Urban Morphology and Housing Stock Granularity: A Cross-Scalar Analysis

Do urban morphologicalparameters trickle down to impactthe diversityand granularity of a district's housing stock?Do urban morphologicalparameters impact housing rental values? These are the main questions underpinning this mixed-method study of four districts across Madrid and Barcelona—twodistrictsdeveloped in a bottom-up mannerand exhibitinghighmorphological heterogeneity, and two developed in a top-down manner and exhibiting highmorphological homogeneity. The large-scale statistical analyses conductedfrom October 2021 to May 2022via 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 withhaving 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-divergentand more-affordablereal 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.