Understanding Spaces of City by Morphological Studies
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Date
2019-01
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Publisher
Medical Council of India
Abstract
City building is not a one-time effort it is rather a process using which the planners, designers create the habitat for humans. The habitatalong with its constituents parts namely buildings, streets, gardens, squares etc. constitute an urban form. Urban morphology is an importantfield of study along with urban typology. Urbanists, planners and geographers have been practicing them in Europe and America. Theseexplain the process of city building, help in preserving the historic urban form for change and continuity, and quantify the qualitative aspectsof urban form. There exist two widely accepted and discussed streams of city form analysis these are typology and morphology.Authors have during their research have identified three basic schools practicing different thoughts that give shape to city urban form fromdifferent perspectives. The German-British school pioneered by geographer and planner M R G Conzen is the oldest of all. Conzen migratedto England after the World War II. It is stated that study and analysis of urban landscape is the basis of study of city building processexplaining the historicity. The tradition is carried forward by the scholars like Whitehand, Larkham, and Slater under the flagship of UrbanMorphology research group, at University of Birmingham. The Italian school led by architect Muratori founded in early 50s. The Italianarchitects got associated with the thought of city form study on the basis of architectural design theory. This branch of city form study iscalled as typological study of city form. The works of Cannigia, Maffei, Maretto, etc. have established and carried forward the typologicalstudy of cities. The third school known as French school and was founded by architect Philippe Panerai, Jean Castex and sociologist CharlesDePaule in late 60s. The theory of design amalgamated with the social theory of human interaction with the built environment. This paperbrings out the in-depth method of understanding cities by use of three kinds of methods used in morphological studies. This will help us toknow about them in integrated manner and create better understating of city fabric.
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Keywords
Morphology, Town Plan, English School, Italian School
Citation
Kaushik Ar. Ajay. Understanding Spaces of City by Morphological Studies. International Journal of Interdisciplinary and Multidisciplinary Studies. 2019 Jan; 6(1): 80-88