H3 - Urban form and structure
The form or shape of the city, known as its morphology, can be seen as the tangible outcome
of a complex mix of socio-economic forces and the ideas and intentions of groups and
individuals acting both from within and outside a city. In this chapter we provide a brief
introduction to some of the ways in which geographers have sought to analyse urban form
and understand the dynamic and changing structure of cities over time and space. We begin
by examining the development of ideas associated with urban morphological study. We then
adopt a broadly chronological approach by examining key stages in the historical
development of cities and their form.
Studying urban form and structure
Many early studies of cities were essentially descriptive ‘site and situation’ studies,
concerned primarily with examining physical characteristics as the determining factor in the
location and development of settlements. Later research not only undertook more detailed
studies of urban forms but also considered the forces creating them. This urban
morphogenetic study developed particularly strongly in German universities in the early
twentieth century. The traditions developed here have had a continuing influence on the
development of urban morphological study in many European countries and in North
America through both the spread of ideas and the movement of key researchers. A key
legacy of this German tradition was the development of approaches to the study of urban
form within geography, principally through the work of Conzen, who was a student in the
early twentieth century. He undertook a number of detailed urban studies of British towns in
the 1950s and 1960s. These studies established some important foundations for the study of
urban form which have become widely accepted and which have underpinned much
subsequent work in this area:
Basic principles for urban morphological study
● The three-fold division of the urban landscape into plan, building form and land use, as a
way of unpacking its complexity.
● The sub-division of a city’s plan into streets, plots/blocks/open spaces and building/block
plans as a way of understanding the key elements of the city’s two-dimensional form.
● The recognition of the individual plot, or land parcel, as the fundamental unit of analysis.
Conceptualization of developments in the urban landscape
● Recognition that different elements of the urban landscape change at different speeds over
time, with the plan more resistant to change than building forms and land uses. Existing
forms then provide constraints on subsequent development.
● Conceptualization of cycles of development at the micro scale within the plot
● Conceptualization of the phases of growth of the city at the macro scale through the idea
of fringe belts
Despite this work being well received at the time of publication, Conzen’s ideas
have not been widely utilized until relatively recently. Many studies of urban
form remained essentially descriptive and came in for criticism in the 1960s as
geography moved to embrace scientific and structural approaches. Studies of
urban development and the ‘shape’ of the city became dominated by studies of
,function and land use, drawing on the work of the Chicago School. Here, form and use
became conflated and buildings and spaces were viewed primarily as containers of
activities, if they were examined at all. Consideration of the city as a complex physical entity
almost disappeared from mainstream urban geographical research and urban geography
textbooks.
Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence in studies of urban form. The impetus for this
resurgence has come from scholars in a variety of different disciplines around the world,
including geography, planning, architecture, urban design and urban history. Within
geography there are three principles. strands of current interest are evident. First, work
based on Conzen’s ideas has continued in Britain and in the United States. Key areas have
been development of the fringe belt concept, the plan analysis of medieval towns and
examination of agents of urban change. Second, renewed interest in culture in geography
has focused attention on the symbolic qualities of the urban landscape. Finally, researchers
have become interested in the emergence of the new urban forms linked to post-modernism
and changes in the dominant forms of architecture in cities. This recent research has begun
to explore the common ways in which cities are built and transformed, and has widened
research beyond the traditional areas of study, showing the applicability of many earlier
concepts to modern urban environments and cities beyond Europe.
Early urban forms - Urban origins
Generally, early urban development was linked to changes in human societies
beginning in the Neolithic Period (6,000 to 10,000 years BP) and associated with
the development of human control of the environment through the domestication
of animals, crop production and irrigation. Surpluses and the management of a social elite,
provided the preconditions for urban development. However, this idea of agricultural primacy
has been questioned, with the development of urban areas and populations seen to
have provided the stimulus for agricultural development. The reality was probably a complex
inter-relationship between these two elements and technological change, with other factors
such as defensive and religious needs. There is an important link between socio-economic
transformations and processes of urbanization, with the associated emergence of particular
urban forms. 2005). Only with the expansion of Greek urban influences and the subsequent
rise of the Roman Empire around 2,100 years BP is there evidence for the diffusion of
city-building ideas, in particular the use of a grid layout for planned new settlements. While
legacies from some of these early cities have survived as the basis for modern cities, many
of these early sites were abandoned as environments changed and empires waxed and
waned.
