Modeling street connectivity, pedestrian movement and land-use according to standard GIS street network representations: A Comparative Study

by Ayse Ozbil, John Peponis, and Brian Stone

Two 1 mile x 1 mile areas in Atlanta and two 1 mile x 1 mile areas in Istanbul are compared to establish correlations between the distribution of pedestrian movement and street configuration. In each city, one area is chosen in the urban center and the other in one of the residential neighborhoods. The aim is to identify both underlying regularities that link street connectivity to pedestrian flows and differences regarding the volumes of pedestrian presence that can be traced to the influence of different modes of space appropriation. Based on pilot studies we expect to show that the volumes of pedestrian traffic per road segment can be post-dicted based on an analysis of standard GIS-based representations of street networks to implement two new measures of connectivity: reach, which measures the length of street network accessible within a given walking radius, and directional distance, which measures the number of direction turns needed to get to all accessible parts of the network. The work has several consequences. First, it complements existing work on the influence of density and design upon pedestrian movement by bringing into sharper focus a variable that clearly partakes of both design and density, namely the connectivity of the street network and its configuration. Second, it helps clarify that while land-use may play an important role in determining the average volume of movement in a given area, spatial layout plays a more important role in determining the distribution of movement within an area. This has consequences for at least some kinds of local urban economy as the comparative analysis will show: in Istanbul retail still relies on the “passing trade” more than it does in Atlanta because of the finer grain not only of the street network but also the size of businesses.

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more about Space Syntax:

TRADITIONAL SHOPPING: A Syntactic Comparison of Commercial Spaces in Iran and Turkey

Can Betweenness Centrality Explain Traffic Flow?

Correlating Densities of Centrality and Activities in Cities: the Cases of Bologna (IT) and Barcelona (ES)

Correlating street centrality with commerce and service location in cities

Street Centrality and Densities of Retails and Services in Bologna, Italy

Evaluated Model of Pedestrian Movement Based on Space Syntax, Performance Measures and Artificial Neural Nets

THE STREETS OF INNOVATION: an exploratory analysis of knowledge transfer in the public realm

An integration of space syntax into GIS for modelling urban spaces

TRADITIONAL SHOPPING: A Syntactic Comparison of Commercial Spaces in Iran and Turkey

by Erincik EDGÜ, Alper ÜNLÜ, Mehmet Emin ŞALGAMCIOĞLU, and Ashkan MANSOURI

Commerce is an ancient economical system that enables establishment of legal and ethical foundations, strengthening of social ties, improving cultural relationships, trading values and technology as well as goods. Trading routes necessitates places for accommodation and rest both for traders and pack animals, horses, camels, oxen and such. For many centuries, caravanserais helped as design solutions for this purpose. However as the stopping places on routes began to act as small trading towns, sarās or hans took over the accommodation service for traders. Although administrative, social, cultural, religious and linguistic distinctions present many functional and semantic variations, having situated on the ancient routes and ports of the Silk Road, cities and states of the west Asia have developed a traditional insight to shopping activity and design that are being preserved in the hearts of these ancient cities.
Although there may be predesigned grid or crisscross exceptions, in most cases, traditional Islamic commercial i.e. shopping spaces are built in time, with expansions in relation to the organic pattern of the city and street layouts. In Turkish social system, covered bazaars are usually built as a part of a larger complex including, hamams, soup kitchens, and such as a source of revenue for mosques, religious or charitable trusts known as vakıfs, where the donated assets cannot be turned over to individuals or institutions. In Iranian system however, covered bazaars are built by state authorities or wealthy individuals solely for the purpose of commerce, although the latter may also include mentioned public amenities. On the other hand, unlike Turkish organisations, having a strong political and/or religious demonstration tradition, Iranian covered bazaars act as a reflection of social indicator. This distinction presents formal variations in layout and attributes semantic uses to spaces as well.
Although sarās or hans were initially used for accommodation purposes in both cultures, they also act a guild for specific branch of trade or manufacturing with their enclosed square/rectangular forms having courtyards or eyvans. However, Iranian bazaar structure relies on linear shopping strips rāstās or arastas combined to compose chārsugs or çarşıs at intersections and meydans serving as the hubs of the network. In Turkish system on the other hand, bedesten, the covered and enclosed core building, where the most expensive and valuable goods are exchanged, determines the formation of the whole bazaar. This building and arastas of the Turkish bazaars are predesigned and built in single sessions without any expansion. Thus, although in both cultures, both organic and pre planned bazaar systems, developed from linear strips are seen, contrary to the articulated and clustered Iranian bazaars, Turkish bazaars formed through connection of arastas acting as gridiron building blocks. 

