Identification and analysis of urban fabric considering external space: Taking Shanghai as an example

Abstract

Urban fabric preservation is a crucial objective in urban conservation. Identifying fabric types is essential for protecting and maintaining urban fabric. However, precise methods for identifying fabric types are lacking. This study expands the concept of fabric from the similarity of individual buildings to the similarity of buildings and the external spaces between them, as well as from a two-dimensional relationship to a three-dimensional perspective. A K-means clustering method, which uses building footprint area, building height, and exterior building space area as primary indicators, is proposed for urban fabric identification. The manifestation patterns of urban fabric in various areas of Shanghai are examined as a case study. Results shows: first, the identification method proposed in this study has a good identification effect, with an identification rate of 77%. Second, four types of urban fabrics constitute the main urban fabric of Shanghai. Third, the implementation of policies such as the delineation of historic and culture areas has played a certain role in the protection of historical fabric, but the historical fabric of unprotected areas is disappearing rapidly, better conservation policies are urgently needed. This study develops fabric identification method and analyses the fabric of Shanghai’s urban area, providing valuable insights for research in urban morphology theories and methods, as well as urban preservation and revitalisation practices.

Keywords

Urban fabric k-means clustering building external space urban conservation shanghai

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Araldi

Fusco

(2019) From the street to the metropolitan region: pedestrian perspective in urban fabric analysis. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 46(7): 1243–1263.

Berghauser Pont

Haupt

(2010) Spacematrix: Space, Density and Urban Form. Rotterdam: NAI.

Berghauser Pont

Stavroulaki

Bobkova

, et al. (2019) The spatial distribution and frequency of street, plot and building types across five European cities. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 46(7): 1226–1242.

Bingol

Kropf

(2023) In pursuit of integrity in urban morphology: cultural landscape VS urban landscape. Change-Transformation and Critique of Urban Spaces: 99–124.

Bobkova

Berghauser Pont

Marcus

(2021) Towards analytical typologies of plot systems: quantitative profile of five European cities. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 48(4): 604–620.

Caruso

Hilal

Thomas

(2017) Measuring urban forms from inter-building distances: combining MST graphs with a local index of spatial association. Landscape and Urban Planning 163: 80–89.

Cataldi

(2003) From Muratori to Caniggia: the origins and development of the Italian school of design typology. Urban Morphology 7(1): 19–34.

Chen

Liu

(1998) The Residence Construction in Shanghai (In Chinese). Shanghai: Shanghai Academy of Soacial Sciences Press.

Cody

Siravo

(2019) Historic Cities: Issues in Urban Conservation. Getty Publications.

10.

Cohen

(2001) Urban Planning Conservation and Preservation. New York: McGraw-Hill.

11.

Colaninno

Roca

Pfeffer

(2011) An automatic classification of urban texture: form and compactness of morphological homogeneous structures in Barcelona. 51st Congress of the European Regional Science Association, Barcelona.

12.

Conzen

(2004) Thinking about Urban Form: Papers on Urban Morphology, 1932-1998. Austria: Peter Lang.

13.

Conzen

Alnwick

(1960) A study in town-plan analysis. Transactions and Papers 27: 93–122.

14.

Cuthbert

(2008) The Form of Cities: Political Economy and Urban Design. John Wiley & Sons.

15.

Eshrati

(2022) Urban conservation in the public eye: evaluating the integrity achieved in the rehabilitation plan of Karim-Khan Zand Complex, Shiraz, Iran based on people’s perceptions. Land Use Policy 117: 106121.

16.

Gil

Beirão

Montenegro

, et al. (2012) On the discovery of urban typologies: data mining the many dimensions of urban form. Urban Morphology 16(1): 27.

17.

Guyot

Araldi

Fusco

, et al. (2021) The urban form of Brussels from the street perspective: the role of vegetation in the definition of the urban fabric. Landscape and Urban Planning 205: 103947.

18.

Hijazi

Koenig

, et al. (2017) Measuring the homogeneity of urban fabric using 2D geometry data. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 44(6): 1097–1121.

19.

Hull

Lam

Vigo

(1994) Place identity: symbols of self in the urban fabric. Landscape and Urban Planning 28(2-3): 109–120.

20.

ICOMOS (1972) Resolutions of the Symposium on the introduction of contemporary architecture into ancient groups of buildings. In: At the 3rd ICOMOS General Assembly. ICOMOS.

