The study of the urban ‘form-dynamic’: mapping the spatial appropriation and the social dynamics

Abstract

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.