Modernist Determinants Vs The Shape of Urban Space. The Method of Indicating Factors Which Decide About The City’s Image

The aim of the paper is to demonstrate a scheme of research connected with the shape of an urban space and its determinants. As a basis, elements of a city and their spatial features deciding about the characteristic and individual image of an urban organism were determined. They were defined using the example of the evolution of European cities from ancient times until modernism and the analysis of various methods of characterising the tissue of a city. The reference to modernism is justified by the importance of its strategies for the development of the European urban thought. A modern model of a city, created in the first decades of the twentieth century, was the answer to the rapid industrialisation and urbanisation connected with the industrial revolution of the 19^th century. Its implication brought about radical changes of the concept of shaping cities and the creation of new features of the main elements of their spatial structure.