In the European City Studios, typo-morphological analysis is used as a didactic method to teach students how to analyze the city and its characteristics in a structured and organized way. The analysis is done in groups of collaborating students, which means that each individual student carries out part of a greater research. These ‘parts’ can for example be periods in time or different parts of the city. The synthesis of the knowledge acquired through individual research is of great importance in order to understand, for example, the full history of a city (as opposed to just a single time period) or the city as a whole (as opposed to just a part of the city). A strong collaboration within the group will thus eventually lead to a better understanding of the city for each individual member of that group. The result of the group work is a book or ‘atlas’ in which all the collaborative research and analysis is combined.