Talk:Urban morphology

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Aldo Rossi and Leon Krier should also be condiered as leaders of the movement in Italy and France, and later on in the rest of the english speaking world. Their respective examination of the essence of the city and its "urban facts" are at the centre all typo-morphology schools. The notion of urban facts as the central part of their thesis enables us to better understand why certain urban spaces remain, and change function through time.

Understanbly, North American cities are considerably younger then European cities who are sometimes more than 2000 years old, compared to 300 years (or 400 for Quebec, Montréal, Boston, New York and other large centres on the American East Coast). The same technique can be applied for North America, but consideration for the fact that all North American cities expanded with the help of industrialisation and the railroad (and later on the car) should be kept in mind, thus greatly affecting the development of the urban form and fabric of North America.

Also, European tend to have a greater of history, knowledge and acceptation of living in dense, compact cities. While the North American myth of the city is centred on super dense cores and vast flat residential areas. Few North American cities have been able to accept and thrive in density; Manhattan is the prime example. Older East Coast cities, like Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Montréal and Toronto did develop some density in the lat 19th Century, but it was quickly evacuted by the reliance on the automobile as the primary means of transportation. West Coast cities, like Los Angeles, Seattle and other South West cities have become the perfect embodiment of the North Amercian myth of the city; super dense cores and vast residential areas built entirely on land speculation and the propagation of the said myth.

Recommanded readings:
The architecture of the City, 1984, MIT Press, Aldo Rossi (printed in Italian in 1966)
Collage City, 1984, MIT Press, Colin Rowe
"The Montrealness of Montreal", Architectural Review Vol. 167, no. 999 (May 1980), Melvin Charney
Delirious New York, 1978, Monacelli Press, Rem Koolhaas

24.37.129.44 15:46, 11 February 2007 (UTC)[reply]