove useful in identifying areas with the highest potential for lowering vehicle miles traveled and other sustainability, livability, and equity goals. This is made even more significant given California’s recent move to abolish level of service analysis for traffic impact studies.

OpenStreetMap offers a valuable source of worldwide geospatial data useful to urban researchers. This study uses the OSMnx software to automatically download and analyze 27,000 US street networks from OpenStreetMap at metropolitan, municipal, and neighborhood scales—namely, every US city and town, census urbanized area, and Zillow-defined neighborhood. It presents empirical findings on US urban form and street network characteristics, emphasizing measures relevant to graph theory, transportation, urban design, and morphology such as structure, connectedness, density, centrality, and resilience. In the past, street network data acquisition and processing have been challenging and ad hoc. This study illustrates the use of OSMnx and OpenStreetMap to consistently conduct street network analysis with extremely large sample sizes, with clearly defined network definitions and extents for reproducibility, and using nonplanar, directed graphs. These street networks and measures data have been shared in a public repository for other researchers to use.

This article revisits the relationship between urban form and excess commuting by analyzing 206 metropolitan statistical areas in the United States. Using the most recent Census Transportation Planning Products, we revalidated the importance of using multidimensional indices when examining excess commuting across metropolitan areas. We found that higher levels of polycentricity aggravate cross-commuting, while higher central city dominance improves excess commuting. In addition, our results indicate the significant impact of sprawl or jobs–housing dispersal on excess commuting. These findings shed light on the multidimensional relationship between urban form and excess commuting.

Air pollution bears severe health and environmental impacts and is of increasing concern to urban planners but densification strategies have ambiguous impacts. We analyse how households’ aversion to generating and being exposed to traffic pollution at the residential place and during their commute influences emerging urban structures and how these structures in turn affect pollution exposure and the residential choice of households. Resulting spatial patterns are difficult to predict because of this feedback and the spatial form of urbanisation and road networks. We address this complexity with a micro-economic agent-based residential choice model dynamically coupled with a cellular automata model for pollution dispersion and its perception in neighbourhoods. Our simulation experiments on a theoretical grid suggest that the spatial scale of this perception is important. We also find that if both health and environmental concerns are to be addressed, a combination of reducing commuting distances and preserving local green spaces is necessary. In particular, locally dispersed urban development and intra-urban green spaces next to busy roads can mitigate pollution exposure.

A spatio-temporal hedonic price model is developed for the Greater Toronto area to examine the effects of urban configurations and proximity to transit services on housing price. A spatial Durbin panel model is utilized to account for both spatial and temporal autocorrelation. This model is shown to have advantages through its ability to reduce the number of explanatory variables required to obtain a strong fit with empirical data. Analysis is completed for the period of 1996 to 2017 and distinctions are made in housing stock between single-family houses, townhouses, and condominiums. It is shown that heterogeneities exist between the hedonic representations of each dwelling type and that separate models should be employed for each. In all cases, the average income of the community, its distance to the central business district (CBD), and population and employment density are found to be significant factors in the determination of price.

This study examines the potential changes in residential location choice in a scenario where shared autonomous vehicles (SAVs) are a popular mode of travel in the Atlanta metropolitan area. This hypothetical study is based on an agent-based simulation approach, which integrates residential location choice models with a SAV simulation model. The coupled model simulates future home location choices given current home location preferences and real estate development patterns. The results indicate that commuters may relocate to neighborhoods with better public schools and more amenities due to reductions in commute costs.

Geography of innovation, creative clustering, urban buzz and innovation districts are place-based concepts that have emerged as a result of the US economy’s transformation to knowledge-intensive economies. The notable built environment characteristics of these concepts are spatial clustering, walkability and proximity to urban amenities, diversity, regional connectivity and agglomeration. While several of these characteristics have been associated with urban sprawl in previous studies, there is a lack of direct evidence on how urban sprawl affects innovation productivity. This national study seeks to examine the relationship between urban sprawl, place-based characteristics and innovation productivity. We used Multilevel Modelling to account for built environment characteristics at both neighbourhood and regional levels. We found that innovative firms tend to locate more in census tracts that are less compact but offer spatial proximity to firms in related business sectors. This is likely due to the higher land and property value in compact areas, which could make it unaffordable for small businesses. We also found that the regional compactness positively and significantly affects the number of innovative firms. This is likely due to the role of compact regions in supporting public transit investments, enhancing social capital and reducing poverty and racial segregation.

This study examines whether compact development promotes a seismic-resistant city. A statistical model is used to simulate seismic damages under four spatial structure scenarios for Taichung, Taiwan. The existing floor areas of various land uses are allowed to be reallocated for reshaping the spatial structure of the city. This provides an opportunity to find an urban structure that would best resist seismic impacts similar to what have occurred during the past 100 years. The results suggest a polycentric compact form for seismic mitigation. This form, derived from the vision of Taichung, would have less seismic damages by shifting floor areas from the city center to three proposed subcenters, far away from most seismic impacts. One weakness is the seismic impacts from the north. The results also reveal that a monocentric compact form would incur more damages because the downtown area is essentially seismic-vulnerable. This paper advocates the application of a stricter building code in the downtown area. The local government should also not render additional building bulk as an incentive for urban renewal.