This research focuses on the comparison of the physical layout of Iranian and Turkish traditional covered bazaars in the context of Tabriz and Istanbul respectively. The usage of gathering spaces, articulation of nodes, connection of main or secondary axes in forms of hans, bedestens, eyvans, courtyards, meydans with streets or arastas and such, are the syntactic experiment areas of the research. The research hypothesis assumes that guild formation affects the articulation and spatial configuration of the spaces that in return changes the usage in terms of social gatherings versus pedestrian flow in the traditional covered bazaars.

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more about Space Syntax:

Can Betweenness Centrality Explain Traffic Flow?

Correlating Densities of Centrality and Activities in Cities: the Cases of Bologna (IT) and Barcelona (ES)

An integration of space syntax into GIS for modelling urban spaces

An integration of space syntax into GIS for modelling urban spaces

SPATIAL GROWTH AND FUNCTION IN A JAVANESE COASTAL CITY

Agent-based Simulation of Human Movement Shaped by the Underlying Street Structure

Space Syntax and Transit Networks

Can Betweenness Centrality Explain Traffic Flow?

by Aisan Kazerani and Stephan Winter

Centrality measures describe structural properties of nodes (and edges) in a network. Betweenness centrality (Freeman 1977) is one of them, characterizing on how many shortest paths a node is. So far, network analysis concentrates on structural, i.e., topological properties of networks, and on static formulations of centrality. Although travel networks can be studied this way, they deviate from other networks in two significant ways: their embeddedness in geographic space is relevant, and their dynamic properties can not be neglected. For example, a physical urban street network constrains travel behavior in a way that people seek to satisfy their demands from physically near, not topologically near resources. Also, a physical street can have significant temporal constraints, such as night time closures, dynamic lane allocation, or current traffic volume, besides of slow rates of change in the network itself. This means, it is not appropriate to compare traffic flow on street networks with traditional betweenness centrality. 

Traffic flow is the process of physical agents moving along an urban travel network. These agents are autonomous, purposeful, flexible, and volatile. They establish a social network: agents near to each other can communicate and interact (other social ties, like kinship or friendship, are not considered here). Since the agents are mobile this social network is highly dynamic. Also agents are volatile. They enter traffic at any time, and leave as soon as they have reached their destination. The places where they emerge or disappear are distributed over space and time, but not in a random manner. Additionally, agents in urban traffic are purposeful. They have individual travel, sensing and communication capabilities, maybe even preferences, and a specific travel demand (to reach a destination by a specified time or specified costs). Especially, during travel they can interact with their fellow agents, be it by coordination (communication) or collaboration (transport), and they can sense and act in their physical environment, and thus, change their travel plans at any time to satisfy their travel demand. This means travel plans—if not the underlying travel demand itself—can be dynamic. This social network of agents in traffic can also be characterized by centrality measures; however, these measures are attributes of the agents, not of the nodes of the physical travel network, and they are constantly changing—hence, infeasible to track in a central database.

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more baout Centrality:

Opportunities for transport mode change: an exploration of a disaggregated approach

Correlating Densities of Centrality and Activities in Cities: the Cases of Bologna (IT) and Barcelona (ES)

Geographically Weighted Regression: A Method for Exploring Spatial Nonstationarity

Correlating street centrality with commerce and service location in cities

Street Centrality and Densities of Retails and Services in Bologna, Italy

Centrality in networks of urban streets

Correlating Densities of Centrality and Activities in Cities: the Cases of Bologna (IT) and Barcelona (ES)

by Porta S, Latora V, Wang F, Rueda S, Cormenzana B, Càrdenas F, Latora L, Strano E, Belli E, Cardillo A, and Scellato S.

This paper examines the relationship between street centrality and densities of commercial and service activities in cities. The aim is to verify whether a correlation exists and whether some categories of economic activities, namely those scarcely specialized activities oriented to the general public and ordinary daily life, are more linked to street centrality than others. The metropolitan area of Barcelona (Spain) is investigated, and results are compared with those found in a previous work on the city of Bologna (Italy). Street centrality is calibrated in a multiple centrality assessment (MCA) model composed of multiple measures such as closeness, betweenness and straightness. Kernel density estimation (KDE) is used to transform data sets of centrality and activities to one scale unit for correlation analysis between them. Results indicate that retail and service activities in both Bologna and Barcelona tend to concentrate in areas with better centralities: in fact the spatial distribution of these activities correlates highly with both simple and compound measures of centrality. This confirms the hypothesis that street centrality plays a crucial role in shaping the formation of urban structure and land uses. Moreover, results suggest that a locational rule seems to link to street centrality those economic activities oriented to the general public.

