Citation: Merlo, A.; Lavoratti, G. Documenting Urban Morphology: From 2D Representations to Metaverse. Land 2024, 13, 136. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13020136 Academic Editors: Dagmar Haase, Marco Maretto and Nicola Marzot Received: 1 November 2023 Revised: 9 January 2024 Accepted: 13 January 2024 Published: 25 January 2024 Copyright: © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/). land Article Documenting Urban Morphology: From 2D Representations to Metaverse Alessandro Merlo * and Gaia Lavoratti Department of Architecture, University of Florence, 50121 Florence, Italy; gaia.lavoratti@unifi.it * Correspondence: alessandro.merlo@unifi.it; Tel.: +39-335-5423014 Abstract: The documentation of urban morphology is linked to the complex operation of representing the city, which over the centuries has been undertaken using different methodologies, instruments, and purposes. The “IT revolution” has expanded the possibility of overlapping and relating multiple pieces of information in connection to the urban organism on the same support and, on the other hand, has opened up new scenarios linked to the use of urban digital twins to support the analysis and urban planning. The 21st century has marked a momentous turning point compared to the recent past: the advent of artificial intelligence has in fact allowed the introduction, alongside Urban Information Systems, of ‘Predictive’ Systems, capable of formulating new scenarios on the basis of the elements available and pictured on 3D models. At the same time, the technical and technological acquisitions of the last century have contributed to evident experimentation on the metaverse, which, although it still exists in a de-emphasised form, is currently a whole universe under construction and expansion. Its rules are written with every passing day, in which the individual can recreate a reality similar to, or absolutely antithetical to, the one they experience on a daily basis, populating virtual cities that elude the established urban dynamics of physical structures. Keywords: urban representation; urban analysis; 3D digital model; urban digital twin; information communication technology; city information modelling; artificial intelligence; metaverse “The act of representation is thinking and building simulacra, the simulacra of what exists, has existed but no longer exists as it did at the beginning of its life, or at some other stage, and that could be restored to its primary image. It is also a simulacrum of what will, or will not, exist. The act of designing therefore also evokes what is invisible and impossible. Representing is then a substitutive act. It creates a vicarious entity located in a space where something that [...] cannot really be present at a certain point in space and time. However, a design does not exhaust its role in the creation of these supplementary images, these surrogates. [...] At the very moment of the creation of a deferred replica of an object, a second reality is in fact defined, a parallel universe in which the simulacrum is as real as the object to which it refers to” [1]. The act of depicting a city is a complex operation that involves the analytical documen- tation of multiple and heterogeneous factors, their subsequent reading through cultural filters and, finally, their critical representation through the adaptation of the reality to codi- fied and shared graphic symbols. Over the centuries, as the terms of this operation have changed with different purposes, so have the tools used for analysis and their figuration, or the different modus operandi of those who have engaged in it. The main goal of this paper is to underline that the information on a settlement is still ‘closely linked’ today, as it was in the past, to its (first analogue, then digital) representations of the reality investigated. Furthermore, we aim to highlight the possibilities inherent in the use of responsive and predictive 3D models in the management of a city through the most advanced facility management software. Land 2024, 13, 136. https://doi.org/10.3390/land13020136 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/land