Towards analytical typologies of plot systems: Quantitative profile of five European cities

Abstract

The importance of the plot (also referred to as 'property') as one of the fundamental elements of urban form is well recognized within the field of urban morphology. Despite the fact that it is often described as the basic element in the pattern of land divisions, which are essential as organizational frameworks for urban form, studies offering comprehensive descriptions and classifications of plot systems are quite scant. The aim of the paper is to introduce a classification of plot systems into typologies based on five European cities, in order to distinguish particular spatial differences and similarities in terms of their plot structure. The proposed typologies are developed using unsupervised k-means cluster analysis based on numeric attributes derived from central theories in urban morphology. The introduced typologies are essentially configurational, allowing collective systematic properties of plot systems to be captured. Numeric attributes include plot differentiation (or plot size), plot frontage and compactness ratio, corresponding to essential qualities of plot systems such as the capacity to carry differences in space, the ability to operate as interface between street and building and providing a framework for evolution of built form over time. All three attributes are translated into configurational measures in order to capture the context of the plot system, rather than the parameters of individual plots. The combination of these deductively defined variables with algorithmically defined classification methods results in seven plot types that can be used to scale up traditional urban morphological analysis to whole city regions and conduct substantial comparison of patterns within, but also between these regions. Further, it also makes it possible to describe commonly recognized plot patterns and discover new ones.

Revisiting Urban Resilience: A Review on Resilience of Spatial Structure in Urban Refugee Neighborhoods Facing Demographic Changes

“…Redundancy increases in fragmented and smaller size blocks (Vialard, 2012). This is measured by the frontage index for plot or block which is a ratio between frontage street length and plot or block perimeter length (Bobkova et al, 2021).…”

Parametric Urban Data Structuring and Spatial Query - Advanced data mapping and selection methods for parametric modelling environments

“…Streets facilitate the accessibility to different urban spaces hosted mainly inside the city buildings. In a recent study, Bobkova et al (2021) added that some properties of the plots, like their frontages, correspond to essential qualities such as the ability to operate as an interface between street and building.…”

Methodological foundation of a numerical taxonomy of urban form

“…Recently however, advances in geographic data science, combined with growing availability of geospatial data, triggered a data-driven stream of urban morphology studies, named ‘urban morphometrics’ (e.g. ; Araldi and Fusco 2019; Bobkova et al, 2019; Dibble et al, 2019; Gil et al, 2012). Within this line of research, the paper aims to address the need for more systematic, scalable and efficient method for the detection and classification of morphological patterns.…”

“…More complex classifications involve hierarchical methods ( taxonomies ), which organise classes based on their mutual relationships like Serra et al (2018)’s hierarchical taxonomy of neighbourhoods built according to 12 morphological characters of street network, blocks and buildings, and the work by Dibble et al (2019) who hierarchically classify portions of urban area enclosed by main streets . More granular approaches include the work by Araldi and Fusco (2019), who classify street segments using 21 morphometric characters derived from street networks, building footprints and digital terrain model and research by Spatial Morphology Group at Chalmers University (Berghauser Pont et al, 2019a, 2019b; Bobkova et al, 2019) that classifies morphological elements of plots, streets and buildings through a handful of morphometric characters.…”