Urban Blueprint and Compatible Growth: A Multi-Scalar Morphological Method for Sustainable Transformation in Erseke, Albania

Abstract
Urban transformation can weaken a town when expansion interrupts the spatial relationships that support its identity, accessibility, and everyday functioning. This paper develops a multi-scalar morphological method for Erseke, Albania, aimed at converting inherited urban structure into generative rules for compatible growth. The study reads the town through network hierarchy, public and functional systems, landscape edges, and building grain. These layers are interpreted through urban granularity, morphological continuity, and bounded fractal diagnostics. Fractal analysis is used only where scaling or self-similar tendencies can be identified; other differences are treated as changes in grain, density, hierarchy, or aggregation. The extracted relations are organized as a morphological grammar composed of nodal hierarchy, connective lines, grid alignments, proportional fields, and seed structures. Rhino and Grasshopper are used to implement the rules and generate alternative scenarios of urban growth. The scenarios are compared through morphological continuity, connectivity, accessibility, and functional balance. The results suggest that the method is strongest when it acts as a translation framework between urban analysis and design rather than as a universal mathematical model. It allows future growth to remain connected to the inherited spatial structure while admitting variation, programmatic change, and controlled densification.

Keywords: Urban Morphology, Urban Blueprint, Granularity, Morphological Grammar, Compatible Growth, Spatial Accessibility