The form of the pre-industrial city
The diversity in the origins of early cities in time and space produced a great variety in their
form. The forms of earliest cities were often intimately linked to religious and cultural beliefs.
Despite this variety in early urban forms, similarities in the principal functions and
socio-political structure of early cities led Gideon Sjoberg to propose a model of the structure
of the pre-industrial city. Within Sjoberg’s model, prestige buildings, religious complexes and
the residences of the social elite were located in the centre, indicating the pre-eminence of
the core and the greater prominence of these activities over economic concerns. Concentric
rings of decreasing social status span out from the centre. These zones of artisans and
unskilled workers were further differentiated by virtue of occupation or ethnicity. Variations to
,Sjoberg’s model emphasized the importance of occupational sub-districts in pre-industrial
cities based on economic rather than purely religious concerns and questioned the extent of
a zone of lower class laborers, seeing these scattered throughout the sub-districts.
Sjoberg’s is based on socio-economic structure and does little to illuminate understanding of
the physical structure of pre-industrial cities. While the physical form was quite specific,
related to localized building traditions, similarities in the functions of early cities produced
some commonalities in the layout and building types contained within them. Early cities were
‘pedestrian’ cities and therefore relatively compact in size with fairly narrow streets, so called
organic in structure -> irregular and ‘natural’ rather than formal and planned. However, the
description of the form of pre-industrial cities as ‘unplanned’ is somewhat false as there is
clear evidence of planning in many early cities, for example in many medieval European
cities.
Case study: urban form and symbolism in the medieval city
In inscribing Christian values into urban landscapes. This Christian symbolism was further
inscribed into the urban life of the medieval city and communicated to urban populations
more widely through religious processions which often went from the periphery of the city to
the main religious building at the centre, so symbolizing the route to God and the centrality of
God within the city and also the wider Christian world.
In line with their defensive and control functions cities were often surrounded by
fortifications, particularly walls, that acted as important barriers to outward extension. This
densely packed structure is also evident in the multiple use of plots and buildings in the
pre-industrial city for both commercial and residential purposes. Conzen’s (1960)
examination of burgage plots in Alnwick reveals a typical structure where homes, workshops
and storage areas were combined in a single plot, which over time was increasingly infilled
with buildings due to development pressures. Cities also acted as trading centres,
containing spaces for the exchange, storage and processing of goods (shops and markets in
the core of the city).
While these generalized forms can be identified in many cities with pre industrial origins, it
should be noted that differences in religious codes and the organization of social relations
produce some distinctive form variants. For example, in traditional Islamic cities, the site of
the main mosque has an important influence on urban form, while extended family living
arrangements and ideas about the distinction of public and private domestic space produce
distinctive layouts in residential districts.
The modern city
The rise of the modern cities that we know today was precipitated by two further significant
phases in the development of human history, namely industrialization and colonialism.
Many pre-industrial cities increased significantly in size and had their form altered by
redevelopment and the addition of new urban forms associated with new economic and
socio-cultural impulses. In addition, many new urban centres emerged based on the
exploitation of new resources, such as coal, new transportation links, such as railways, and
new industries.
, In parallel to industrialization a number of European countries embarked on a
period of global exploration and colonization. Initial quests for trade routes developed into
the claiming and settlement of land on the continents of North and South America, Africa and
Asia. This resulted in the export of European ideas of city building to the ‘New World’, some
design ideas from colonized countries also filtered back into European cities
New cities were founded as political centres for colonial control and as centres for colonial
trade. Where existing cities were utilized, separate colonial extensions were often added to
existing indigenous urban forms.
The industrial city
The rise of the industrial city stimulated much research into these new and changing cities.