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more about Centrality:

Geographically Weighted Regression: A Method for Exploring Spatial Nonstationarity

Correlating street centrality with commerce and service location in cities

Street Centrality and Densities of Retails and Services in Bologna, Italy

Street Centrality and Densities of Retails and Services in Bologna, Italy

Spatial Network Analysis of Public Transport Systems: Developing a Strategic Planning Tool to Assess the Congruence of Movement and Urban Structure in Australian Cities

Centrality in networks of urban streets

Correlating street centrality with commerce and service location in cities

by S. Porta and V. Latora

In this paper we are presenting a discussion of centrality in cities and a model, named Multiple Centrality Assessment (MCA) which helps in managing centrality for urban planning and design purposes. In so doing, we summarize a research that we have been undertaking for the last couple of years. In addition, we are hereby offering the results of a new line of research aimed at understanding the level of correlation between the centrality of streets and several other urban dynamics like the location of shops and services as well as that of workplaces. The whole research is worked out in a GIS (Geographic Information System) environment: the correlation analysis is addressed both directly (comparing centrality and dynamics on every arc of the street graph) and through a GWR (Geographic Weighted Regression) approach. Data are taken form real cities like Rome (IT), Barcelona (ES) and Bologna (IT).

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more about Space Syntax and centrality:

Street Centrality and Densities of Retails and Services in Bologna, Italy

Spatial Network Analysis of Public Transport Systems: Developing a Strategic Planning Tool to Assess the Congruence of Movement and Urban Structure in Australian Cities

Centrality in networks of urban streets

Street Centrality and Densities of Retails and Services in Bologna, Italy

by Porta, S, Latora, V, Wang, F, Strano, E, Cardillo, A, Scellato, S, Iacoviello, V, Messora, R.

This paper examines the relationship between street centrality and densities of commercial and service activities in the city of Bologna, northern Italy. Street centrality is calibrated in a multiple centrality assessment (MCA) model composed of multiple measures such as closeness, betweenness and straightness. Kernel density estimation (KDE) is used to transform data sets of centrality and activities to one scale unit for correlation analysis between them. Results indicate that retail and service activities in Bologna tend to concentrate in areas with better centralities. The distribution of these activities correlates highly with the global betweenness of street network, and also to a slightly lesser extent, the global closeness. This confirms the hypothesis that street centrality plays a crucial role in shaping the formation of urban structure and land uses.

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more about Space Syntax:

Centrality in networks of urban streets

An overview of urban morphology and micro-scale analysis

A presentation by Tim Stonor on "Spatial Layout Efficiency"

Social exclusion and transportation in Peachtree City Georgia

OPTIMAL LOCATION OF ROUTE AND STOPS OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

Space Syntax and Transit Networks

Agent-based Simulation of Human Movement Shaped by the Underlying Street Structure

SPATIAL GROWTH AND FUNCTION IN A JAVANESE COASTAL CITY

Spatial Network Analysis of Public Transport Systems: Developing a Strategic Planning Tool to Assess the Congruence of Movement and Urban Structure in Australian Cities

by Jan Scheurer ,  Carey Curtis , Sergio Porta

This paper introduces a GIS-based tool designed to assess centrality and connectivity in urban public transport networks. Despite some recent progress and supportive rhetoric by policy makers, the public transport systems of large Australian cities remain characterised by market shares significantly below those in most developed cities outside the US. Public transport users and experts have long lamented that sizeable proportions of Australian metropolitan areas have no access to high-quality public transport services and where they do these services only cover a limited range of possible destinations. Public transport thus largely fails to live up to a ‘go anywhere, anytime’ principle that would make it more competitive with car travel.
The spatial network analysis of public transport systems endeavours to identify and visualise strengths and weaknesses of geographical coverage, network connectivity, competitive speed and service levels in a coherent mapping exercise. It is closely linked to the movement and activity centre networks promoted as redevelopment corridors and nodes in recent metropolitan strategies such as Melbourne 2030 and Perth’s Network City, and can thus serve as a communicative tool for transport and land use planners, urban designers and community advocates. The model was first developed in 2006 for Melbourne’s north-eastern suburbs in a project initiated by seven local councils and convened by the Metropolitan Transport Forum. In 2007, as part of an ARC Linkage grant on Transit-Led Development in a New Rail Corridor, it is being applied to the entire Perth metropolitan area to conduct a before-and-after assessment of the impacts of the Perth to Mandurah railway opening later in the year.

