ISUF, Urban Morphology and Human Settlements

Vítor Oliveira is President of the International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF) and President of the Portuguese-Language Network of Urban Morphology (PNUM). He is Principal Researcher at the Research Centre for Territory Transports and Environment (CITTA / FEUP) and Professor of Urban Morphology and Urban Planning at ULP. He is Associate Editor of ‘Urban Morphology', Advisory Editor of ‘The Urban Book Series' (Springer), and Founding Editor of the ‘Revista de Morfologia Urbana' (2013-18). His latest books are ISUF, urban morphology and human settlements: advances and prospects (2024), Urban morphology: an introduction to the study of the physical form of cities (2022, 2016; translated to Chinese, Persian, Portuguese and Turkish), Morphological research in planning, urban design and architecture (2021), JWR Whitehand and the historico-geographical approach to urban morphology (2019) and Teaching urban morphology (2018). He has translated, with Cláudia Monteiro, the classic book Alnwick, Northumberland: a study in town-plan analysis by MRG Conzen.

• Part 1: Past and present.- The history of ISUF and urban morphology.- ISUF – A different type of academic society.- The Journal Urban Morphology and Jeremy Whitehand’s comments.- The historico-geographical approach to urban morphology.- Recent developments in urban morphology in Italy.- Escaping townscape – British architects and urban morphology.- Part 2: Present and future.- Mapping morphological futures – Plan-analysis and its cultural intersections.- Infrastructure and territory – Leaving a trace in the contemporary (urban) archipelago.- A cross-cultural conception of urban morphology.- Working across boundaries in urban morphology.- Social critique and design in the face of multiple crises: Directions for urban morphology.- The present and future of human settlements, urban morphology and ISUF.