21.

ICOMOS (1987) Charter for the conservation of historic towns and urban areas (Washington charter 1987).

22.

ICOMOS (2011) The Valletta principles for the safeguarding and management of historic cities, towns and urban areas. In: Principles, as adopted by the 17th ICOMOS General Assembly. ICOMOS.

23.

Istrate

Chen

(2022) Liveable streets in Shanghai: Definition, characteristics and design. Progress in Planning 158: 100544.

24.

Kostof

(1991) The City Shaped. Boston, MA: Little, Brown and Company.

25.

Kumar

Ingle

Pande

, et al. (2014) Canopy clustering: a review on pre-clustering approach to k-means clustering. International Journal of Innovation in Advanced Computer Science 3(5): 22–29.

26.

Levy

(1999) Urban morphology and the problem of the modern urban fabric: some questions for research. Urban Morphology 3(2): 79–85.

27.

Quan

(2023) Identifying urban form typologies in Seoul using a new Gaussian mixture model-based clustering framework. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science 50(9): 2342–2358.

28.

Cheng

, et al. (2020) Data analytics of urban fabric metrics for smart cities. Future Generation Computer Systems 107: 871–882.

29.

Lovra

(2015) Typology of the urban fabric: evaluation of the inherited townscape. Cultural Heritage Possibilities for Spatial and Economic Development-Conference Paper. Zagreb, Zagreb: Faculty of Architecture University of, 238–244.

30.

Liu

Zhang

, et al. (2022) Urban historic heritage buffer zone delineation: the case of Shedian. Heritage Science 10(1): 64.

31.

Marzot

(2002) The study of urban form in Italy. Urban Morphology 6(2): 59–73.

32.

Mendes Zancheti

Piccolo Loretto

(2015) Dynamic integrity: a concept to historic urban landscape. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and Sustainable Development 5(1): 82–94.

33.

Moudon

(1997) Urban morphology as an emerging interdisciplinary field. Urban Morphology 1(1): 3–10.

34.

Muratori

(1960). Studi per una operante storia urbana di Venezia. Libreria dello Stato.

35.

Panerai

Castex

Depaule

J-C

, et al. (2003) Urban Forms: The Death and Life of the Urban Block. Woburn, MA: Architectural Press.

36.

Porta

Crucitti

Latora

(2006) The network analysis of urban streets: a primal approach. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 33(5): 705–725.

37.

Rousseeuw

(1987) Silhouettes: a graphical aid to the interpretation and validation of cluster analysis. Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 20: 53–65.

38.

Shan

Zhang

(2022) Study on the changing of traditional urban fabric in Shanghai old town. International Planning History Society Proceedings 19(1): 273–284.

39.

Syakur

Khotimah

Rochman

, et al. (2018) Integration k-means clustering method and elbow method for identification of the best customer profile cluster. In: IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering. IOP Publishing, p. 012017.

40.

Tambunan

Barus

Hartono

, et al. (2020) Electrical peak load clustering analysis using K-means algorithm and silhouette coefficient. In: 2020 International Conference on Technology and Policy in Energy and Electric Power (ICT-PEP). IEEE, 258–262.

41.

Thomas

Frankhauser

(2013) Fractal dimensions of the built-up footprint: buildings versus roads. Fractal evidence from Antwerp (Belgium). Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 40(2): 310–329.

42.

Thomas

Frankhauser

Frenay

, et al. (2010) Clustering patterns of urban built-up areas with curves of fractal scaling behaviour. Environment and Planning B: Planning and Design 37(5): 942–954.

43.

Tibshirani

Walther

Hastie

(2001) Estimating the number of clusters in a data set via the gap statistic. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society - Series B: Statistical Methodology 63(2): 411–423.

44.

UNESCO (2011) Recommendation on the historic urban landscape. In: Proceedings of the Records of the General Conference 36th Session. UNESCO.

45.

Vanderhaegen

Canters

(2017) Mapping urban form and function at city block level using spatial metrics. Landscape and Urban Planning 167: 399–409.

46.

Zhong

Chen

(2017) Demolition, rehabilitation, and conservation: heritage in Shanghai’s urban regeneration, 1990–2015. Journal of Architecture and Urbanism 41(2): 82–91.

Supplementary Material

Please find the following supplemental material available below.

For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.

For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.

0.00 MB

1.54 MB