Exploring residential urban form patterns: a Spanish case study

Rapid urban growth in recent years has increasingly compromised urban environments and made urban sustainability assessment quite challenging. Breaking down the city structure into smaller systems enables its complexity to be simplified. This work provides a methodology for defining the urban taxonomy of cities by characterizing the urban form patterns of its residential building stock into four different scales. The methodology enables the urban morphology of the city to be standardized, overcoming the barrier of building stock heterogeneity posed by cities, and considers a comprehensive review of the historic and urban planning development as starting point. The methodology proposed herein is supported by GIS technology and can be applied to medium-sized cities. It was validated by applying to the city of Castellón de la Plana, a Spanish Mediterranean coastal city. As main outcome of this research, the urban taxonomy has been obtained and building types in an average block have been standardized, allowing the definition of representative urban form patterns. This methodology can be useful for the stakeholders involved in urban decision-making processes when analysing socio-economic aspects, energy issues, the impact of different technological options or the promotion of sustainable urban development initiatives, among others.