The morphological approach in the reading of the Territorial City

Abstract

[EN] The crisis of the traditional city, with its morphological characteristics, has been largely debated. The new urban phenomenon has almost always been described as antithetical; on the contrary this article explores the possibility of reading continuity between the traditional and the contemporary city. The paper brings forth the concept that the territory can be described as an urban phenomenon resulting from a change of scale of the city, and offers the definition of the contemporary city as Territorial City (Città-Territorio). The article recovers this term introduced in the 70’s by the Italian morphological school, to emphasize the continuity with the European traditional morphological schools, taking advantage of its learning, to compare the traditional city with the contemporary city. The relevance of a morphological approach in the study of the contemporary Territorial City is discussed through a summary of the main European schools’ contributions, with a particular schematization due to geographical areas. From the synthesis of these references emerges a basis for the definition of a taxonomy organized around three main elements that constitute the urban grid. Moreover, the article proposes a methodology for the analysis of the Territorial City that uses the taxonomy as a reading tool describing its aggregation logics and decomposing the historical-procedural continuum. This method is illustrated through experimentation on the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona, which is of particular relevance for the interpretation of the processes that have characterized the morphology of the current urban phenomenon.