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Closeness Centrality in the public transport system of Perth, Australia (derived from the paper), source: Scheurer, J. and  Curtis, C. and Porta S. (2006), Spatial Network Analysis of Public Transport Systems: Developing a Strategic Planning Tool to Assess the Congruence of Movement and Urban Structure in Australian Citie, Australasian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport (GAMUT)

more about urban form:

Centrality in networks of urban streets

Re-evaluating the impact of urban form on travel patterns in Europe and North-America

MODELLING TRANSPORT: A Synthesis of Transport Modelling Methodologies

PHYSICAL PLANNING THOUGHT: RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT

An overview of urban morphology and micro-scale analysis

THEORIES AND MODELS OF THE PERI-URBAN INTERFACE: A CHANGING CONCEPTUAL LANDSCAPE

Centrality in networks of urban streets

by Paolo Crucitti, Vito Latora, and Sergio Porta

Centrality has revealed crucial for understanding the structural properties of complex relational networks. Centrality is also relevant for various spatial factors affecting human life and behaviors in cities. Here, we present a comprehensive study of centrality distributions over geographic networks of urban streets. Five different measures of centrality, namely degree, closeness, betweenness, straightness and information, are compared over 18 1-square-mile samples of different world cities. Samples are represented by primal geographic graphs, i.e., valued graphs defined by metric rather than topologic distance where intersections are turned into nodes and streets into edges. The spatial behavior of centrality indices over the networks is investigated graphically by means of color-coded maps. The results indicate that a spatial analysis, that we term multiple centrality ssessment, grounded not on a single but on a set of different centrality indices, allows an extended comprehension of the city structure, nicely capturing the skeleton of most central routes and subareas that so much impacts on spatial cognition and on collective dynamical behaviors. Statistically, closeness, straightness and betweenness turn out to follow similar functional distribution in all cases, despite the extreme diversity of the considered cities. Conversely, information is found to be exponential in planned cities and to follow a power-law scaling in self-organized cities. Hierarchical clustering analysis, based either on the Gini coefficients of the centrality distributions, or on the correlation between different centrality measures, is able to characterize classes of cities.

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Integration map of central Cairo, (derived form the paper),  source: Crucitti, P. and Latora, V. and Porta, S. (2006), Centrality in Network of Urban Streets, Chaos, 16, 015113.

similar posts:

Integrated Systems Planning for Energy Efficiency and Conservation

A Spatial Analysis of Future Macro-Urban Form, Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Transport Energy Outcomes for Melbourne

Urban Sprawl beyond Growth: from a Growth to a Decline Perspective on the Cost of Sprawl

Cities, Zoning, and Industry

An overview of urban morphology and micro-scale analysis

 by David Bernard O’Sullivan

This chapter reviews a selection of work in the study of urban form at a micro-scale. My purpose is twofold. First, I am concerned to show that many approaches to urban morphology have tended to separate structure and process, often concentrating on one to the exclusion of the other. The modelling approach which I propose in chapter 5 attempts to address this weakness. Second, as discussed in chapter 2 (see especially figure 3 on page 35), I want to use urban morphology — predominantly at the scales identified by Moudon (1997) in the passage quoted in section 1.1 — as a source of ideas about spatial elements which can be used in the construction of proximal spatial models of cities.
As a result of these twin foci I do not spend time on any of the more broad brush stroke histories of the city (Mumford 1961, for example), nor on those approaches which fit ‘the city’ into much wider perspectives (Castells 1989, Harvey 1978, for example). Also, I am not concerned with models which may be broadly labelled operational land use–transportation models (Torrens 2000, reviews many of these). As a result, most of the work considered here originates in the geography, planning and architecture literature, at the scale of Montello’s (1993) vistal or environmental spaces, rather than at the scale of regional models, although this focus does not mean that the modelling approach developed in the next chapter could not be applied at those larger scales.