Extensive literature examines the relation between land use patterns and obesity, but less work explores whether local employment centers may reduce obesity. Local employment centers may affect obesity via providing agglomeration benefits such as increased job/transportation opportunities and closer proximity to local facilities/destinations. We utilized a large serial cross-sectional health survey from Los Angeles, California, conducted over three periods, to examine whether the presence of local employment centers modifies the association between land use patterns and individual body mass index. We retrieved individual health and sociodemographic data from the Los Angeles County Health Survey (2002, 2005, and 2007). To this Health Survey, we linked land use attributes at the census tract level collected from the Southern California Association of Governments. Our log-transformed regression models present interactions between local employment centers, neighborhood urban form features, and body mass index. Although most findings are consistent with previous studies, some of land use factors hypothesized to reduce the risk of obesity could have counterintuitive associations unless local employment centers were controlled. The unexpected results of our land use coefficients indicate that the tenet of New Urbanism may not necessarily promote health benefits. Our findings suggest that modifying the built environment may be effective in reducing obesity only in areas with high degree of local employment centers. Future studies would benefit from longitudinal and experimental, rather than cross-sectional, study designs that rigorously test the potential causal role of New Urbanism on obesity.

Estimating residential building energy use across large spatial extents is vital for identifying and testing effective strategies to reduce carbon emissions and improve urban sustainability. This task is underpinned by the availability of accurate models of building stock from which appropriate parameters may be extracted. For example, the form of a building, such as whether it is detached, semi-detached, terraced etc. and its shape may be used as part of a typology for defining its likely energy use. When these details are combined with information on building construction materials or glazing ratio, it can be used to infer the heat transfer characteristics of different properties. However, these data are not readily available for energy modelling or urban simulation. Although this is not a problem when the geographic scope corresponds to a small area and can be hand-collected, such manual approaches cannot be easily applied at the city or national scale. In this article, we demonstrate an approach that can automatically extract this information at the city scale using off-the-shelf products supplied by a National Mapping Agency. We present two novel techniques to create this knowledge directly from input geometry. The first technique is used to identify built form based upon the physical relationships between buildings. The second technique is used to determine a more refined internal/external wall measurement and ratio. The second technique has greater metric accuracy and can also be used to address problems identified in extracting the built form. A case study is presented for the City of Nottingham in the United Kingdom using two data products provided by the Ordnance Survey of Great Britain: MasterMap and AddressBase. This is followed by a discussion of a new categorisation approach for housing form for urban energy assessment.

As multiculturalism has become a valued aspect of the city, ethnic enclaves have taken on new economic power in the cultural economy. However, as Western cities become increasingly diverse, multiple ethnic communities often overlap in shared urban spaces. Employing ethnographic methods, this article examines Wilshire Center, Los Angeles, to better understand how multiethnic communities perceive of and experience the culture of their community and how different actors foster or resist neighborhood change. In doing so, this research complicates our understandings of gentrification dynamics in multiethnic areas, and highlights important considerations for community development practitioners seeking to plan for multiple publics.

This paper uses building footprint data in a shrinking city, Baltimore, MD, in 1972 and 2010 to achieve two primary research objectives. The first is to understand the historical patterns of housing construction and demolition in selected row house neighborhoods in Baltimore between 1972 and 2010. The second is to understand changes in housing footprints, and associations between these changes and physical and socio-economic characteristics in selected neighborhoods. We find that housing losses and associated changes in building footprints have shown substantial variation across our study area and exhibit clustering within our study area. Moreover, while housing loss is strongly associated with certain physical factors, there is a weaker association between housing loss and changes in certain socio-economic neighborhood characteristics between 1970 and 2010. Our research findings provide support for targeted, evidence-based neighborhood-based strategies that encompass traditional as well as novel approaches to vacant land management.

Urban decentralisation in the USA during the past five decades has created an automobile-dependent landscape characterised by low-densities, largely single-use zoning and disconnected street networks. Longer distances between dispersing destinations, resulting from urban decentralisation, negatively affects the mobility of socially disadvantaged groups, including women, minorities and lower-income populations. Furthermore, the urban poor and minorities in communities experiencing severe disinvestment and decline, as evident in Detroit, suffer from greater transportation burdens in accessing basic necessities, such as employment and shopping. This study explores gendered travel patterns in six neighbourhoods within the Detroit region, including neighbourhoods experiencing severe disinvestment and decline. This analysis into the gendered dimensions of travel, with a particular focus placed on women, involves a full array of trips, including work and non-work. Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression analysis and ANCOVA (Analysis of Covariance) were used to further examine gender differences by childcare responsibility in an extensive array of disaggregated travel, including trips to work, shopping and personal services, restaurant visits and leisure destinations. This study reconfirms that the traditional gender role is reflected in women’s daily travel. It also reveals the burdens of travel placed on women living in racially segregated and socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods experiencing extreme disinvestment and decline. In addition, the research shows the importance of class and race in shaping travel behaviour.

