The Role of Vegetation in the Morphological Decoding of Lisbon (Portugal)

Rui Justo and Maria Matos Silva
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Rui Justo: Formaurbis LAB, CIAUD—Research Centre of Architecture Urbanism and Design, Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa 1349-063, Portugal
Maria Matos Silva: URBinLAB, CIAUD—Research Centre of Architecture Urbanism and Design, Lisbon School of Architecture, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa 1349-063, Portugal

Land, 2020, vol. 9, issue 1, 1-21

Abstract: In the academic context, especially in the fields of architecture, landscape architecture, and urbanism, urban form studies are assumed to be a vehicle for reflection on the built and unbuilt city. This essay aims to challenge the most common and stabilized morphological approaches in the city reading process, invoking vegetation and its role as an element of urban composition that is recurrently left out of it. Methodologically, this work uses the city of Lisbon to carry out a morphological characterization of different homogeneous areas based on a decomposition process of urban systems and elements. The article focuses on the reading of the public component of three homogeneous areas in Lisbon—Alfama, Avenidas and Alvalade—and specifically on the role of urban greenery as a systemic element of the formal or informal composition of the city. Through an initial systematization process reflects upon the formal attributes of vegetation and trees in particular, this research may contribute not only to the development of the discipline of urban morphology applied to the city of Lisbon but also to the acknowledgment of urban greenery as a contributor to the creation of specific, unique, and unrepeatable spaces within urban landscapes.

Keywords: urban morphology; vegetation; Lisbon (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q15 Q2 Q24 Q28 Q5 R14 R52 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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