Urban Highway Areas: Reconsidering Morphological Elements of the Approach to Urban Studies

Abstract

This study aims to characterize and map morphological changes that occurred in urban areas crossed by capital transportation infrastructures such as highways. There are geographic, morphological and classification perspectives for considering these urban areas. Bearing it in mind, this paper tries to define a method between morphological and urban studies approach to these areas. The method is applied in the urban area of the E75 highway in the urban fabric of Belgrade (Serbia). Based on the historic approach, such as the evolutive perspective of the transformation stages, observation of the transportation infrastructure and the surrounding urban space through multi-scale morphological analysis includes modernization of the city from its construction, development period and transition to the actual times. Starting from specific criteria based on individual elements or clusters in the landscape, as a result of analysis, there are specific morphological elements that provide information about the characterization of urban highway and its urban space. Street as one of the primary elements of urban form is transformed. According to the fact that the infrastructure is a problematic formal element in the study of urban form, this paper can contribute to future urban morphological studies by identifying categories of morphological elements to study the relationship between transportation infrastructure and the urban space.