PERIOD: JANUARY - FEBRUARY In this course we will interactively think, talk (and occasionally speculate) on past, present and future (liveable) cities, urban form and its profound link with environmental, and socioeconomic issues. It will show alternative urban models, explore relations between urban size-form-structure and sustainability, and methods-tools to read/quantify urban/regional morphology and their effects on sustainability. An introduction for the understanding of the different forces shaping cities will briefly touch historical patterns, economic influences, and complexity science. Consequences of these forces from a urban form sustainable point of view are the final goal that will be then faced more directly. After a brief overview of the meaning of sustainability, and the different urban forms, the link between them is discussed. Which urban forms and urban structures are more beneficial to achieve quality of life, economics-social prosperity, and environmental respect? Despite the fact that cities and regions developed independently and remotely along unique historical paths, genius loci and geographical environments, an astonishing empirical regularity is systematically appearing between population size and social phenomena. A new quantitative scientific approach is needed and recently being developed from a truly multidisciplinary point of view linking ecology, psychology, sociology, economics, physics, biology in a common framework, trying to understand their scaling relations with population size. The reasons of these empirical surprising allometric and universal relations are still under investigation and without a clear reply and have great promise of increasing efficiency to these societies able to control the distribution of their populations’ size. This course will also introduce you to quantitative scientific approaches to investigate social, environmental and economics phenomena as city ‘outputs related to its size, as well as the importance of designing specific policies related to urbanization growth and transformations. Even if within the intricate interplay of positive and negative feedbacks inherent in the complex, spontaneous emergence from retroactive games among countless urban actors, the outcome in terms of overall quality/sustainability of an urban form, nowadays more than ever, depends on the set of rules and regulations and its implementation. To make effective decisions on urban form issues, is among the most urgent needs and with the longest lasting effects, in the sustainable development arena in a world whose current urbanization dimension is unique in history.

You will learn, both from a scientific-academic angle and from a practical angle, quantitative and qualitative, how urban form and urban size can influence socio-economics and environmental factors as well as some quality of life aspects; and how you could plan and manage the structure of cities to facilitate a low-carbon, resilient and liveable output, at the neighbourhood, urban and regional level. Methods-tools to read/quantify urban/regional forms and their effects on sustainability such as Space and Place Syntax, Fractal Analysis, Zipf’s law and Allometry, will be shown.

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A multidisciplinary introduction to Urban Form Complexity and Cities Sustainable Urban Form Future Cities Quality of Life Spatial Analysis: Space Syntax and Place Syntax Fractal Analysis Urban size and socio-economic-environmental outputs Polycentric Urban Region Interactive conclusion

The course will be highly interactive with students participation and expressions of their own thoughts and ideas, the more provocative and visionary the better. The structure of the course will spontaneously alternate teacher's speech with students' speech (in group or individually as they feel more comfortable with). Real urban project, at different scales, will be proposed (e.g. an urban development of the New Forest District area in south England, and of a town in the Hampshire) and ask participants to express their own planning solutions keeping in mind the course content. The order and weight of each part of the program will be adjusted in real time according to students' preferences too.

