Urban morphology and housing stock granularity: a cross-scalar analysis

Abstract

Do urban-morphological parameters trickle down to impact the diversity and granularity of a district’s housing stock? Do urban-morphological parameters impact housing rental values? These are the main questions underpinning this mixed-method study of four districts across Madrid and Barcelona—two districts developed in a bottom-up manner and exhibiting high morphological heterogeneity, and two developed in a top-down manner and exhibiting high morphological homogeneity. The large-scale statistical analyses conducted via the course of this research delves into the cross-district variations and commonalities of residential values, dwelling unit sizes, plot sizes, block sizes, and street widths. Three findings of import are uncovered—(1) possessing an intricate urban-morphological (or housing stock) granularity does not come hand-in-hand with having high urban morphological (or housing stock) diversity; (2) despite not possessing a higher diversity of urban morphological elements, the bottom-up districts still behaved as slightly-divergent and more-affordable real estate bubbles when compared to the top-down neighborhoods; and (3) across all the districts examined, smaller-scale plots consistently supported more than their expected share of smaller-scale dwelling units.