Urban Design and Urban Morphology has wider implications to urban growth.

Urban morphology is the study of the form of human settlements and the process of their formation and transformation. The study seeks to understand the spatial structure and character of a metropolitan area, city, town or village by examining the patterns of its component parts and the ownership or control and occupation. Typically, analysis of physical form focuses on street pattern,  plot) pattern and building pattern, sometimes referred to collectively as urban grain. Analysis of specific settlements is usually undertaken using cartographic sources and the process of development is deduced from the comparison of historic maps.

Granularity of city and compactness of the city has implications to the city growth. The word ‘granular’ is used to describe something that is made up of smaller elements, and ‘granularity’ is how small or large those elements are. If the elements are small, we call it ‘fine-grained’, and if the elements are large we call it ‘coarse-grained’. It is a term we use in economics, computer science, geology, and likely many other fields. For example, in computer science, an algorithm is fine-grained if it is divided into many small steps, and coarse-grained if it is divided into few large steps.

Compactness facilitates flow and easy access of goods and services.

A fine-grained environment is a sign of a healthy environment, from an economic and an urbanist perspective. Large buildings are not bad, and the best cities have a diverse mixture. We should do our best to make our urban environment fine-grained – with development using as little land as possible. However, on the occasion when we do need to build large, we should do our best to make the result faux-grained.

Urban Morphology is not only the shape of the city. It is also the relative positioning of different zones of the city. Flow of Goods and services affect Future Urban Growth.