Territory and Urban Form

Code:

500503

Acronym:

500503

Instance: 2010/2011 - A

Active?	Yes
Responsible unit:	Arquitectura (A)
Course/CS Responsible:	Integrated Master Degree in Architecture

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
MIARQ	148	MIARQ	5	-	9	-

Teaching language

Portuguese

Objectives

With the progressive urbanization of contemporary societies and territories, cities are losing some of the key features that, historically, have been recognized as part of its identity.

The compact and dense agglomeration, physically limited and distinct from the surrounding territories, are now complex socio-territorial formations, without clear limits, which tend for increasingly dispersed forms of growing. The cohesion and readability of traditional urban spaces have been replaced by different territorial mosaics, which are physically discontinuous and dissolved into territorial scales, where the traditional idea of city/country often becomes useless.

The diversity of concepts that are used today to classify these forms and processes is a clear sign of these changes: cities, metropolis, megalopolis, metapolis, diffuse urbanization, polycentric conurbation, counter-urbanization, de-urbanization, rural urbanization, etc. are some examples, not always used in a consensual way and applied to very different scales and socio-territorial contexts.

Thus, the central aim of this course unfolds into two:
- Identify the dominant patterns of urbanization, proposing hypotheses that explain the processes that gave rise to them;
- Identify the factors of change considered as essential for understanding these processes and for the definition of intervention strategies and urban regulation.

It is therefore intended that the discipline of Territories and Urban Forms is linked to the curriculum of the 5th year of Master course, especially to the discipline of Architectural Design 5, which occupies a central place in the curriculum (20 ETCS for a total of 84) and which purpose and program are an exercise in urban design, that normally has as study area a site of the Porto Metropolitan Area. This approach – that follows a model of "learning by doing", in confrontation with the processes of transformation of the urban territory and the instruments available to intervene in it (diagnosis and design) - seems the most suitable to enrich the further development of the program and content of the discipline of Territories and Urban Forms.

In fact, this articulation is mutually beneficial as it gives students of Architectural Design 5 a more comprehensive and coordinated overview of the social processes that explain the contemporary urban transformations. In other words, the study area on which the students Architectural Design 5 work, (which are necessarily limited to the local phenomenology which vary with the choice of the site that is made each year) are easily contextualized on broader and more comprehensive themes that are developed, especially along the B and C of the program Territories and Urban Forms.

Program

A-Cities, territories and patterns of urbanization – introduction
. Cities - the limitations of the historical concept
. Territories - surfaces, networks and nodes
. Patterns of urbanization - diversity and contexts

This first block of contents aims to confront the students with the transition from the concept of “city” to the concept of “urban”. Quoting M. Castells, “the 21th century will be an urban world without cities”. It is intended, mainly through the confrontation with the variability of the contemporary "urban condition", to lead the students to an analysis of the diversity of the patterns of urbanization, from major polycentric conurbations (with metropolitan root or not), to small towns still recognizable in their limits, in their relation with the territory and in their canonical morphology.

Along this route the canonical concepts and oppositions (eg urban/rural, center/periphery; city/suburbs) will also be re-evaluated, through a kind of game of "creative destruction" that allows greater conceptual flexibility to recognize and interpret the models of the urban fragmentation and the jump in territorial / geographical scale of the new urban construction. This will open the field of contents to be developed on the second block and which focus mainly on explaining the main processes and social actors that produce / transform the urbanized territory.


B-For an explanation of the urban transformations of the territory
. Influencing factors and hypotheses (historical and emerging) for the different types of urbanization
. Relevant elements to the differentiation of those types - tendencies of agglomeration and dispersion, diversity of functions and activities; centers and marginal spaces
. Urban / territorial systems (Portugal, EU and USA)
. Small and medium cities
. Urban archipelagos and low density urban tissues
. Territories of diffuse and polycentric urbanization
. Metropolitan nodes
. The “Metapolis” (F. Ascher) hypothesis

In this second block, the diversity of urbanization types (from small towns to "metapolis" – as presented by F. Ascher), is accompanied with the explanation of the key processes that are the root of recent urban morphogenesis: infrastructure and systems of mobility and communication; new patterns or typologies of activities location which corresponds to new trends on economic development; social change and urban practices.

C - For the creation of coherent and effective strategies for re-balancing the urban network
. what is changing: infrastructure and mobility and communication systems, economical restructuration and factorsfor the location of activities, social dynamics vs. territorial changes.
. the new paradigms of urban policy (Portugal and the European Union): competitivenes vs. equity; hierarchy vs. complementary of functions, internationalization / localism, sustainability challenges.
. models of urban "governance": the new "cities", governance instruments, other actors and other administrative architectures

This last block takes up the conclusions of previous, so as to consolidate the last two points that focus on the recent paradigms of urban policy in Portugal and the challenges of regulation and urban "governance". Against the formalistic approaches that are characteristic of the students, it will be emphasized the complexity and socio-institutional policy of the "urban design".

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation without final exam