The Center of Urban and Regional Planning for Postgraduate Studies at the University of Baghdad discussed the Master’s thesis entitled “The Impact of the Positioning of High-Rise Residential Towers on Urban Morphology: Strategies for Dealing with Skylines – Luxury Residential Towers as a Model,” submitted by student Rasel Fares Hussein, and supervised by Assistant Professor Dr. Falah Mahdi Hadi.
The thesis aimed to regulate the formal units of high-rise residential towers without negatively impacting the skyline. The positioning of high-rise residential towers influences urban morphology as an architectural style outside the traditional context, giving a distinctive shape to the city’s skyline and affecting the elements of the urban landscape. The student concluded in her thesis that high-rise buildings reflect the investment and economic power of cities, and that introducing high-rise residential towers into a low-rise urban environment leads to transformations in the city’s morphology. High-rise residential towers act as turning points in the city’s skyline due to their significant visual impact on the skyline. Furthermore, the major urban trends resulting from these towers contribute to putting pressure on existing infrastructure and urban functions, necessitating well-considered planning before the construction of residential towers.
The thesis recommended in its outputs the necessity of adopting a theoretical and scientific knowledge methodology to enhance the benefit from the planning challenges that high towers faced and their impact on cities, and the necessity of developing flexible urban policies that take into account the characteristics of the current urban fabric of the region when signing high vertical projects such as (luxury residential towers) in a way that achieves harmony between the visual and functional character, and trying to reduce or limit the negative effects of signing (luxury residential towers) and limit the effects of signing them on the study area, while relying on urban gradation in heights and providing transitional spaces between the towers and the surrounding buildings to reduce the visual shock in the skyline.
