Urban morphology of Murcia (Spain) in the twentieth century. Compactness and density of urban fabrics.

Abstract

Expansion of cities during twentieth century, and especially in its second half, has raised, almost since its construction, a controversy about its consequences on the lives of their inhabitants. New urban fabrics appeared in this period as a response to the big population growth. Describing cities morphology, compactness and density have be- come two of the most functional values, as Berghauser and Pont have shown in the last years (2009). These two parameters are able to classify the urban fabric forms, allowing the comparison of their in? uence in issues as: quality of life, mobility, energy and mate- rial consumption, etc. Since Muratori’s studies of Venice (1960), development of Geo- graphic Information Systems (GIS) and the open access policies to public data enable a systematic management of huge amounts of information required for these studies. In this paper, public information from Spanish Cadastre is used to classify different fabrics. Methodology is based on combining compactness and density at building level and at urban fabric scale and it is applied to the case of the periphery of Murcia city, in south- ern Spain, in the last century. Results show the evolution of fabric morphology along the century and its contrast with contemporary urban design theories.