This article aims to evaluate the association between urban form and air quality in China through the use of empirical evidence. The relationship between a variety of urban form metrics and concentrations of air pollutants were analyzed through linear regressions using a data set of cross-sectional observations from 157 Chinese cities. After controlling for other explanatory variables, higher population density and lower urban continuity are commonly associated with better air quality, and urban form could play a modest but important role in improving air quality for Chinese cities.

The implications of urban form on energy have long been present in international debate, whether considering travel patterns or thermal comfort in buildings. The urban environment is a result of a set of intertwined attributes, the understanding of which is often unclear. The energy trade-offs between urban form attributes haven’t received proper attention. Research remains sectorial, considering buildings and transport in isolation. In order to allow for a comprehensive analysis of this relationship, this article reviews urban attributes with energy relevance. A collection of attributes and metrics is gathered from the literature for incorporating urban form in urban energy analysis.

This article observes how the concept of power and national identity produced space in 1960’s Islamabad, the new capital city of Pakistan. In World War II’s aftermath, many capital cities emerged which were seen as their nation’s representation by negating or reinforcing ties with sovereign or imperial power. Pakistan is one such nation that gained independence from the British in 1947. Islamabad designed by Constantinos A. Doxiadis in 1959 aimed to construct its identity in a postcolonial paradigm. This article studies the urban layout and pattern of the city and emphasizes the relation of power and identity on its social constructs and making.

Air quality is affected by the interplay between emission sources and urban planning factors such as land use, built environment, development pattern, and transportation. Few empirical studies have been conducted to determine the influence of urban form characteristics on air quality in Korea. Thus, the purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between urban form and air pollution, focusing on ozone pollution in Korea. The characteristics of urban form include density, concentration, clustering, and land use mix. In this study, those characteristics were measured by population density, the Theil index, Moran’s I index, G-statistic values, and an entropy index using statistical methods and a geographic information system. We employed a spatial regression model to consider the spatial effects of ozone concentrations. We found that the degree of urban land use mix, clustering, and concentration of development are significantly associated with better air quality by using a spatial lag model, which was found to be the best fit for the data used in this study. However, an increase in population density was found to be associated with exacerbated ozone concentrations. Communities with higher daily temperatures, a large number of cars, and polluting facilities exhibited poor air quality, while those with a larger percentage of residential land use tended to have lower ozone pollution. These findings suggest that, to properly address concerns over air quality, mixed-land use and compact urban form need to be more seriously considered in sustainable urban planning.

The conceptual and methodological debate on urban form has grown in the last decades to recognize that social, economic, demographic and political processes can contribute to the development of new urban forms, especially those related to urban sprawl, as well as to find alternative methodologies for measuring them. Spatial metrics derived from landscape ecology arise as principal indicators to measure urban form. This paper proposes a typology of the urban occupation of Portuguese municipalities. It uses land use/cover data from 1990 and 2006 to extract built-up areas, and it presents five spatial metrics alongside seventeen statistical indicators from 1991 to 2011 most commonly used in the literature to characterize urban occupation. It uses a self-organising map as a visual tool to identify trends and relationships among variables and to cluster municipalities. Based on the self-organising map’s visual clustering, six types of urban occupation of Portuguese municipalities are proposed. In addition, the paper discusses the added value of using indicators that describe both the patterns and the characteristics of the municipalities for making spatial planning decisions in Portugal. The observed results show that spatial metrics are particularly adequate for measuring peri-urban municipalities (urban sprawl areas). These results represent the first multidimensional and systematic analysis of Portuguese urban occupation and they can be the first step in the integration of spatial metrics as indicators that are suitable for the analysis of spatial planning, and also for comparative purposes at a broader geographical scale.

The term ‘palimpsest’ refers to medieval manuscripts that have been multiply erased and inscribed with the overlapping texts of successive scribes. More recently and amongst academics, the term has become a metaphor for describing the city, including both the physical urban form as well as memories and experiences of everyday urban life. The palimpsest offers a way of thinking not only about urban transformation, where new and repurposed structures exist alongside the old, but also changes in how the city is experienced, or how life stories are written upon and rewrite existing spaces. This paper focuses on the latter. Though the palimpsest metaphor has been used to describe material transformations of the urban, the question that this paper raises is: how can the notion of the palimpsest inform methodological approaches to researching how the city is lived and seen? Collaborative, digital storytelling that combines images, narration, and sound can provide a method that emphasises the polyvocality and multi-temporality that the term palimpsest implies. A palimpsestic approach to digital storytelling, as a visual and narrative method, gestures at places as open to future readings and inscriptions. This is relevant to all cities, but perhaps most obviously in cities where historical narratives, memories of violence, and questions over the future political direction of the country in which the city is located are all highly contested. To illustrate these points, this paper draws upon research conducted with young people in Beirut, Lebanon as part of a wider study about how youth experience citizenship and belonging in divided societies.