Urban Morphology: The Significance of Urban Space History

The importance of urban morphology lies with its interdisciplinary approach from architecture over history to geography. However, often enough, its scientific methods only marginally start from the urban space itself that makes morphology tangible in the first place. With the ongoing specialization of the sciences, strong isolations occur, be it related to the singular development in one place or the dissection of a temporal period, a functional context, or a numerical method. And yet, there are abundant general methods already investigated and tested to deal with the historic development of urban space. The aim of an Urban Space History is thus to explain the importance of the consideration of urban space; to recall the existing methods; and, thus, in a further development, to develop a low-threshold scientific approach that is helpful, or even indispensable, in retrospective and prospective work with urban space. This paper summarizes the spatial–historical perspective, as it has been developed since 2006 at the universities in Aachen and Buxtehude and is today a significant part of the teaching at both institutions.