Skip to content

Audio Version

See more about

More info

[1] Michael Weinstock, The Architecture of Emergence: The Evolution of Form in Nature and Civilisation, (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2010).

[2] Léon Krier, Completar Santurce: Estudio preliminar para el plan Maestro de Un Barrio (San Juan, PR: Oficina de Asuntos Urbanos, Oficina del Gobernador, 1992).

[3] John Summerson, Georgian London (London: Penguin Books, 1978).

[4] Ivor Samuels, Philippe Panerai, Jean Castex, and Jean Charles Depaule, Urban Forms: The Death and Life of the Urban Block (London: Routledge, 2012).

[5] Le Corbusier, When the Cathedrals Were White (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1964).

[6] Albert Pope, Ladders (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1997).

[7] Robert Venturi, Denise Scott Brown, and Steven Izenour, Learning from Las Vegas (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1972).

[8] Jim Antoniou, “Chandigarh: Once the Future City,” Architectural Review 213, no. 1273 (March 2003): 70.

[9] Martino Tattara, “Brasilia’s Superquadra: Prototypical Design and the Project of the City,” Architectural Design 81, no. 1 (January 1, 2011): 46–55, DOI:10.1002/ad.1188.

[10] Jun Jiang, “A Village by the SEZ: The Dafen Sample of China’s Urbanization,” MAS Context, Spring 2011; Urbanus, Urbanus: Selected Works (Beijing: China Architecture and Building Press, 2007).

[11] David Grahame Shane, Urban Design Since 1945: A Global Perspective (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2011), 329–39.

[12] Emily Talen, Charter of the New Urbanism, 2nd ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2013).

[13] Constantinos Doxiadis, Architecture in Transition (London: Hutchinson, 1963).

[14] Reyner Banham, Megastructure: Urban Futures of the Recent Past (New York: Harper & Row, 1976).

[15] Brian McGrath, Digital Modelling for Urban Design (Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 2008).

[16] Terry McGee, The Urbanization Process in the Third World: Explorations in Search of a Theory (London: Bell, 1971).

[17] André Loeckx, Urban Trialogues: Visions, Projects, Co-Productions (Nairobi: UNHABITAT, 2004), 122–56.

[18] Kjersti Monson, “String Block Vs Superblock Patterns of Dispersal in China,” Architectural Design 78, no. 1 (January 1, 2008): 46–53, DOI:10.1002/ad.608.

[19] Ariella Masboungi, Métamorphose de l’ordinaire: Grand Prix de l’urbanisme 2013 (Paris: Parenthèses, 2013), 44–47.

Block, Superblock, and Megablock: A Short Morphological History

The terms block, superblock, and megablock indicate an increasing capacity and scale of urban form and organization over time. This ascending sequence marks the block as an element in a clear urban hierarchy associated with ever-larger cities: the historical city, the modern metropolis and megalopolis, and now the emerging megacities of Asia.

The scale of block dimensions has shifted over time as the block’s area has been enlarged from its small-scale, early beginnings to grid formations with 0.6-hectare blocks, 6.5-hectare superblocks, and megablocks of 65 hecatres or more. Blocks can form regular or irregular networks of streets, designed by collective use or by landowners intent on development. In each case, the block design is often devoted to a single use as the scale increases, reducing the mix of uses in the name of efficiency. At the same time, the grid, or network of streets, provides a framework for nesting multiple blocks of single uses within the city. As the scale of the city expands, regular blocks nest inside superblocks, which in turn nest within megablocks.

Historically, the nesting of blocks provided a potent system of urban organization that only changed when the increasing pace, scale, and sequencing of development created new hierarchies, allowing modern cities to expand in superblocks across open territories. Initially this new approach required the segregation and sorting of all functions, but with more advanced communication and information systems, new hybrids and mixtures have become possible in the megablocks of both rapidly expanding and shrinking cities.

Block

Michael Weinstock, in his 2010 book The Architecture of Emergence, paints an elegant picture of the evolution of the nested block system that begins with early migratory groups, whose pit houses and long houses were arranged in courtyards to respond to solar conditions.[1] When deserts expanded as a result of climate change, mass migrations carried these settlement patterns into the Nile, Tigris-Euphrates, Indus and Ganges River valleys, the Mekong Valley in South Asia, and the Yangtze River and Yellow River valleys in China. Such water-based cities and empires were unstable and vulnerable to collapse. Beijing, for instance, was refounded by several dynasties, each time with increasing levels of organization and control. By 1400, Beijing had developed a nested grid and courtyard system with blocks of houses on 150-meter hutong nested in 1,000-meter superblocks inside megablock districts, including the enormous 100-hectare Forbidden City.

 width=

Figure 1: Block scale comparison
Full content is available only for registered users. Please login or Register
Excerpt from:

 width=

Buy it at actar.com

urbanNext (October 13, 2024) Block, Superblock, and Megablock: A Short Morphological History. Retrieved from https://urbannext.net/block-superblock-and-megablock-a-short-morphological-history/.
Block, Superblock, and Megablock: A Short Morphological History.” urbanNext – October 13, 2024, https://urbannext.net/block-superblock-and-megablock-a-short-morphological-history/
urbanNext August 2, 2022 Block, Superblock, and Megablock: A Short Morphological History., viewed October 13, 2024,<https://urbannext.net/block-superblock-and-megablock-a-short-morphological-history/>
urbanNext – Block, Superblock, and Megablock: A Short Morphological History. [Internet]. [Accessed October 13, 2024]. Available from: https://urbannext.net/block-superblock-and-megablock-a-short-morphological-history/
Block, Superblock, and Megablock: A Short Morphological History.” urbanNext – Accessed October 13, 2024. https://urbannext.net/block-superblock-and-megablock-a-short-morphological-history/
Block, Superblock, and Megablock: A Short Morphological History.” urbanNext [Online]. Available: https://urbannext.net/block-superblock-and-megablock-a-short-morphological-history/. [Accessed: October 13, 2024]

urbanNext | expanding architecture to rethink cities and territories

Newsletter

Sign up to our newsletter

Search
Generic filters
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Search in excerpt
Formats
Audio&visual
Concept
Data
Essay
Forum
Lecture
Podcast
Project
Talk
Survey
Statement
Selfthink
High Density
Middle Density
Low Density
No Density

talk

essay

project

product

survey

data

all formats