This dissertation uses quantitative data on city cinematography and the morphological study of filming locations to identify how differences in ways of seeing cities, as shaped by cinematographic choices, are anchored both in differences in what is physically present as well as in differences in frameworks and expectations about what might be interesting or important to see. Four films are evaluated that are set in Los Angeles and New York, two cities recognized as paradigms in American urbanism: The Naked City (1948), The Long Goodbye (1970), Goodfellas (1990), and Pulp Fiction (1994). In general, the New York movies suggest the embeddedness of the individual in the city and its social life in ways tied closely to urban form, with the visual presentation of the street acting as an index to the position of the individual within the narrative. Los Angeles, by contrast, presents the city as a series of enclaves linked by infrastructure. The street as a sociologically relevant entity hardly exists, with the exception of a handful of chase scenes, as though only crisis can catalyze direct encounters with the streets of Los Angeles. Within individual movies, the depiction of city form reveals directorial idioms in the presentation of the narrative. The Naked City exploits corner shots to impart greater visual interest to the presentation of activity in the streets. The Long Goodbye shows the degradation of the distinction between public and private space as concurrent with a city form and culture that resists decoding. Goodfellas develops a grammar of views on the street that corresponds to the relationships of individual characters to overlapping social groups over time. Pulp Fiction mainly presents city locations as decontextualized to focus on dialogue and relationships, to sculpt urban form to meet the exigencies of the narrative, and to all the more powerfully introduce surprise. In the concluding chapter, the qualities of the city as presented in Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction and both of the cities are diagrammed and discussed relative to architectural precedents and ideas that might inform architectural design.

The main objective of the thesis is to study the forces that built up the morphology of the old city of Sulaimaniyah and the reasons of its existence. It focuses on the morphological elements of property (ownership elements of streets, blocks and parcels) and their existence in spite of the impacts of modernism in the transformation of these elements. Modernity in Sulaimaniyah city affected the city in terms of the transformation of traditional life pattern and traditional structure into modern function. Modern function covers a new administrative system and new commercial functions. The city adapted itself to these new institutions. As a consequence, the power of state displayed itself in the form of building roads, and then the new larger and regular parcels were created to adapt new functions. Furthermore, the study aims to establish the historical evolution of the city starting from its foundation and the periods, which are signified by the introduction of modernism concepts. This study is analyzed through a morphological research depending on the physical elements as quantitative characteristics. It starts with an evolutionary plan analysis, which is a tool of morphological study and covers the old part of the city in macro scale, mezzo scale, and consequently, micro scale. The old fabric of Sulaimaniyah city as organic fabric faced the modernism&#039 / s impact gradually due to the construction of streets. In spite of this fact, preserving old fabric&#039 / s morphology behind the power of ownership pattern is still surviving. In this thesis, typology is another research method, which is used to analyze the evolution of the building fabric of the city in both functional and formal configuration. In addition, a comparison of traditional and modern building types in the old city shows that there are similarities between these types, which suggest that these types are part of the old fabric of the city and they define the morphology of the old city. The study concluded that the morphology of the old city is the product of property in two dimensions (ownership parcels), and the building types on them.