The work of urban sociologists at The University of Chicago was particularly influential. For
Burgess, the city was a ‘social organism’ and he used the ecological analogy of invasion and
succession to conceptualize the process of suburbanization. In his model, recent migrants to
the city would lack money and would seek out the cheapest accommodation in the city,
namely older housing in the inner city. As these migrants became wealthier and able to
make wider housing choices, they would move out to the next zone of more expensive
housing. Thus social status and wealth increased towards the edge of the settlement, with
the best housing and wealthiest groups on the edge of the city. The model also identified a
central business district, where commercial functions dominated, and a transitional zone,
where industry mixed with poor housing. The model therefore identifies the increasing
functional segregation of the industrial city, with an increasing separation of home and work.
Hoyt’s model was based on urban land economics. He disputed the notion of a concentric
zonal structure for the industrial city and argued that residential areas could be more
properly understood as a pattern of sectors. He identified a sectoral pattern of high rent
areas and suggested that high status sectors could be found along routes radiating out from
the centre and away from industrial zones. However, his model also includes an element of
filtering, with wealthier residents moving out from the centre.
Subsequent ‘testing’ of these models has revealed the complexity of urban
socio-economic structure and the range of factors influencing this. An important
early variation to Burgess and Hoyt’s models was the proposal of a multiple nuclei model by
Harris and Ullman (1945). Here they argued that cities rarely
develop around a single nucleus and that a range of local conditions were important to the
location and clustering of various land uses. Other important variations were identified in
industrial cities where capitalist and free market conditions had not been given an unfettered
rein. In the UK, analysis of British cities revealed a more complex pattern of zones and
sectors, exemplified by Mann’s (1965) model (figure 3.3), with lower status local authority
housing on the edge of cities, a result of state intervention in the housing market from the
early twentieth century onwards. Intervention by the state also gave rise to very different
forms in cities developed under communism in Eastern Europe and China.
While useful, these classical urban models only provide a partial insight into the form of the
industrial city, based as they are on considerations of socio-economic structure alone. They
provide no indication of the physical forms associated with the dynamic growth and change
of the industrial city. Using the fringe belt concept which links the long-term development of
urban areas to economic fluctuations, the role of innovation and cycles of building in
The form or shape of the city, known as its morphology, can be seen as the tangible outcome
of a complex mix of socio-economic forces and the ideas and intentions of groups and
individuals acting both from within and outside a city. In this chapter we provide a brief
introduction to some of the ways in which geographers have sought to analyse urban form
and understand the dynamic and changing structure of cities over time and space. We begin
by examining the development of ideas associated with urban morphological study. We then
adopt a broadly chronological approach by examining key stages in the historical
development of cities and their form.
Studying urban form and structure
Many early studies of cities were essentially descriptive ‘site and situation’ studies,
concerned primarily with examining physical characteristics as the determining factor in the
location and development of settlements. Later research not only undertook more detailed
studies of urban forms but also considered the forces creating them. This urban
morphogenetic study developed particularly strongly in German universities in the early
twentieth century. The traditions developed here have had a continuing influence on the
development of urban morphological study in many European countries and in North
America through both the spread of ideas and the movement of key researchers. A key
legacy of this German tradition was the development of approaches to the study of urban
form within geography, principally through the work of Conzen, who was a student in the
early twentieth century. He undertook a number of detailed urban studies of British towns in
the 1950s and 1960s. These studies established some important foundations for the study of
urban form which have become widely accepted and which have underpinned much
subsequent work in this area:
Basic principles for urban morphological study
● The three-fold division of the urban landscape into plan, building form and land use, as a
way of unpacking its complexity.
● The sub-division of a city’s plan into streets, plots/blocks/open spaces and building/block
plans as a way of understanding the key elements of the city’s two-dimensional form.
● The recognition of the individual plot, or land parcel, as the fundamental unit of analysis.
Conceptualization of developments in the urban landscape
● Recognition that different elements of the urban landscape change at different speeds over
time, with the plan more resistant to change than building forms and land uses. Existing
forms then provide constraints on subsequent development.
