With recent development of analytical tools in the past decade, a series of approaches evaluating perceived street qualities have been developed. Nevertheless, street attractiveness as an important concern of contemporary urban design is still lacking quantitative measurements. As a response, we are attempting to develop an evaluation of the perceptual-based attractiveness of streets which usually depended on subjective experience. With multi-sourced urban data and machine learning algorithms, a human-centered evaluation has been developed to measure street attractiveness from three dimensions: visual quality, network accessibility and functional diversity. Specifically, street view images and machine learning algorithms were applied to quantify visual quality intelligently. Spatial design network analysis (sDNA) was used to measure street network accessibility. The entropy of points of interest (POIs) was used to assess functional diversity on streets. Beijing and Shanghai, two megacities from China were selected for case study. Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was applied to integrate these three key dimensions to evaluate street attractiveness. Furthermore, the satisfactory accuracy of the approach has been verified by further validation. The analytical approach helps to quantify the degree of street attractiveness comprehensively, owing to the application of multi-source urban data. In short, this study contributes to the development of a human-centered and systematic measurement of street attractiveness across large-scale areas, which benefits planning practitioners to get information more efficiently and precisely. Findings achieved from this study would contribute to bring in a human-oriented perspective into morphometrics and newly developed analytical tools.

Car travel consumes finite fossil fuel resources and is a major cause of increased carbon emissions and accelerating climate change. However, the size and shape of modern cities have resulted in people being unable to commute to the towns without car-based transport. In the context of decarbonization strategies, applying public transport priority strategies has become a consensus in many cities in China and Europe. However, with completed urban road networks and the mass of family cars, the question of how to incentivize people to prioritize public transport as a mode of travel has become an issue for city management and designers to consider. To improve the accessibility (the so-called last mile) of the public transport network, many cities have deployed mobility hubs to provide more choices for people to travel. In addition, research has shown that the convenience, comfort, and functional diversity of walking processes can help people to abandon driving in favor of walking or cycling. This paper will look at the morphology of various types of mobility hubs, their design and location, analyze public transport facilities and possibilities to walk and cycle. This study will establish a suitable indicator system through evaluation and provide a basis for subsequent morphological design optimization. This study aims to inspire urban design interventions to increase mobility options, improve the quality of walking or cycling and thus achieve the goal of public transport as the preferred mode of travel.

Urban morphology examines the physical form and structure of cities, processes of formation and transformation, and dynamics of urban change. There are different schools and approaches how to study urban form. The International Seminar of Urban Form (ISUF) is established around three morphological schools deriving from geography and architecture/urbanism. This paper discusses eclectic and eclecticism in urban morphology and possibilities for eclectic urban design fusions and pursuing mongrel/dzukela urbanism within the established schools and beyond the schools. Dzukela (mongrel) is an "ursprache" word for a street dog of the Balkans that is typically a tough, rough and sturdy mix of dog breeds. The paper is inspired by the Balkanstreet dogs and urban design defined as a "mongrel discipline". Eclectic is defined in the Oxford dictionary as "not following one style or set of ideas. but choosing from or using a wide variety". Urban morphologists and urban designers faced with theoretical and practical problems can follow established approaches and highbred theories of morphological schools and urban design groups or they can create idiosyncratic mongrel/.ukela mixes choosing that which seems best.

Interest in space exploration has skyrocketed driven by enthusiastic superrich space entrepreneurs. European Space Agency (ESA) refers to the emerging private spacetech industry as New Space. Even though New Space inspires new debates in media and business, there is very little research on space exploration and colonisation from a perspective of urban morphology and urban design. Morphological analysis is defined by a hierarchy of three fundamental elements: streets and their layout, plots and their aggregation in blocks, buildings and land uses as building utilization. Urban designers have the unique background to deal with the experiential qualities of cities in three dimensions (3D) and tackle conflicts between private and public realm. Thinking about space colonisation and urbanisation in zero gravity (0G) inspires creative reflections on urban morphology in 3D and distorted morphological structure of off-world settlements. This paper reviews the popular science and science fiction literature on exploring and colonising space, analysing the morphological structure of spaceships and space stations, outposts and colonies on other planets. The paper also compares the morphological structure of cities on Earth and the conflict between private and public with visions of space colonisation and discusses alternative urbanist vision that revolves around lifepods, privatised space habitats that serve as living quarters, metaversic Virtual Reality (VR) hubs into cyberspace and lifeboats. Public administrations plan space missions with spacecrafts that are semiprivate space and despite private initiatives to explore space, there are no visions of privatised spaces on spacecrafts or space colonies designed by following the established morphological structure. Interactions between public and private spaces on spaceships or in space colonies are not discussed. Reaching out to urban morphology and urban design for new space colonisation visions can enrich the New Space debate and vice versa discussing cities in 0G and 3D broadens the scope of urban morphology.

