The Present and Future of Human Settlements, Urban Morphology and ISUF

This last chapter addresses the present and future of human settlements, urban morphology, and the International Seminar on Urban Form (ISUF). The chapter is in three parts. Firstly, it focuses on the wide variety of human settlements in different parts of the world, exploring fundamental socioeconomic dynamics, structural aspects of their physical and environmental dimensions, as well as key challenges to be addressed in the next decades. The second part identifies a set of crucial contributions that urban morphology, and its systematic knowledge of physical forms, processes and agency, can give to effectively deal with these major issues. Finally, the last section describes how a new generation of urban morphologists, that have concluded their PhD over the last decade and have been actively involved in ISUF in recent years, is already tackling these important challenges.