The Scale of Urban: World Urbanisation and Architectural Reactions (original) (raw)

The chapter represents a theoretical overview of the historical and contemporary debate on urbanisation issues. It is presented in the form of a concise interpretation of the basic concepts related to urbanisation, for the purposes of the understanding and reinterpretation of (urban) sustainability. The chapter points out the critical urban theory thesis that urbanisation is a social process generated and materialised through dynamic spatial transformation that is becoming planetary. The contemporary urbanisation fundamentally changed the cities from centric formations to the new polymorphic urban tissue deeply extended in the once rural and natural environment. Therefore, the chapter is based on the presumption that the issue of urban sustainability cannot be comprehended without an understanding of emergent interconnections and dependencies between different spatial scales, urban agglomerations, and close and distant operational territories. The management of urbanisation as a large-scale process and configuration is understood as the basic drive for the creation of sustainable urban places and territories. Furthermore, the chapter follows the contemporary methodological platforms and conceptual tools for the research of the local urban conditions in the context of planetary urbanisation. It focuses on the selected emerging urbanism approaches to researching and designing the new urban tissue, as a disciplinary path to overcoming the utopian comprehensive model of planning and designing the cities.