Professor Stephen Marshall delivers keynote speech on Urban Morpho-Science

Professor Marshall, who is a professor of Urban Morphology and Urban Design, was part of an international line-up of experts in urban morphology, participating in the four-day event. His keynote speech, entitled ‘Advancing the Science of Urban Morphology’, addressed the overall theme of the seminar, whose purpose was to re-conceptualise urban morphology from a scientific point of view, and report developments in quantitative urban form research.

The event, convened by Professors Wowo Ding and Ziyu Tong of Nanjing University, featured seventeen speakers from six countries, with presentations on topics such as open data, graph theory, morphometrics, representing the dynamics of morphological transformation, and human perception of three-dimensional environments.

One of the expert panel discussions was chaired by Christopher Law, a leading urban practitioner and alumnus of the Bartlett School of Architecture. The panel sparked lively discussion about the future of the ‘science of cities’, the potential for urban morphology to inform urban design, and the handling of cultural differences when interpretating ‘good’ city form.

Professor Marshall said: “There is no doubt that for Urban Morphology to thrive, it needs to embrace the ‘computational revolution.’ That said, advancing the science is not just about innovation, but also about integration: about integrating the new methods with traditional urbanistic theory, and where necessary, updating the theory.”

Professor Marshall, who is convenor of the ‘Morphology @ The Bartlett’ faculty network, has previously written on the links between urban morphology and urban design, the science of urban design theory, urban science for augmented cities, and digital participation in urban design and planning.