The History of ISUF and Urban Morphology

The origins, main developments and fundamental characteristics of urban morphology are addressed in this chapter, making evident the crucial role of the International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF) in strengthening this body of knowledge over the last three decades. After considering the early manifestations of different morphological traditions, in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth century, and some seminal books published after the 1950s, attention is given to a sequence of events that would lead to the creation of ISUF. The Lausanne meetings and the first conferences in Birmingham, Versailles, and Florence, as well as the establishment of the journal Urban Morphology are examined. Two main challenges for ISUF are considered at the end of the chapter. The first is the balance between progressive globalization, after the first conference in the United States in 2001, and the emergence of several regional networks a few years later. The second challenge is the equilibrium between different generations of urban morphologists when, for the first time, the leadership of ISUF is being undertaken by researchers that did not participate in the creation of the organization in the mid-1990s.