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Publications (36)
The current moment can with some confidence be described both generally and in the specific terminology of urban morphology as one of crisis. Environmental, social and economic certitudes and habits are being ‘disrupted’ in a variety of ways, forcing us to revaluate and recalibrate our purposes and aims along with the range of means by which we mig...
Urban morphology studies traditionally put forward how different elements work together and change the shape of the city, and provide information to understand the contrasts and coexistence of the city between continuity and change. The antecedents of urban morphology field has shown that urban morphology is initially based on the cultural landscap...
A diversidade e a complexidade dos assentamentos humanos se refletem na variedade de maneiras com que tentamos entendê-los. A riqueza de temas inerentes às cidades tem dado origem a uma igual riqueza em métodos de investigação. Mesmo dentro de um único campo de estudo, tal como a morfologia urbana, existem diferentes abordagens com diferentes termo...
Preference and visual texture as a measure of performance: ar cula ng the principles of biophilia. Abstract There is growing evidence showing contact with nature has benefits for mental and physical health. Within the design community, evidence has been encapsulated in the concept of biophilic design. The underlying principle is that humans have ev...
There has been a long-running debate within urban morphology around the ‘description-prescription’ problem. The central question is whether we can derive prescriptions for new development based on descriptions of existing and historic development. The debate is sharpened when we seek to make the descriptions provided by urban morphology more object...
Further discussion of the plot or lot as an element of both built form and control or property.
This is a follow-up to Kropf, K. (2018) ‘Plots, property and behaviour’, Urban Morphology 22, 5–14 and response to points raised by Scheer, B. (2018) ‘Toward a minimalist definition of the plot’, Urban Morphology 22, 162–3.
There are many reasons why we might want to deepen our understanding of urban environments, from the often quoted fact that over half the global population now lives in cities to the seemingly inexorable spread of common building types across the globe and the attendant loss of diversity. Or still, there is the spectre of moribund town centres and...
Over the last fifty years, research into street networks has gained prominence with a rapidly growing number of studies across disparate disciplines. These studies investigate a wide range of phenomena using a wealth of data and diverse analytical techniques. Starting within the fields of transport or infrastructure engineering, street networks hav...
Cities concentrate intensive human activities requiring highly complex networked infrastructure for movement, public transport and myriad other spatial interactions. The planning and management of multi-modal street networks for diverse users therefore requires an understanding of urban layout beyond motorised vehicle networks as simple linear cond...
As a taught subject, the interdisciplinary nature of urban morphology presents both challenges and advantages. One challenge lies in providing some kind of structure or ‘scaffold’ that can aid the student in bringing together the diverse strands of the subject. Conversely, addressing the very different backgrounds of students who come from differen...
There is a lack of clarity in urban morphology in the use of the terms ‘plot’ and ‘lot’. The complications arise in large part because these terms are used to refer to several things. Further ambiguities arise because the concept of property is not univocal, and the boundaries corresponding to the different meanings of plot do not necessarily coinc...
Conceived as a practical manual of morphological analysis, The Handbook of Urban Morphology focuses on the form, structure and evolution of human settlements – from villages to metropolitan regions. It is the first book in any language focused on specific, up-to-date ‘how-to’ guidance , with clear summaries of the central concepts, step-by-step ins...
The paper reports on theoretical research building on the work of Steadman, Marshall and
others that examines in detail the basis for correlating the outputs of configurational analysis and urban tissue analysis. The aim of the research is to raise the yield of analysis when combining configurational and typo-morphological methods. A broader, overa...
A detailed critical analysis of the definitions of built form as used in urban morphology is reported. The overarching aim of the analysis was to establish a common reference point for examination of the different aspects of urban form in a given case and comparative study of cases from different times and places. Seminal works are examined in deta...
review of [Evolution and urban form: staking out the ground for a more mature theory]
Designing simulations for urban design not only requires explicit performance criteria of planning standards but a synthesis of implicit design objectives, that we will call ‘purpose rules’, with computational approaches. The former would at most lead to automation of the existing planning processes for speed and evaluation, the latter to an unders...
This paper presents a survey of recent applications of urban morphology in the practice of urban design, conservation and planning. The aim of the survey is to illustrate how the tools of urban morphology, in particular the idea of urban tissue as a key, coordinating point of reference, can provide an essential foundation for understanding the stru...
The diversity and complexity of human settlements is reflected in the range of ways we try to understand them. The richness of subject matter presented by cities has given rise to an equal richness in methods of investigation. Even within a single field such as urban morphology, there are different approaches with different terms of reference. The...
Viewpoints of [Crisis in the typological process and the language of innovation and tradition K.S. Kropf]
Karl Kropf offers a morphological critique of an urban design sacred cow Urban Design 97 Winter 2006 pages 12-13 The perimeter block is one of the defining orthodoxies of current urban design wisdom. It has formed the core of urban design thinking for the past 30 years and has now been institutionalised in official guidance. It is held up as a defe...
This paper starts from the premise that urban morphology and process typology make use of a number of different, more or less explicit, quasi-evolutionary conceptions of change. The principal argument of the paper is that the evolutionary conceptions of change as used in these fields could be made more explicit, robust and broadly applicable if the...
This paper was prompted by a very basic question. What is a plot? Or, to what does the term plot refer? The same questions apply, of course, to the term lot. There are both theoretical and methodological dimensions to these questions. On the one hand it raises the further question of what sort of description gives us the clearest picture of the for...
The paper describes an approach to development control taken in France, bringing together the zoning system of planning and geographical and architectural studies of urban form. The approach addresses a number of issues, in particular the maintenance of the historical and regional character of towns, often eroded under systems of land‐use zoning. T...
This paper is concerned with the question of identifying and describing the general and historical character of human settlements. Beginning with a brief overview of the subject, the paper examines some basic issues concerning the perception of character and its historical dimension, highlighting a number of fundamental principles. The central argu...
Thesis (doctoral)--University of Birmingham, 1993.
Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Birmingham, 1993.