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Urban Fractals, Souce:

Batty, M. and Longley, P. (1994) Fractal Cities: A Geometry of Form and Function, Academic Press, San Diego, CA and London

and also 

Chapin, F. S. Jr. and Weiss, S. F. (1962), Factors Influencing Land Development, Chapel Hill, Institute for Research in Social Sience, University of North Carolina

more about urban form and morphology:

Urban Sprawl and Atlanta’s Air Quality Problems

On Favored Quarters, Off-Center Skyscraper Districts, and Poverty

Visualizing, Analyzing Vienna's Traffic Patterns

Vancouver: the almost perfect grid

SMART GROWTH, SMART CHOICES SERIES: MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT

THE ROLE OF PHYSICAL IDENTITY OF CITY IN URBAN SUSTAINABILITY (THE CASE STUDY: YAZD,IRAN)

Analyzing Land Use Change In Urban Environments

A presentation by Tim Stonor on "Spatial Layout Efficiency"

Here you can watch an informative video of a presentation on spatial layout efficiency by Tim Stonor of Space Synatx in London, England. The organization in charge is the National Capital Planning Commission. If you are going to learn more about Space Syntax, this video is for you. It explains the fundamentals of Sapce Syntax and its applications in modelling the urban space.

more about Space Syntax:

Poverty and Connectivity: Crossing the Tracks

Exploring Multi-layered Hyper Dense Urban Environments through Spatial Analysis

MEASURING THE CONFIGURATION OF STREET NETWORKS: the Spatial profiles of 118 urban areas in the 12 most populated metropolitan regions in the US

Evaluated Model of Pedestrian Movement Based on Space Syntax, Performance Measures and Artificial Neural Nets

John Peponis explains: What do we Mean by Syntax in the Spatial Analysis of Architecture?

SPATIAL GROWTH AND FUNCTION IN A JAVANESE COASTAL CITY

John Peponis explains: What do we Mean by Syntax in the Spatial Analysis of Architecture?

via SSS8 Videos

In this video John Peponis describes the meaning of Syntax in the Spatial Analysis of Architecture. You can watch it here.

Once design aims are stated, the analytical techniques and measures embedded in UCL Depthmap, Taubman College Syntax-2D, KTH Place Syntax and Spatial Positioning Tool, Figueiredo’s Mindwalk, Shpuza’s Qelize, Georgia Tech Spatialist and Spatialist_Lines, or other similar computational tools for spatial analysis can be used to evaluate alternative design proposals, or to assist their further development and refinement. The more sensitive the tool is to design geometry the more precise and thus the more fully developed the input must be prior to analysis and measurement.
In their present state, these tools cannot be used to generate a design proposal, except through an analysis of the spatial structure of the relevant context; for example, the connectivity of the environment of an urban site; or, the shape of a building shell as it frames the design of internal circulation. Nor can they be used to facilitate the formulation of design aims other than in general terms. It is not always clear whether they can be usefully applied to preliminary design diagrams.

I would maintain that this is not an entirely unpleasing state of affairs. The original aims of space syntax as a program of architectural research never included the replacement of design intuition or imagination by some “expert system”.

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more about Space Syntax:

Social exclusion and transportation in Peachtree City Georgia

MEASURING WALKING. TOWARDS INTERNATIONALLY STANDARDISED MONITORING METHODS OF WALKING AND PUBLIC SPACE

Flat City; a space syntax derived urban movement network model

QUANTIFYING THE QUALITATIVE: an evaluation of urban ambience

Compact Sprawl Experiments four strategic densification scenarios for two modernist suburbs in Stockholm

by Alexander Ståhle and Lars Marcus

One of the biggest challenges for future urban design is to cope with suburbia and sprawl. This paper investigates how sprawl can be compacted in terms of spatial morphology. New 'user-related' location density measures, like spaciousness and compactness, are introduced that integrate floor area, axiality of pedestrian network, and public open space. These and 'administrative' area density measures are applied to two modernist suburbs in Stockholm, Björkhagen and Rågsved (1946-1957), and four strategic densification scenarios: 'New urbanism', 'New regularism', 'New conservatism', and 'New modernism'. The results show that the suburbs can increase by 100% in Floor Area Ratio in the first two and but only 20-40% in the other two. Floor area accessibility, however, is influenced by network accessibility more than plot density. Public open space is needed to uphold spaciousness and compactness. To conclude, tree-like morphologies seem rational in peripheral low density suburbs with a lot of public open space, but when densified the grid becomes more necesary to uphold compactness. Even though densification by 'New urbanism' or 'New regularism' in modernist suburbia is improbable due to political reality, they point out possible ways to compact more efficiently modernist sprawl as well as the need for further research.

