Urban Taxonomy

Martin Fleischmann

Charles University

We have built something

Taxonomic tree (up to 256 branches)

Taxonomic tree with a cut marking 2 branches (level 1)

Illustration of different levels of the hierarchy.

Taxonomic tree with a cut marking 4 branches (level 2)

Illustration of different levels of the hierarchy.

Taxonomic tree with a cut marking 8 branches (level 3)

Illustration of different levels of the hierarchy.

Urban Taxonomy

urbantaxonomy.org

What now?

Geography and urban structure

Abundance of built fabric types derived from level 1

Abundance of built fabric types derived from level 2

Abundance of built fabric types derived from level 3

Taxonomic tree with a cut marking 107 branches (level 7)

Compression to 2 dimensions using UMAP

UMAP components reflecting the composition within 50km grid.

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Projection of UMAP components

Cities in time

Amsterdam

Madrid

Paris

Sevilla

Zaragoza

Spain, level 1

Spain, level 2

Spain, level 3

Spain, level 4

France, level 1

France, level 2

France, level 3

France, level 4

building alignment

mean distance to neighbouring buildings

joined perimeter wall length

street width

building squareness [FR]

building squareness [ES]

Environmental effects

Population effects

Scale

Basic Settlement Units

20 000 BSU in Czechia

Delineated based on urban fabric

Census characterstics as the independent variables

Census variables

Population density

Age structure

Employment sector

Employment status

Dwelling ownership

Education level

Household size

Citizenship

Religion

Marital status

Census processing

Results

Averaged F1-macro score.

Results

Averaged F1-macro score.

Results

Averaged F1-macro score.

Distribution of local coefficients/importances ordered by their magnitude

Distribution of standard deviations of local coefficients/importances by fabric type

Take home points

Urban morphometrics can support
quantitative studies done at scale.

Structure of cities is deeply affected
by culture and politics.

We can read the story of urban development.

And learn how it affects the present.

Do you want to follow up

uscuni.org/talks

urbantaxonomy.org

github.com/uscuni/urban_taxonomy

martin.fleischmann@natur.cuni.cz

martinfleischmann.net

The authors kindly acknowledge funding by the Charles University’s Primus programme through the project “Influence of Socioeconomic and Cultural Factors on Urban Structure in Central Europe”, project reference PRIMUS/24/SCI/023.