A review on the Conzenian concept of morphological region

Abstract

Various approaches have been developed in the last decades addressing the physical form of cities. The concept of morphological region, proposed within historico-geographical approach by M.R.G. Conzen, is one of the most powerful. It analyses morphological changes in terms of development phases and morphological composition of urban landscape. A main strength of the concept is to suggest a sound basis for planning practice and urban landscape management, in particular, conservation area delimitation and urban heritage management. Utilization of the concept have increased from the second half of twentieth century onwards. Despite the amount of research on the concept, the process of delimiting and mapping morphological regions, namely morphological regionalization, has remained elusive. Unclear aspects are particularly the derivation process of morphological regions, the contribution of form complexes, which are ground plan, building fabric and land utilization, to the hierarchical regions and a confusion between the terms employed in order to identify morphological regions. This paper has two main goals. One is to shed some light on the different terms employed for identification of the concept of morphological region. The second is to clarify the derivation process of morphological regions. In this context, firstly, a wide range of papers on the concept have been investigated. Secondly, a questionnaire has been made with the authors of these papers in order to clear up the inexplicit aspects of their methods.