The integration between spatial and social networks is fundamental to new approaches on cities as systems of interaction. In this paper, we focus on the spatial and temporal conditions of encounters as a key condition for the formation of social networks. Drawing on classic approaches such as Freeman’s concept of segregation as ‘restriction on contact’, Hägerstrand’s time-geography, and recent explorations of social media locational data, we analysed the space-time structure of potential encounters latent in the urban trajectories of people with different income levels in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This approach allows us to estimate trajectories examining spatiotemporal positions in tweets, and assess spaces of potential encounter and levels of social diversity on the streets. Finally, we discuss the utility and limitations of an approach developed to grasp how clusters of encounters between groups with different income levels are produced.

The paper presents the results of an investigation that aims at integrating different approaches to the analysis of the urban form. The proposed methodology integrates two lines of investigation: i) texture analysis of high resolution satellite images using fractal and lacunarity measures to describe the spatial distribution of pixels with similar grey levels; ii) Visual Graph Analysis (VGA) describing visual properties of spatial systems. A second order analysis is proposed to describe the texture of VGA maps and to investigate to what extent the underlying configurational and texture patterns are correlated. The results reveal how robust the procedures are, particularly in identifying distinct socio-spatial patterns.

The universe of the national research, sponsored by FAPESP through the thematic project ‘Open spaces and urban form’ coordinated by QUAPÁ-SEL laboratory, in FAUUSP, encompasses 35 cities, among state capitals and medium-sized cities in Brazil. It is based on procedures that include: individual and group network surveys; workshops held in the cities studied; annual research colloquiums; presentations in national and international scientific events. This paper focuses on five cities located on the coast of Brazil where workshops have already taken place in 2014 and 2015, and have made possible the analysis of some results through comparative approach: Vitória, Salvador, Maceió, Santos and Recife. The text includes reflections and comparisons between cities and concludes by indicating for discussion some criteria of intervention in the studied cities that could generate urban quality, safeguarding the particular socio-environmental situations. In this paper, instead of discussing all the research issues, proposed for the workshops carried out by the QUAPÁ-SEL network, we have decided to focus only in some of them that have in common the fact they relate to the location along the Brazilian coast. The reflection was based basically on the results of the workshops, which brings to this analysis a simplification and, at the same time, a difficulty. The workshops and their reports are presented in a very heterogeneous and uneven manner. However, the discussions were always based on the same lines of research, ensuring, on the other hand, homogeneity in our approach.

Cianorte and Angélica are two new towns planned in Brazilian hinterlands’ pioneering agricultural colonization zone. Both designed in the early 1950s, each one is linked to a specific town planning tradition: Cianorte late resonated the notion of the city as a work of art, alongside with some features of the garden city; Angélica early exemplified in Brazil the rationalist urbanism for a functional city. By contrasting the urban forms of the two cities, this paper explores the adopted design strategies, and points out their potentialities and weaknesses. As a result, this morphological study unveils, on the one hand, the layout of a town according to classical precepts of composition and the creation of a unique townscape; and, on the other hand, the configuration of a radically modern, functionally standardized and uniform town. In both cases the adopted design strategy impacted the development of the urban form: in Angélica, the land use pattern and the built form did not follow the revolutionary, modernist configuration of the morphological elements; in Cianorte, the urban growth ignored the city-beautiful layout and did not materialize the planning proposals.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, the French architect Tony Garnier designed a plan for a new city called ‘The Industrial City’. However, the proposal was considered too radical by his peers. In 1917 Garnier used this plan as the basis of the book: Une cité industrielle, étude pour la construccion des villes. The book received much criticism both by academics and professionals. Yet, some years later, it was considered by many authors as one of the most significant planning publications of the twentieth century, becoming a source of inspiration for the proposals of many progressive architects, such as Le Corbusier, and having significant impact on the urban form of cities around the world. 100 years have passed since the publication of the book. Professionals working in the urban and architectural fields should reflect on the breadth of the Industrial City proposal. This paper aims at analysing the elements of urban form proposed by Garnier in his book, as well as the consequences of the use of these elements and the importance they had in architecture and urbanism. Research is based on primary sources, namely the book itself, and on secondary sources, including the critique of the book. The paper concludes that, even after all the years since the publication of the book, many elements proposed by Garnier in his definition of the urban form of the Industrial City are still informing contemporary urban projects and practices at many different scales.

