A study on diagrammatic assessment approaches to the sustainable morphology of urban density

Abstract

While the expansion of urbanisation has been occurring on an unexpected scale since the 1960s, urban density has become more and more globalized. Essentially, the dense urban morphology has been benefitted from all aspects of sustainable urban development, despite the consequential problems cannot be ignored.

As sustainability is one of the most salient themes across all disciplines currently, it is necessary for the well-developed theory of morphology to contribute to sustainable development in practice. Sustainability assessment of the morphology in high-density cities is making a contribution to achieving a sustainable urban form in specific circumstances. Also, this instrument can be applied to strengthen sustainable development in terms of morphology in all cities. As conventional sustainability assessment mostly depends on the numerical sustainable indicator systems, the diagrammatic assessment approaches provide a straightforward and visual way to qualify sustainability of morphology, and express the form a sustainable urban morphology takes. Finally, it provides a direct grasp for planners, architects and local governments to design a sustainable city form, rather than only by the materials or technology employed.

The final goal of this research is to better implement sustainability indicator system to assess sustainable morphology in the high-density context. This study therefore commences with respective demonstrations of the theories of morphology, diagrammatic methods and sustainability indicator systems through a literature review, in order to build up the theoretical underpinnings for the development of diagrammatic methods. At the same time, it explores the virtues of morphological and diagrammatic methods, which are applied as complements to the shortcomings of sustainability indicator systems that have emerged and are utilized to evaluate sustainable morphology. Afterwards, this research attempts to investigate what is sustainable morphology for the purpose of defining sustainable morphology through examining the definite features it should possess, and identifying the overlapped scope between morphology and sustainable development. Based on the exact scope, it categorizes relative indicators in the four respective aspects of sustainability respectively drawn from a proven indicator system – SPeAR® developed by Arup. These indicators are simplified to a radar diagram which is succinct, visual and informative to represent the evaluation results. Moreover, this research compares a series of diagrams concerning sustainable buildings and cities to summarize the referencing diagrams of sustainable morphology characteristics which assist to explain the profile of sustainable morphology on scales. Finally, Hong Kong is taken as the test bed for the application of these diagrammatic approaches due to its outstanding performance of high density. The findings of this research can be viewed as a theoretical complement to urban morphology and sustainability assessment research. The diagrammatic assessment approaches can be applied as guidance for sustainability designs in planning and decision-making processes across all areas. In addition, the proposed assessment methodology is not only suitable for evaluating the high-density morphology, but also can be replicated with relevant alterations responding to different circumstances.