Parts from: Benevolo L. (1980). The History of the City. MIT Press. Morris A.E.J. (1994). History of Urban Form. Prentice Hall. Lynch K. (1981). Good City Form. MIT Press: Chapter 1 and 4. Carter H. (1983). An Introduction to Urban Historical Geography. Arnold. Ellin N. (1999). Postmodern urbanism. Princeton Press. Clark P. (2016). The Oxford Handbook of Cities in World History. Oxford Press. Batty M. (2008). Generating Cities from the Bottom-Up: Using Complexity Theory for Effective Design. Heylighen F. (2008). Complexity and Self-organization. Encyclopoedia of Library and Information Sciences. Batty M. (2012). Building a science of cities. Cities. Marshall S. (2009). Cities, Design and Evolution. Routledge. In particular the chapters: Introduction, Emergence and evolution, Emergent urban order. Burger, Meijers (2012). Form Follows Function? Linking Morphological and Functional Polycentricity. Urban Studies 49(5) 1127-1149. Meijers (2005). Polycentric Urban Regions and the Quest for Synergy: Is a Network of Cities More than the Sum of the Parts? Urban Studies 42(4) 756-781. Barthelemy & Louf (2014).Scaling: lost in the smog. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 2014, volume 41, pages 767–769. Yosef Rafeq Jabareen (2006). Sustainable Urban Forms: Their Typologies, Models, and Concepts. Journal of Planning Education and Research, 26: 38. Hillier B. (2009) Spatial Sustainability in Cities, Proceedings of the 7th International Space Syntax Symposium. Tim Stonor (2011) Howard University lecture: Carbon emissions and spatial connections http://www.slideboom.com/presentations/483486/Tim-Stonor_Carbon-emissions-and-spatial-connections Patterson J. (2016). Traffic modelling in cities – validation of space syntax at an urban scale. Indoor and Built Environment, Vol 25(7) 1163-1178 Pereira R., Holanda F., Medeiros V., Barros A. (2012). The use of space syntax in urban transport analysis: limits and potentials, Proceedings: Eighth International Space Syntax Symposium J. Cooper (2005). Assessing urban character: the use of fractal analysis of street edges. Urban Morphology 9(2) 96107. J. Cooper, D. Watkinson, R. Oskrochi (2010). Fractal Analysis and Perception of Visual Quality in Everyday Street Vista. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science Vol 37, Issue 5, pp. 808 - 822. Hagerhalla,Purcella ,Taylor (2004). Fractal dimension of landscape silhouette outlines as a predictor of landscape preference. Journal of Environmental Psychology 24. Nahid Mohajeri, Paul A. Longley, Michael Batty (2012). City shape and the fractality of street patterns. Questiones Geographicae 31(2). Sang-Hoon Kim (2004). Fractal structure of streets in Seoul. Journal of the Korean Physical Society, Vol. 45, No. 4, October 2004. Bettencourt, Lobo, Helbing, Kühnert, West (2007). Growth, innovation, scaling, and the pace of life in cities. PNAS 104 (17) 7301-7306 Easterlin, R.A., Angelescu, L., & Zweig, J.S. (2011). The Impact of Modern Economic Growth on UrbanRuralDifferences in Subjective Well-Being.World Development. Vol. 39, No. 12. 2187-2198. Adam, Okulicz-Kozaryn (2015). When Place is Too Big: Happy Town and Unhappy Metropolis. 55th Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "World Renaissance: Changing roles for people and places", 25-28 August 2015, Lisbon, Portugal Jens F. L. Sørensen (2014). Rural–Urban Differences in Life Satisfaction: Evidence from the European Union. Regional Studies Volume 50, 2016 - Issue 3 Brian J. L. Berry &Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn (2011). An Urban-Rural Happiness Gradient. Urban Geography Vol 31 Issue 6 more details in the slides and at lectures.

Modalità di esame: Prova orale facoltativa; Elaborato grafico individuale;

Exam: Optional oral exam; Individual graphic design project;

... Students will choose a subject they particularly liked and will expose in their own preferred ways the main conceptual points in a A1 poster (eventually also by hand, it doesn't matter) and, if they wish, an oral exam in the form of an oral discussion briefly touching the main arguments saw in the course, and particularly on what was most preferred. Understanding and applying the concepts will be privileged rather than learning by hearth.

Gli studenti e le studentesse con disabilità o con Disturbi Specifici di Apprendimento (DSA), oltre alla segnalazione tramite procedura informatizzata, sono invitati a comunicare anche direttamente al/la docente titolare dell'insegnamento, con un preavviso non inferiore ad una settimana dall'avvio della sessione d'esame, gli strumenti compensativi concordati con l'Unità Special Needs, al fine di permettere al/la docente la declinazione più idonea in riferimento alla specifica tipologia di esame.