Porta Sergio, Dr

Research Overview

My research sits in three areas: 1. Urban Morphology and Street Network analysis, 2. Construction and Therapy, and 3. Urban Design. Overall, I am trying to set up a scientific approach to urban form production and evolution, with a focus on people/environment relations and direct community construction.

More in detail:

My latest research is mainly orientated to the definition of procedures, attitudes and tools for sustainable/human/adaptive urban analysis and design, ranging from GIS-based space analysis to sustainable community design, mobility planning and traffic calming to strategies for safety and liveability in the public domain and community engagement in decision making. The theoretical development of my ideas on urbanity and change has been summarised under a notion of Plot-Based Urbanism (http://www.udsu-strath.com/5-publications/5-3-udsu-wp/working-papers-2011-plot-based-urbanism/). I conduct joint research with physicists like Vito Latora, Luciano Da Fontoura Costa and Marc Barthelemy on the network analysis of urban spatial systems, in particular streets and intersections. This research is about mapping centrality in urban spaces and establishing correlations with relevant dynamics such as land-use, vehicular or pedestrian flows, crime and real-estate values. A summary of this stream of research has just been published (http://www.udsu-strath.com/5-publications/5-1-articles/articles-2010-networks-in-urban-design-six-years-of-mca-research/).

I work with students and communities to the real constrcution of buildings through a process of direct and collective design/construction in three phases inspired by Chris Alexander: Land Exploration, Pattern Language and Conception/Construction. The involvement of end-users throughout all phases is a curcuial step towards "healing the people and healing the land" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksQ3DSu-X44).  

A new frontier of researchis currently under exploration involves a quantitative approach to urban morphology, i.e. the statistical characterization of different types of urban fabrics taken from the history of cities in order to infer “parental” relationships between them; in short a non-analogic study in urban evolution. A first position working-paper has now been released that defines the field of research in terms of “urban morphometrics” (http://www.udsu-strath.com/5-publications/5-3-udsu-wp/working-papers-2011-urban-morphometrics/).

Academic / Professional qualifications

Professor of Urban Design, Head of Department, Director of Urban Design Studies Unit

• GALE: Global Accessibility to Local Experience (Principal investigator)
• KTA - Multiple Centrality Assessment (MCA) as a strategic modelling tool for use in urban regeneration (Principal investigator)
• Seminar on Evolution of Complex Transportation Systems (Principal investigator)
• MILNBANK HOUSING ASSOCIATION PROJECT (Principal investigator)