Morphological Dimension of Urban Design
Urban Morphology is the study of form and shape of settlements.
Morphology helps the urban designer to be aware of local patterns of
development and process of changes.
Understanding the city in urban design terms
The urban pattern and its components: buildings (and plots), street-blocks
and the grid.
Urban pattern: a collection of built and un-built areas, and the ways in
which these are arranged within a geographical region.
The expression urban pattern often refers to, and is represented as the two-
dimensional plan of a settlement but is also about its third or vertical
dimension specifically in urban design context.
Planned vs Un-planned organic urban forms: urban patterns vary greatly in
geometry and order, form perfect grid or chessboard layouts, to completely
irregular or disorder forms.
Street block:
A piece or urban land surrounded on four (or more) sides by streets. Blocks
and streets are two elementary components by which we recognize and
experience an urban pattern, and through which we manipulate urban forms
for economic and social purposes.
The degree to which a city is sustainable is affected both by the form of the
urban street block and also by the composition of the activities it
accommodates. The way in which the street blocks are designed and the
land use mix within street blocks also affects the quality of the built
environment.
It is the size, function and structure of the street block which gives form to
public space and contributes to the vitality of those spaces.
A city block, urban block, or simply
block is a central element of urban
planning and urban design. A city block is
the smallest area that is surrounded by
streets.
Within the block are plots. Plots contain
the various activities related to a building: the building footprint, the access
requirements, the servicing space, amenity space, parking spaces.
In design, the need for, and the relationship betwene these items should be
considered.
Plot: A small piece of land that has been marked or measured for building
development (or other purpose).
Building type: Structure categorized according to the make-up and
arrangement of its construction not necessarily its use.
Urban fabric: Understood in terms of the various forces that act upon an
urban settlement and its transformation, which can be best understood from
the features of the blocks and streets, their scale, dimension, grain or
texture, geometry, subdivision of plots and the mesh width of an urban
district.
Urban form determining forces:

Natural conditions

Economiocs of city building: understood in terms of property development

Political: understood in terms of public realm vs the private realm as

reflected in space.

Legal: Understood in terms of the regulations imposed by a community on

city building process: technological and aesthetical.

Grid as an urban planning and design issues

Two arguments underlying the universal adoption of the grid as an effective Scientific coherence in any scale
city building device. Conceived as a worldwide system, but very specific in the local
a) Man…walks in a straight line implementation. Every detail was designed from the surface of the
b) It offers a standard way of distributing land equally, and an easy extension plan to the positioning of every bench or tree or clock.
way of parceling for real estate development Ventilation, sun radiation and mobility planned from an entire city approach
rather visionary. Blocks’ depth and height regulated due to unhygienic
reasons.
Figure:

Permeability. Finely
meshed grids offer many
different ways to get
from place to place
within the grid, Coarser
grids offer fewer ways.
If the grid becomes
discontinuous through
the severing of
connections and the creation of dead ends, permeability is reduced. This has
radical impacts within coarsely meshed grids.

Barcelona, the scientific method for urban planning. The grid as the
possibility of growth ad infinitum.