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more about Space Syntax applications:

Social exclusion and transportation in Peachtree City Georgia

MEASURING WALKING. TOWARDS INTERNATIONALLY STANDARDISED MONITORING METHODS OF WALKING AND PUBLIC SPACE

OPTIMAL LOCATION OF ROUTE AND STOPS OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

QUANTIFYING THE QUALITATIVE: an evaluation of urban ambience

Social exclusion and transportation in Peachtree City Georgia

by Ruth Conroy Dalton

This paper will discuss how, in a small American city, Peachtree City (43km south of Atlanta), the flexibility and relative affordability of electric golf carts, as a viable alternative to the automobile, means that the level at which families and individuals are disadvantaged through their lack of access to public/private transport is effectively lowered. Economic access to golf carts, in of itself, would not be sufficient if it were not for the extensive, highly penetrative and ‘ringy’ spatial structure of the cart path system, a mostly-segregated, 150 kilometre network. A spatial analysis of this dual transportation system is presented and its implications discussed. The conclusion of this paper is that the duality of the effective spatial structure of the cart path network and the relative low cost and inherent flexibility of the golf carts combine to reduce transportation-linked social exclusion in Peachtree City. This argument is substantiated, in the final section of the paper, through the evidence of a questionnaire distributed to a random sampling of 1,038 property owners and renters in the city.

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more Space Syntax papers:

Evaluated Model of Pedestrian Movement Based on Space Syntax, Performance Measures and Artificial Neural Nets

Compact Sprawl Experiments Four Strategic Densification Scenarios for Two Modernist Suburbs in Stockholm

THE STREETS OF INNOVATION: an exploratory analysis of knowledge transfer in the public realm

MEASURING WALKING. TOWARDS INTERNATIONALLY STANDARDISED MONITORING METHODS OF WALKING AND PUBLIC SPACE

by Daniel Sauter and Martin Wedderburn,

For many years walking had not been seriously considered as means of transport and, consequently, not been measured. In recent years we have seen, however, a slow change towards the better. New methods and tools to assess walking have been developed all over the world. Data is gathered, surveys, counts and audits are performed. In parallel, new technologies and equipment is being placed on the market. This is a big step forward. However, many exchanges and debates show one common problem: the incompatibility of data and methods. The European COST project 358 “Pedestrian Quality Needs PQN” (www.walkeurope.org) aims to publish (among other things) a consistent qualitative and quantitative methodology for recording pedestrian activity; easy to use auditing tools and guidance on national and local procedures for monitoring walking. Currently 20 European countries are participating in this project. In a first step we’re creating an overview of existing methods used to assess walking in the different European countries (a questionnaire has been circulated among participants). On this basis we started to discuss content and procedures to establish some common ground for the type of data to be collected and the adequate methods and tools to be used in order to make them internationally (more) comparable.
At the 7th WALK21 conference 2006 in Melbourne the International Charter for Walking has been adopted (for the conference series and the Charter please see www.walk21.com). It outlines what should be measured but it doesn’t say how this should be done. It is, therefore, logical and timely to make the next step and develop a set of “international guidelines for the collection, analysis and dissemination of qualitative and quantitative techniques for measuring walking”, as stated in the Melbourne conference conclusion. At the 2007 WALK21 conference in Toronto a day-long pre-conference workshop has been held to start the discussion and exchange of know-how globally. More than 30 experts attended the whole day session which resulted in a fruitful brainstorming on the many aspects of measuring walking. The debate will be continued at the 2008 WALK21 conference in Barcelona in October with a special focus on counting pedestrians. To this, city officials, experts and equipment providers will be invited.

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more Space Syntax papers:

Flat City; a space syntax derived urban movement network model

Making an Urban Oasis The Use of Space Syntax in Assessing Dhanmondi Lake Revitalization Project in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Modeling street connectivity, pedestrian movement and land-use according to standard GIS street network representations: A Comparative Study

OPTIMAL LOCATION OF ROUTE AND STOPS OF PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION

by Tatsuya Kishimoto, Shutaro Kawasaki, Nobuhiko Nagata, and Ryosuke Tanaka

This study is concerned with the optimal location of route and stops of LRT and the effects of LRT in central urban areas. In order to implement LRT, it is important to locate LRT lines and stations in appropriate places and to estimate the effects of LRT. In this study we accordingly address the optimal layout of LRT route network and estimation of the effects. First, for the estimation of the effects of introducing LRT, a new evaluation model based on space syntax theory is proposed. Two indexes which explain traffic flows and the character of location are introduced. One is the average travel cost from nodes to nodes, which corresponds to the depth index of space syntax. The other is the amount of through traffic on each link, which is the frequency that a certain link (a road, train or LRT link) is chosen as a part of route for traveling from nodes to nodes in the city. The former is named C_depth value, and the latter is named Flow value.
Second, the optimal location of LRT route and stops, which minimizes the mean cost in whole area, is considered. The case of the new LRT system in Maebashi city in Japan is examined. Optimal location and its effects are investigated by case study in Maebashi City. Two types of optimal location are studied and compared. In both cases, Flows on LRT and trains are still lower than the Flow by cars on main streets. Thus, one conclusion may be that in order to promote LRT and train usages, policies, such as road-pricing and discount of LRT fare, are needed.