Urban spaces are defined by degrees of axial and convex extension. Space Syntax research has predominantly emphasized axial lines and maps and considered convexity through isovists and visibility graphs. Axiality emphasizes movement or flow and creates axial maps as two-dimensional networks. Convexity of urban space is aural and shaped by vision and sound in three dimensions. It is represented by convex maps of stretchable polygons (described furthermore by an adjacency scene graph within the polygons) and remain fuzzy conceptualizations because of their property as three-dimensional objects. Kevin Lynch's morphology of imageability and Michael Southworth’s soundscapes can be used to create diagrammatic representations of convex spaces as townscape representations. This paper explores the convergence of Space Syntax and imageability, soundscape and townscape theories for analysing three dimensional urban spaces in two dimensional representations. The ‘urban envelope’ creates an assemblage of building façade and street sections as fronts and empty spaces as voids surrounding one viewshed. The viewshed like an isovist or visibility graph on map depicts convexity, but with an image collage of fronts and voids (surrounding buildings and streets) distorted on a map. The urban envelope is used as an urban design drawing board in a new software for City Information Modelling (CIM) that is under development. This paper aims to inspire synergetic ways to juxtapose morphological and urban design traditions to discuss applications of morphological theories and urban design practices.

Computer-Aided Architectural Design (CAAD) finds its historical precedents in technological enthusiasm for generative algorithms and architectural intelligence. Current developments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and paradigms in Machine Learning (ML) bring new opportunities for creating innovative digital architectural tools, but in practice this is not happening. CAAD enthusiasts revisit generative algorithms, while professional architects and urban designers remain reluctant to use software that automatically generates architecture and cities. This paper looks at the history of CAAD and digital tools for Computer Aided Design (CAD), Building Information Modeling (BIM) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in order to reflect on the role of AI in future digital tools and professional practices. Architects and urban designers have diagrammatic knowledge and work with design problems on symbolic level. The digital tools gradually evolved from CAD to BIM software with symbolical architectural elements. The BIM software works like CAAD (CAD systems for Architects) or digital board for drawing and delivers plans, sections and elevations, but without AI. AI has the capability to process data and interact with designers. The AI in future digital tools for CAAD and Computer-Aided Urban Design (CAUD) can link to big data and develop ambient intelligence. Architects and urban designers can harness the benefits of analytical ambient intelligent AIs in creating environmental designs, not only for shaping buildings in isolated virtual cubicles. However there is a need to prepare frameworks for communication between AIs and professional designers. If the cities of the future integrate spatially analytical AI, are to be made smart or even ambient intelligent, AI should be applied to improving the lives of inhabitants and help with their daily living and sustainability.

This commentary aims to concisely introduce artificial intelligence and urbantech for urban morphologists. We are in a midst of a new revolution in machine learning with 'neural nets' capable of understanding human speech and written language and analysing content on images and videos. The neural nets can semantically parse scenes on images recognizing objects, creating scene graphs, and describing content with text. However, specialized neural nets for urban morphology do not exist. Neural nets can recognise artefacts from specific historical ages or learn about architectural styles only if they are supervised by experts. To create urban morphological architectural intelligence that can help with morphological research or morphologically-informed urban design practices, urban morphologists need to translate their analytics and practices into software specifications. Creating specialized neural nets for urban morphology requires expertise in software engineering and programming effort and seems far in the future, but the International Seminar for Urban Form and Urban Morphology can play a profound role in debating urbantech, needs for intelligent tools and reaching to computational science and technology. Only through coordination and ,finding synergies the revolution of artificial intelligence will influence urban morphology as urbantech.

The new developments in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and Artificial Intelligence (AI) bring revelations of emerging smart cities. However, AI has not yet been integrated in Computer Aided Design (CAD), Building Information Modelling (BIM) or Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. There are experiments with AI in urban modelling and simulations and AI techniques are applied in procedural generation of buildings and cities, but software based on simulations, procedural models and generative algorithms is seldom used in architectural and urbanist practices. In this paper, we look at the history of smart cities and digitization in architecture and urbanism in relation to new potentials brought by AI. We map and juxtapose future urban visions, digital tools and AI techniques to discuss the role of architects and urban designers in an emerging world of smart cities. The purpose is to inspire a debate about the possibility to make a convergence of architectural and urbanist practices with new AI developments.