A Quantitative Study on Urban Fabric of Historical Areas with Graph Analysis: Case Studies of Datong and Nanjing, China

The exploration of quantitative methods for urban fabric, grounded in urban morphology theory, offers digital tools to accurately characterize the physical attributes of urban fabric. While exiting quantitative approaches primarily focus on general morphological features such as dimension, shape, intensity, etc. There remains a gap in developing targeted methodology based on buildings types as well as buildings composition. In this study, we examine the urban fabric of two historical districts in China as case studies. By applying graph theory, we attempt to quantify the compositional patterns of urban fabric by setting plots and building typological units as nodes. This approach reveals differences in building types and urban fabric organization between the two cases. Our findings demonstrate that quantitative statistics and graph theory analysis, based on parameters such as building width, depth, and courtyard units, effectively uncover the patterns across different fabric compositions. Furthermore, metric intervals derived from graph theory indicators—such as node degree and depth values—provide a means to distinguish the unique characteristics of each case. This study highlights the potential of integrating morphological analysis with graph theory to advance the understanding of urban fabric complexity of historical area.