The Integrated Modification Methodology

As the environmental ramifications of urban development have become clear, it is fundamental to investigate what practical methods should be implemented to tackle urban growth and environmental issues simultaneously. How should one integrate urbanization and the issue of saving natural resources? How could design strategies contribute to climate change mitigation and the reduction of emissions? Is urban morphology correlated with these issues? And eventually, how can the urban transformation be performed, retrofitted, and monitored in order to achieve a more sustainable result? A strictly sectorial approach could result in neglecting the mutual dependencies of these demands. Conversely, an integrated approach can help to sharpen a better understanding of the different performances of different urban configurations. Although many studies have been carried out on how cities’ forms are structured, scarce efforts have been done for the systemic understanding and evaluation of the urban morphology through quantitative metrics. More research is required in this direction in order to better describe the urban form characteristics and their impact on the performance of cities. The integrated modification methodology (IMM) is a procedure encompassing an open set of scientific techniques for morphologically analysing the built environment in a multiscale manner and evaluating its performance in the actual state or under specific design scenarios. The methodology is structured around a nonlinear phasing process aiming at delivering a systemic understanding of any given urban settlement, formulating the modification set-ups for improving its performance, and examining the modification strategies to transform that system. The basic assumption in IMM is the recognition of the built environment as a complex adaptive system. IMM has been developed by IMMdesignlab, a research laboratory based at Politecnico di Milano at the Department of Architecture, Built Environment and Construction Engineering (DABC).