Typologies have always played an important role in urban planning and design practice and formal studies have been central to the field of urban morphology. These studies have predominantly been of a historical-qualitative nature and do not support quantitative comparisons between urban areas and between different cities, nor offer the precise and comprehensive descriptions needed by those engaged in urban planning and design practice. To describe contemporary urban forms, which are more diffuse and often elude previous historic typologies, systematic quantitative methods can be useful but, until recently, these have played a limited role in typo-morphological studies. This paper contributes to recent developments in this field by integrating multi-variable geometric descriptions with inter-scalar relational descriptions of urban form. It presents typologies for three key elements of urban form (streets, plots and buildings) in five European cities, produced using statistical clustering methods. In a first instance, the resulting typologies contribute to a better understanding of the characteristics of streets, plots and buildings. In particular, the results offer insight into patterns between the types (i.e. which types are found in combination and which not) and provide a new large scale comparative analysis across five European cities. To conclude, a link between quantitative analysis and theory is established, by testing two well-known theoretical propositions in urban morphology: the concept of the burgage cycle and the theory of natural movement.

A better understanding of the relationship between the built environment and urban processes is central in guiding urban processes in more sustainable trajectories. Of particular importance to this endeavour is the idea of urban types. However, on closer scrutiny, while such types may capture the symbolic dimension of urban form, they frequently do not capture its performance or functional dimension. This prohibits precise policy formulation on the topic. This paper first presents a methodology for generating urban types relevant to urban practice (using analytical and statistical methods) and, second, an empirical test of the differences in performance concerning their influence on the presence of people in public space (an essential driver of many other urban processes). For this reason, a large (and to our knowledge unique) pedestrian survey of three European metropolitan areas was conducted and used to test the performance of the urban types developed. The results prove that the methodology for developing the types is robust, as it picks up generally recognised spatial patterns in all three cities. Further, the types were able to explain the intensity of pedestrian flow, its spatial distribution and fluctuations of intensity in space and time. These are vital steps forward and provide more useable typologies in urban planning and design practice.

Spacematrix explores the potential of urban density as a tool for urban planning and design. This revised and extended edition of Meta Berghauser Pont and Per Haupt’s 2010 volume includes an extensive analysis of the relations between density, urban form and performance – a prerequisite for understanding and successfully predicting the effects of specific designs and planning proposals. The density database that is an integral part of the book has been expanded and now includes 142 examples from five capitals in Europe as well as examples from Asia. Berghauser Pont and Haupt demystify the use of concepts such as ‘urbanity’, ‘compact city’ and ‘park city’ by challenging the reliability of such concepts and critically examining the possibility of redefining them through quantification using multiple density measures. Spacematrix is of interest to professionals working in the field of urbanism, such as architects, urban planners and designers, as well as developers, economists, engineers and policymakers. It also offers researchers a method to quantitatively describe urban form and connect this to a wide range of performances.

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.

Plot systems (also referred to as “property”, “parcel”, or “lot”) are generally recognised as the organisational framework of urban form that contributes to the economic performance of cities. However, studies that link the spatial form of plots to economic data are limited. The paper builds on the theory of Webster and Lai, which argues that the process of urbanisation is aligned with increased subdivision of property rights (increased division of land into plots, for example) due to the process of economic specialisation that is typical of cities. The aim of the paper is to test this theory by analysing whether there is a correlation between: (a) the shape and structure of plot systems, which are classified as types based on three plot metrics (size, compactness, and frontage index) and b) economic activity, measured as the concentration of retail and food activities per plot. The paper will use statistical analysis to relate plot types to economic activity in three European cities (London, Amsterdam, and Stockholm). The results provide empirical support for our initial hypothesis and Webster and Lai’s theory, which states that plots of smaller size, more regular shape, and smaller frontage generally correspond to a higher concentration of economic activity in cities.