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more Space Syntax papers:

A STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PEDESTRIAN NETWORK AND PEDESTRIAN VOLUME ACCORDING TO LAND USE PATTERN

MEASURING THE CONFIGURATION OF STREET NETWORKS: the Spatial profiles of 118 urban areas in the 12 most populated metropolitan regions in the US

Evaluated Model of Pedestrian Movement Based on Space Syntax, Performance Measures and Artificial Neural Nets

A STUDY ON THE CORRELATION BETWEEN PEDESTRIAN NETWORK AND PEDESTRIAN VOLUME ACCORDING TO LAND USE PATTERN

by Haeng Woo Shin, Young Ook Kim, and Ah Hyun Kim

This study aims to clarify the characteristics of pedestrian space use patterns according to land use by analyzing the correlation between pedestrian network and pedestrian volume in downtown Seoul. The study method is as follows: first, the present condition of the land was investigated; second, a pedestrian network was created using space syntax and pedestrian volume examined; and third, the correlation between pedestrian volume and pedestrian network according to land use was analyzed.
The results indicated that the correlation between pedestrian volume and spatial network in residential areas was very low (R^2=0.07), while there was a close relationship between pedestrian volume and spatial network in business areas (R^2=0.872). With respect to the commercial areas, the pedestrian volume characteristic of the entire commercial area surrounding Namdaemun Market and that of Namdaemun Market itself were different: where the correlation between pedestrian volume and spatial network was high (R^2=0.694) in the commercial area excluding Namdaemun Market, but became low when the market was included.
As the results show, there was a very close correlation when it was broken down and analyzed according to the type of land use, which signifies that correlation between pedestrian network and pedestrian volume differ according to land use. The study results also suggest that when planning for pedestrian space, business and commerce areas need a plan that puts more emphasis on spatial network over comfort of pedestrian environment, and in case of residential areas, comfort of pedestrian walkways are more important than spatial network.

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more about urban Korea:

New City Landscape - Seoul

The Colourful Buses of Seoul

seoul: buses that tell you where they go?

MEASURING THE CONFIGURATION OF STREET NETWORKS: the Spatial profiles of 118 urban areas in the 12 most populated metropolitan regions in the US

by John Peponis, Douglas Allen, Dawn Haynie, Martin Scoppa, and Zongyu Zhang

In this paper we report an analysis of 118 urban areas sampled from the 12 largest metropolitan regions in the US. We deal with familiar measures of block size, street density, intersection density and distance between intersections. We also introduce two new variables, Reach and Directional Distance. Reach is the aggregate street length that can be accessed from the midpoint of each road segment subject to a limitation of distance. Directional distance is the average number of direction changes needed in order to access all the spaces within reach. We provide parametric definitions of these variables and implement their computation using new software which runs on standard GIS representations of street center lines.

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more about Space Syntax:

Evaluated Model of Pedestrian Movement Based on Space Syntax, Performance Measures and Artificial Neural Nets

Compact Sprawl Experiments Four Strategic Densification Scenarios for Two Modernist Suburbs in Stockholm

THE STREETS OF INNOVATION: an exploratory analysis of knowledge transfer in the public realm

Evaluated Model of Pedestrian Movement Based on Space Syntax, Performance Measures and Artificial Neural Nets

