Quantitative analysis of urban form: a multidisciplinary review

Clifton, Kelly J.; Ewing, Reid; Knaap, Gerrit; Song, Yan

doi:10.1080/17549170801903496

Cited by 163 publications

(166 citation statements)

References 94 publications

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“…Beyond these qualitative formulations of complexity in urban form and design, how might it be measured and assessed? A stream of planning literature has considered quantitative measures of the urban form, but without explicitly engaging with complexity (e.g., Cervero and Kockelman 1997;Song and Knaap 2004;Tsai 2005;Clifton et al 2008;Ewing and Cervero 2010;Schwarz 2010;Song et al 2013b). Various complexity metrics at multiple scales, from metropolitan to neighborhood to building, are scattered throughout different bodies of literature.…”

Section: Background: Complexity Form and Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Clifton et al (2008) discuss qualities of the urban form and human perceptions at multiple scales. For neighborhood and street scale urban design, perceptions of human scale are related to building heights and signage, perceptions of coherence are related to consistency of building heights, and sense of enclosure is related to building/element spacing and tree canopy.…”

Section: Visual Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

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Measuring the Complexity of Urban Form and Design

Boeing

2017

SSRN Journal

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Complex systems have become a popular lens for conceptualizing cities, and complexity has substantial implications for urban performance and resilience. This paper develops a typology of methods and measures for assessing the complexity of the built form at the scale of urban design. It extends quantitative methods from urban planning, network science, ecosystems studies, fractal geometry, and information theory to the physical urban form and the analysis of qualitative human experience. Metrics at multiple scales are scattered throughout these bodies of literature and have useful applications in analyzing the complexity that both evolves and results from local planning and design processes. The typology developed here applies to empirical research of multiple neighborhood types and design standards and it includes temporal, visual, spatial, fractal, and network-analytic measures of the urban form.

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Section: Background: Complexity Form and Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Visual Complexitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Measuring the Complexity of Urban Form and Design

Boeing

2017

SSRN Journal

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“…Moreover, urban design deals with the delivery of urban form, at different scales. In a metastudy of urban form, Clifton et al (2008) suggested that this is the focus of many different disciplines, which use different scales of investigation, have a different focus of interest and use different methods. We follow on from their classification of scales, and focus our review on the (sub-)metropolitan, neighborhood and pedestrian scales.…”

Section: Urban Design and City Formmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As such, we look at urban form as shaped by urban design at three main scales: metropolitan, neighborhood and pedestrian (Clifton et al 2008;Lehrer 2010). We then search for studies that relate domains of QoL to each of these scales, including a focus on objective and subjective indicators.…”

Section: Aim and Rationale Of The Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Design and Quality of Life

Rómice

Thwaites

Porta

et al. 2016

Handbook of Environmental Psychology and Quality of Life Research

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This chapter deals with those aspects of the design of cities that have been shown to affect quality of life. Whilst direct causal relationships between physical space and well-being are often difficult to establish, physical space certainly does play a significant part in shaping the way we engage with it, informing the individual and collective sense of attachment to our own environment; this will become increasingly important, with the urbanization process predicted to grow, a significant part of which in conditions of informality. The aim of this chapter is to gather relevant and recent research that highlights advances in the study of the reciprocal effect between urban form and urban life and use this to compile an agenda for future thinking, research and practice in the field of socially sustainable urban design.The thrust of this agenda is centered on the concept of control. Since urbanization is an ongoing phenomenon and life in cities is now the norm for the vast majority of people, the traditional role of design needs to be reconsidered to give way to more collaborative and flexible forms of conceptualization, creation, occupation and management of space. This is important in order to relieve pressure on land and institutions, and instill an overall proactive and reciprocal attitude towards space itself, and space as a form of collective and social life.The chapter will highlight that urban quality of life rests on four core themes of: material well-being; emotional and personal development; interpersonal relationships; and physical well-being. These themes provide an organizational framework for exploration of how they are manifest at the metropolitan, neighbourhood and pedestrian levels of scale. KeywordsCities, urban form, control, urban design, quality of life, metropolitan scale, neighbourhood scale, pedestrian scale. Email author OutlineFrom an overview on recent trends in urbanization, we will introduce the notion of control as a key to read the following text and in particular we will: 1. contextualize the concept of control in relation to the fields of both quality of life (QoL) and urban form. In fact, the literature in both domains shows that there is a mutually reciprocal relationship between aspects of quality of life and urban spatial structure; 2. review established and recent research on the relationships between QoL and urban form, structured around metropolitan, neighborhood and pedestrian scales, which illustrates the centrality of control in shaping our cities and allowing quality of life to be fulfilled within them; 3. propose a conceptual framework for socio-spatial urban design, which is sensitive to the relative importance of predictive/structural and loose/flexible urban elements in the production and management of urban space, and their critical role in affording their users a sense of control; 4. suggest the need for a reconceptualization of city form away from an assemblage of material and spatial elements towards a more integrated sense of a city as a mutually d...

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“…At its core, urban sprawl is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon with no universally accepted definition [4][5][6] and these characteristics have had a profound impact on the way that sprawl research has been conducted. The lack of a standard definition has contributed to the longevity and contentiousness of debate, while the breadth of the issue has made it difficult to study in a comprehensive manner.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Environmental Impacts of Sprawl: Emergent Themes from the Past Decade of Planning Research

2013

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Abstract:This article reviews studies published in English language planning journals since 2001 that focus on the environmental impacts of sprawl. We organise our analysis of the reviewed literature around: (1) the conceptualisation or measurement of sprawl; (2) a comparison of research methods employed and findings with respect to four categories of environmental impacts-air, energy, land, and water; and (3) an exploration of emergent and cross-cutting themes. We hypothesise that the trend towards breaking down silos observable in other areas of planning scholarship is also reflected in the recent sprawl literature and structure our review to test this proposition. International in scope, our work demonstrates how focusing on outcomes can facilitate balanced comparisons across geographic contexts with varying rates of urbanisation and affluence. We find that the sprawl research published in planning journals over the past decade frequently engages with broader themes of resilience and justice, increasingly considers multiple environmental outcomes, and suggests a convergence in the way sprawl is studied that transcends national boundaries as well as the developing-developed country dichotomy.

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Quantitative analysis of urban form: a multidisciplinary review

Cited by 163 publications

References 94 publications

Measuring the Complexity of Urban Form and Design

Measuring the Complexity of Urban Form and Design

Urban Design and Quality of Life

The Environmental Impacts of Sprawl: Emergent Themes from the Past Decade of Planning Research

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