This paper presents the origins, main characteristics and fundamental developments of four dominant approaches in the international debate on urban morphology: historico- geographical approach, process typological approach, space syntax and spatial analysis – including cellular automata, agent-based models and fractals. After describing these four approaches, the article synthesizes their fundamental elements; shows how each approach deals with urban form elements, levels resolution and time; and illustrates the potential of each approach with applications in professional planning practice.

This analysis of the urban fabric of the so-called Mooca district, in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, involves the consideration of streets, street-blocks, plots and buildings taken in isolation, and also of two other composite elements: ‘corridors’ crossing each city sector and corridors within each sector. The corridor is understood as the articulation between the street, the plots on both sides of the street and the buildings erected in these plots. Each corridor contains different information on the urban tissue varying according to the scale of analysis: region, municipality and neighborhood. Each part of the city contained inbetween corridors is a subarea. The paper offers an analysis of corridors in the formation of traditional residential fabrics.

This text seeks to place the ‘city’ against the transformations occurying in Eastern Amazon and to identify a set of morphological patterns that are related to two competing trajectories of urban space structuring – urban-industrial and traditional – highlighting the potential legacy of the latter for innovating in urban design and planning. The patterns of evolution and occupation of six cities, located in an area that has been under intense transformations after the 1970s, are compared, making explicit a set of connections between morphological patterns and socioeconomic processes. The construction of the database used in this paper was based on field research carried out between 2012 and 2014 in the six cities studied under the framework of the Urbis Amazônia project. The methodological procedure includes a brief historical analysis and the characterization of the spatial structure of the city and of major events in the urban expansion of these cities, particularly on the action of public and private sectors. A new type of polynuclear urbanization in this region is identified. This occurs in complex times, where historical problems can be aggravated though the imposition of homogenizing rationales or be overcomed through the transition from the urban-industrial standard to a new stage of real possibilities for innovation, of a balanced relationship between nature and the rights of people and of representation of different rationales for sharing a territory.

The paper addresses the correlation between urban form and socio-spatial dynamics, focusing on tracking urban flows by using mobile communication devices (such as smartphones and tablets). It argues for the inclusion of contemporary ways of experiencing the urban space – potentiated by digital connection and access to the internet, supported by digital platforms processing a wide variety of individual and collective data, georeferenced in real time – into morphological analysis. The profusion of activities and uses occurying in the urban space leads to the acknowledgement that urban flows are key aspects in urban form analysis. As such, tracking, and mapping, the different urban experiences is of fundamental importance. This argument relates to the convergence between the concept of urban dynamic-form and the development of mapping spatial appropriationa and social dynamics. It makes reference to the ‘interoperability’ and the ‘multidimensionality’ of readings processed in combinatorial mode in morphological analysis, widening the scope of the study of the urban form. This interrelation of morphological analysis’ methods should make explicit, in a structured way, the rules underlying the dynamics detected in urban form, consolidating the interdependence between the physical configuration of the spatial system, its perceptions and the patterns of appropriation.

This paper gathers research, developed in 2012/2013, in which urban morphology was used as an investigating tool to study the relations between urbanization and development, producing a comparative study of spatial and economic development, planning processes and the resulting urban forms of four cities: São Paulo and Jakarta, and Hanoi and Belo Horizonte. Planning policies and urban forms were compared at different scales in these four cities, using the approach proposed by Lamas (1993). São Paulo and Jakarta were chosen due to their importance and economic relevance on their respective contexts, Latin America and South East Asia, offering the possibility of comparison aiming at finding relevant similarities. Hanoi and Belo Horizonte have similar positions regarding their contexts; both are administrative cities with similar characteristics in terms of demography, economic growth and rapid urbanization. Despite these similarities, the cities present distinct processes of growth and urbanization, as well as cultural aspects; both were highlighted in this comparison. This study investigates the patterns of urban form of these four cities, exploring their urban tissues and building types, aiming at a better understanding on how these cities have coped with economic processes and how they work today, opening the possibility of broader discussions on which lessons can be drawn both to these case studies and to cities in general.