by F L Zampieri, D Rigatti, and C Ugalde

To understand the generating causes of pedestrian movement is very important for urban planning tasks, because it is possible to infer if attitudes taken in the conception and maintenance of the spaces are in fact contributing to the social dynamics. However, to determine pedestrian flows is a difficult task due to the complexity of people movement. A way to outline this problem is through the creation of models which associate the attributes and their relationships directly to the studied phenomena. The model used here uses two kinds of variables: the configurational ones obtained through the axial map of the city where the study area is located, and the performance measures obtained through the physical evaluation of the attributes of the sidewalks of the studied area. The output of the model is the mean pedestrian rate of the area. The Syntax Space theory is useful for understanding the phenomenon because of the way it deals with space interaction. However, though it is able in predicting part of the movement, we do not find significant correlations when the measure of intelligibility is low. Pedestrian flows are a complex phenomenon and, per se, cannot be understood through linear relationships among any couple of variables, being them spatial or not. In this paper it is argued that the space syntax theory and measures explain the pedestrian movement as a phenomenon emerged from society, but the linear approach is not capable of explaining their relationships. The presented model uses Artificial Neural Nets (ANN), a parallel processing tool with the capacity of working through examples, learning, generalizing and abstracting the variables information and their connections. The implementation of these kinds of models evolves from 'black boxes' to models that can be 'disassembled' and evaluated inside of its logical structure. The ANN uses two groups of data: one for training nets and the other one for validating the network. Thus, the performance of the ANN can be tested with unknown data. The results produced so far have shown that ANN can learn the main features of the data sets with an accuracy of more than 90% of correlation coefficient and with an average error smaller than 0.02. It must be said that the research work targets to spread the samples from different configurational realities and expand the data bank on measured movement in order to improve the accuracy of the model, such as being done lately.

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more papers about Space Syntax:

Flat City; a space syntax derived urban movement network model

Making an Urban Oasis The Use of Space Syntax in Assessing Dhanmondi Lake Revitalization Project in Dhaka, Bangladesh

Modeling street connectivity, pedestrian movement and land-use according to standard GIS street network representations: A Comparative Study

Compact Sprawl Experiments Four Strategic Densification Scenarios for Two Modernist Suburbs in Stockholm

by Alexander Ståhle and Lars Marcus

One of the biggest challenges for future urban design is to cope with suburbia and sprawl. This paper investigates how sprawl can be compacted in terms of spatial morphology. New 'user-related' location density measures, like spaciousness and compactness, are introduced that integrate floor area, axiality of pedestrian network, and public open space. These and 'administrative' area density measures are applied to two modernist suburbs in Stockholm, Björkhagen and Rågsved (1946-1957), and four strategic densification scenarios: 'New urbanism', 'New regularism', 'New conservatism', and 'New modernism'. The results show that the suburbs can increase by 100% in Floor Area Ratio in the first two and but only 20-40% in the other two. Floor area accessibility, however, is influenced by network accessibility more than plot density. Public open space is needed to uphold spaciousness and compactness. To conclude, tree-like morphologies seem rational in peripheral low density suburbs with a lot of public open space, but when densified the grid becomes more necesary to uphold compactness. Even though densification by 'New urbanism' or 'New regularism' in modernist suburbia is improbable due to political reality, they point out possible ways to compact more efficiently modernist sprawl as well as the need for further research.

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more posts about Space Syntax:

SPATIAL GROWTH AND FUNCTION IN A JAVANESE COASTAL CITY

Agent-based Simulation of Human Movement Shaped by the Underlying Street Structure

Space Syntax and Transit Networks

THE STREETS OF INNOVATION: an exploratory analysis of knowledge transfer in the public realm

by Pete Ferguson

This paper investigates the possible mechanisms by which spatial structure can affect patterns of networking and knowledge transfer in the public realm. Drawing on the work of ‘The space of innovation’ (Penn, Desyllas, Vaughan 1999) into the distribution of interaction inside individual office buildings, the research translates a selection of their methodologies to the public realm of central Birmingham and the City of London. Gate counts and extended observations are undertaken to identify the spatial distribution of gross pedestrian flow, interaction whilst walking and encounter. These results are then related to various spatial measures for analysis.
The research reveals that the level of gross pedestrian flow or static activity in space is not always an indicator of the vibrancy of interaction in the public realm. Analysis reveals that interaction while moving appears to relate strongly with spatial measures even when gross pedestrian flow does not and that levels of encounter in space increase as a proportion of pedestrian flow as spatial accessibility increases. As a result, small stretches of pavement aside busy road environments are often shown to be the most conducive to networking activities and that high levels of activity in less accessible public spaces are not accompanied by an increased level of encounter.
The paper concludes that the level and consistency of interface between different scales of movement affects the efficiency of networking and knowledge transfer both externally and internally to organisations. The concept of radial constancy is used as a means of describing the equality and consistency of access to space for different journey distances and consequently, a spaces ability to create opportunities for encounter and interface between scales of movement.
Considerable further research is required to validate research findings in alternate locations and to directly test radial constancy values against the spatial distribution of recorded observations.

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other posts about Space Syntax:

An integration of space syntax into GIS for modelling urban spaces

SPATIAL GROWTH AND FUNCTION IN A JAVANESE COASTAL CITY

Agent-based Simulation of Human Movement Shaped by the Underlying Street Structure

Space Syntax and Transit Networks