Urban Morphology: City Shapes, Plans, and Networks

Posted on Oct 31, 2024 in Geography

Urban Morphology: City Shapes and Layouts

Urban morphology studies the shape of a city as a whole, describing its physical form and structure.

Two primary aspects shape a city’s morphology:

Street Layout and Features: This includes the arrangement, width, length, and curvature of streets, impacting the city’s overall organization.
Buildings: Building facades contribute significantly to a neighborhood’s character and the city’s visual identity.

A city plan is a large-scale map detailing streets and buildings. Analyzing city plans reveals common features and various street layout types.

Disordered or Irregular Plan: Characterized by winding, narrow streets lacking a fixed order, often found in historic European city centers.
Orthogonal Plan (Lattice, Checkerboard, Hippodamus): Features straight streets intersecting at right angles, creating a grid-like pattern. This design, common in 19th-century urban expansions, can lead to traffic congestion.
Radiocentric Plan: Major streets radiate from a central point, typically a landmark, facilitating communication between suburbs and the city center.

Cities within a territory form a system based on their size and functions, creating an urban hierarchy.

Cities higher in the hierarchy serve a larger area and perform more functions.

National Metropolis: Cities with over 1 million inhabitants, exerting influence nationwide (e.g., Madrid and Barcelona in Spain).
Regional Metropolis (First Order): Cities with 300,000 to 1 million inhabitants, influencing a wider region (e.g., Cordoba, Malaga, and Seville in Andalusia, Spain).
Regional Metropolis (Second Order/Sub-metropolis): Cities with 200,000 to 300,000 inhabitants, influencing a province and potentially neighboring areas (e.g., Granada and Jerez de la Frontera in Andalusia, Spain).
Intermediate Cities: Cities with 50,000 to 200,000 inhabitants, serving a province and often specializing in a particular activity.
Small Cities: Cities with 10,000 to 50,000 inhabitants, serving a region and providing basic services to surrounding towns.

An urban network describes the distribution and connections between cities in a region.

Concentrated: Major cities cluster in a limited area, often around the provincial capital, common in underdeveloped or developing countries.
Linear: Cities align along a river or major transportation route (e.g., cities along the Nile in Egypt).
Dendritic: Major cities concentrate near the coast with few inland cities, typical in former European colonies in the Americas.
Radiocentric: A major city acts as the central hub with other cities located on its periphery, leaving large empty spaces (e.g., Spain with Madrid as the center).
Regular: Cities are evenly distributed throughout the territory without significant clustering or gaps, common in Central and Western Europe.

Spain’s urban network is characterized by:

Few large cities (most just over 250,000 inhabitants).
Major cities located on the periphery and near the coast, with exceptions like Madrid and Zaragoza.
Significant deficiencies, including large urban areas in some regions and small provincial capitals in others.
A radiocentric structure with Madrid as the central hub.