Urban crystallization and the morphogenesis of urban territories

New article written together with Andrea Mubi Brighenti is out now on Territory, Politics and Governence

ABSTRACT

In this article, we develop the perspective of crystallization as a way to shed a light on the morphogenesis and stabilization of urban territories. We start by describing crystallization as a consolidation of a visible and singular order that establishes certain privileged directions of growth and breaks spatial and temporal symmetries. We then illuminate how crystallization processes unfold at different scales, going through a series of historical cases, from the stabilization of urban regions, to iconic places such as Times Square, New York, and on to large scale linear or path crystals, such the Turia Riverbed Park in Valencia. Building on these cases, we then discuss crystallization as a phenomenon requiring metastability, and how this metastability relates to different ways and forms of territorial stabilization. Finally, we discuss how crystallization, by making certain figures and directions more salient than others, also plays an important part in the emergence of new scales and in the processes of urban rescaling, that is, how crystallization also contributes to a hierarchical segmentation of the urban environment.

From Bruno Taut, Die Stadtkrone (1919)

Scale alignment

New article in Urban Design International

Abstract: Globalisation has led to the transformation and proliferation of urban borders. Old hierarchies and relations between centres and sub-centres and centres and peripheries are challenged, and new alliances between different places and districts are formed. How can urban design and urban design research meet the challenges of a complex and quickly transforming multi-scalar society? In this article I make three arguments. First, I argue for a territorial perspective that would allow us to better acknowledge how actors of different scales come together and have effects on the level of urban design. Second, I argue that we need to better acknowledge the role of material culture in research on urban design; whereas urban design often benefits from the large-scale perspective of urban morphology, it seldom incorporates the roles of small-scale objects into studies. Finally, I argue that an important task for researchers in urban design is to see how actors of different scales are aligned, and through this alignment produce effects and changes in the ways in which our cities are used.

Keywords: Scale  Urban design  Material culture