● Conceptualization of cycles of development at the micro scale within the plot
● Conceptualization of the phases of growth of the city at the macro scale through the idea
of fringe belts
Despite this work being well received at the time of publication, Conzen’s ideas
have not been widely utilized until relatively recently. Many studies of urban
form remained essentially descriptive and came in for criticism in the 1960s as
geography moved to embrace scientific and structural approaches. Studies of
urban development and the ‘shape’ of the city became dominated by studies of
,function and land use, drawing on the work of the Chicago School. Here, form and use
became conflated and buildings and spaces were viewed primarily as containers of
activities, if they were examined at all. Consideration of the city as a complex physical entity
almost disappeared from mainstream urban geographical research and urban geography
textbooks.
Since the 1980s, there has been a resurgence in studies of urban form. The impetus for this
resurgence has come from scholars in a variety of different disciplines around the world,
including geography, planning, architecture, urban design and urban history. Within
geography there are three principles. strands of current interest are evident. First, work
based on Conzen’s ideas has continued in Britain and in the United States. Key areas have
been development of the fringe belt concept, the plan analysis of medieval towns and
examination of agents of urban change. Second, renewed interest in culture in geography
has focused attention on the symbolic qualities of the urban landscape. Finally, researchers
have become interested in the emergence of the new urban forms linked to post-modernism
and changes in the dominant forms of architecture in cities. This recent research has begun
to explore the common ways in which cities are built and transformed, and has widened
research beyond the traditional areas of study, showing the applicability of many earlier
concepts to modern urban environments and cities beyond Europe.
Early urban forms - Urban origins
Generally, early urban development was linked to changes in human societies
beginning in the Neolithic Period (6,000 to 10,000 years BP) and associated with
the development of human control of the environment through the domestication
of animals, crop production and irrigation. Surpluses and the management of a social elite,
provided the preconditions for urban development. However, this idea of agricultural primacy
has been questioned, with the development of urban areas and populations seen to
have provided the stimulus for agricultural development. The reality was probably a complex
inter-relationship between these two elements and technological change, with other factors
such as defensive and religious needs. There is an important link between socio-economic
transformations and processes of urbanization, with the associated emergence of particular
urban forms. 2005). Only with the expansion of Greek urban influences and the subsequent
rise of the Roman Empire around 2,100 years BP is there evidence for the diffusion of
city-building ideas, in particular the use of a grid layout for planned new settlements. While
legacies from some of these early cities have survived as the basis for modern cities, many
of these early sites were abandoned as environments changed and empires waxed and
waned.
The form of the pre-industrial city
The diversity in the origins of early cities in time and space produced a great variety in their
form. The forms of earliest cities were often intimately linked to religious and cultural beliefs.
Despite this variety in early urban forms, similarities in the principal functions and
socio-political structure of early cities led Gideon Sjoberg to propose a model of the structure
of the pre-industrial city. Within Sjoberg’s model, prestige buildings, religious complexes and
the residences of the social elite were located in the centre, indicating the pre-eminence of
the core and the greater prominence of these activities over economic concerns. Concentric
rings of decreasing social status span out from the centre. These zones of artisans and
unskilled workers were further differentiated by virtue of occupation or ethnicity. Variations to
,Sjoberg’s model emphasized the importance of occupational sub-districts in pre-industrial
cities based on economic rather than purely religious concerns and questioned the extent of
a zone of lower class laborers, seeing these scattered throughout the sub-districts.
Sjoberg’s is based on socio-economic structure and does little to illuminate understanding of
the physical structure of pre-industrial cities. While the physical form was quite specific,
related to localized building traditions, similarities in the functions of early cities produced
some commonalities in the layout and building types contained within them. Early cities were
‘pedestrian’ cities and therefore relatively compact in size with fairly narrow streets, so called
organic in structure -> irregular and ‘natural’ rather than formal and planned. However, the
description of the form of pre-industrial cities as ‘unplanned’ is somewhat false as there is
clear evidence of planning in many early cities, for example in many medieval European
cities.
Case study: urban form and symbolism in the medieval city
In inscribing Christian values into urban landscapes. This Christian symbolism was further
inscribed into the urban life of the medieval city and communicated to urban populations
more widely through religious processions which often went from the periphery of the city to
the main religious building at the centre, so symbolizing the route to God and the centrality of
God within the city and also the wider Christian world.
In line with their defensive and control functions cities were often surrounded by
fortifications, particularly walls, that acted as important barriers to outward extension. This
densely packed structure is also evident in the multiple use of plots and buildings in the
pre-industrial city for both commercial and residential purposes. Conzen’s (1960)
examination of burgage plots in Alnwick reveals a typical structure where homes, workshops
and storage areas were combined in a single plot, which over time was increasingly infilled
with buildings due to development pressures. Cities also acted as trading centres,
containing spaces for the exchange, storage and processing of goods (shops and markets in
the core of the city).
While these generalized forms can be identified in many cities with pre industrial origins, it
should be noted that differences in religious codes and the organization of social relations
produce some distinctive form variants. For example, in traditional Islamic cities, the site of
the main mosque has an important influence on urban form, while extended family living
arrangements and ideas about the distinction of public and private domestic space produce
distinctive layouts in residential districts.
The modern city
The rise of the modern cities that we know today was precipitated by two further significant
phases in the development of human history, namely industrialization and colonialism.
Many pre-industrial cities increased significantly in size and had their form altered by
redevelopment and the addition of new urban forms associated with new economic and
socio-cultural impulses. In addition, many new urban centres emerged based on the
exploitation of new resources, such as coal, new transportation links, such as railways, and
new industries.
, In parallel to industrialization a number of European countries embarked on a
period of global exploration and colonization. Initial quests for trade routes developed into
the claiming and settlement of land on the continents of North and South America, Africa and
Asia. This resulted in the export of European ideas of city building to the ‘New World’, some
design ideas from colonized countries also filtered back into European cities
New cities were founded as political centres for colonial control and as centres for colonial
trade. Where existing cities were utilized, separate colonial extensions were often added to
existing indigenous urban forms.
The industrial city
The rise of the industrial city stimulated much research into these new and changing cities.
The work of urban sociologists at The University of Chicago was particularly influential. For
Burgess, the city was a ‘social organism’ and he used the ecological analogy of invasion and
succession to conceptualize the process of suburbanization. In his model, recent migrants to
the city would lack money and would seek out the cheapest accommodation in the city,
namely older housing in the inner city. As these migrants became wealthier and able to
make wider housing choices, they would move out to the next zone of more expensive
housing. Thus social status and wealth increased towards the edge of the settlement, with
the best housing and wealthiest groups on the edge of the city. The model also identified a
central business district, where commercial functions dominated, and a transitional zone,
where industry mixed with poor housing. The model therefore identifies the increasing
functional segregation of the industrial city, with an increasing separation of home and work.
Hoyt’s model was based on urban land economics. He disputed the notion of a concentric
zonal structure for the industrial city and argued that residential areas could be more
properly understood as a pattern of sectors. He identified a sectoral pattern of high rent
areas and suggested that high status sectors could be found along routes radiating out from
the centre and away from industrial zones. However, his model also includes an element of
filtering, with wealthier residents moving out from the centre.
Subsequent ‘testing’ of these models has revealed the complexity of urban
socio-economic structure and the range of factors influencing this. An important
early variation to Burgess and Hoyt’s models was the proposal of a multiple nuclei model by
Harris and Ullman (1945). Here they argued that cities rarely
develop around a single nucleus and that a range of local conditions were important to the
location and clustering of various land uses. Other important variations were identified in
industrial cities where capitalist and free market conditions had not been given an unfettered
rein. In the UK, analysis of British cities revealed a more complex pattern of zones and
sectors, exemplified by Mann’s (1965) model (figure 3.3), with lower status local authority
housing on the edge of cities, a result of state intervention in the housing market from the
early twentieth century onwards. Intervention by the state also gave rise to very different
forms in cities developed under communism in Eastern Europe and China.
While useful, these classical urban models only provide a partial insight into the form of the
industrial city, based as they are on considerations of socio-economic structure alone. They
provide no indication of the physical forms associated with the dynamic growth and change
of the industrial city. Using the fringe belt concept which links the long-term development of
urban areas to economic fluctuations, the role of innovation and cycles of building in
