Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science

In this paper I attempt to develop a comprehensive, robust model of urban morphology from a phenomenological and behavioral perspective. I do so by comparing the findings of two extensive empirical studies of users' experiences of urban public space: one primarily examining people's perceptions in relation to the practical task of wayfinding, and the other my own research into people's playful behavior in Melbourne, London, Berlin, and New York. Lynch himself called attention to “our delight … in ambiguity, mystery … surprise and disorder”, but little is known about what role specific spatial conditions might have in framing such experiences, or indeed about the diversity of impractical activities people actually pursue in urban spaces. With this paper I seek to fill these gaps. Three elements common to both studies (paths, nodes, and edges) describe the fundamental topological structure of space in relation to movement and visibility. I focus on the four spatial elements which differ between the two models (landmarks, districts, thresholds, and props). Field observations illustrate ways in which the latter two spatial elements frame particular noninstrumental, ‘playful’ experiences which are characteristic of the urban condition: spontaneous encounters with strangers; unfamiliar and risky bodily experiences; distraction, and interpreting new meanings in the urban fabric.

In this paper we report a study that uses space-syntax theories and techniques to develop a model explaining how spatial layouts, through their effects on movement and visible copresence, may affect face-to-face interaction in offices. Though several previous space-syntax studies have shown that spatial layouts have significant effects on movement and face-to-face interaction in offices, none has investigated the relations among movement, visible copresence, and face-to-face interaction in offices with significantly different layouts. On the basis of statistical analyses of the spatial and behavioral data collected at four moderately large offices, this study shows that spatial layouts have consistent effects on movement, but inconsistent effects on visible copresence and face-to-face interaction; that visible copresence, not movement, is an important predictor of face-to-face interaction; that movement has negligible effects on the relationship between visible copresence and face-to-face interaction; and that functional programs have little or no effect on the culture of face-to-face interaction in these offices. Limitations of the research design for workplace study and implications of the research findings for workplace design and management are discussed.

In this paper we revisit the concept of entropy as it manifests itself in spatial terms. We focus specifically on the question of how entropy measures applied to different urban contexts can be adjusted to allow for meaningful comparisons between cities with differing geographic dimensions. It is well known that entropy is affected by the number of geographic units over which it is computed. As a result, the size and number of census tracts in an urban area constitute an intervening factor in making direct comparisons. Some authors advocate addressing this problem by normalizing entropy to its maximum value to derive a ‘relative entropy’ measure. We prove that this conventional normalization procedure does not suffice, and we show further that Theil's decomposition method does provide the proper solution. We then demonstrate how to apply this technique through the use of census data for US cities in 2000, with the empirical results clearly underlying the importance of making these adjustments.

Over the course of many years, professional planners have used a plethora of methods and tools to support their planning activities. Nevertheless, it can be argued that planning practioners have never fully embraced the much wider diversity of available methods, techniques, and models developed in the research laboratories. On the basis of this observation, this study poses several questions about why there is an apparent mismatch in planning practice between supply, demand, and applications of planning-support instruments (including ‘planning support systems’) and their outcomes (dedicated information and knowledge), and how this mismatch can be solved. In order to arrive at an answer, a conceptual framework is constructed, which constitutes crucial factors that influence the potential planning support roles of information, knowledge, and instruments. With the help of this framework, a developmental overview is interpreted of the theoretical planning traditions that exerted an influence on planning practice during the last half millennium in the Western world. From this interpretation, some lessons can be learned about the improvement of the planning-support role in factual planning practice, and moreover, it opens up some new questions and discussion points.

Increasing recognition of the extent and speed of habitat fragmentation and loss, particularly in the urban fringe, is driving the need to analyze qualitatively and quantitatively regional landscape structure for decision support in land-use planning and environmental-policy implementation. The spatial analysis required in this area is not well served by existing spatial-data models. In this paper a new theoretical spatial-data metamodel is introduced as a tool for addressing such needs and a new formalism is presented for spatial-data models on the basis of ideas from mathematical graph theory and category theory. Additionally, this formalism is used to describe a specific spatial-data model useful within the problem domain of decision support for socioecological systems. This model explicitly includes the notion of graph duality.

In this paper we present and apply a modeling methodology to reduce stormwater runoff through land-use planning, in order to mitigate the impact of nonpoint source pollution. A stormwater-runoff simulation model is used to generate peak discharge pseudodata, that are inputted into a regression analysis, in which the functional relationship between peak discharge and land-use variables is approximated as a quadratic function (R² = 0.98). This function is then used in an optimization model to allocate future land uses (urban, conservation, and agriculture) at the subwatershed level, in a way that minimizes the resulting peak discharge at the watershed outlet. A discharge reduction of 44% is achieved, compared with the discharge resulting from the present (actual) land-use pattern. The most downstream and upstream areas are to be protected with more conservation, and most urban activities are allocated to the minimal impact subwatershed. Sensitivity analyses are performed and suggest maintaining at least 25% of the land in a conservation state, developing no more than 12% for urban purposes, and no more than 70% for agricultural purposes.

The influence of colonial (British) rule on native (Indian) culture and vice versa has resulted in the development of ‘hybrid’ architectural styles, which are seen in the external ‘form’ of the buildings. The development of a hybrid style is an important phase in the evolution of domestic architecture in India. In this paper we explore whether such hybrid nature is also reflected in the spatial organizations of some colonial houses of eastern India. For this, a suitable methodology was evolved to analyze the spatial organizations. The compositional rules in the generation of spatial layout in these houses are analyzed through the use of space syntax analysis, with some modifications, in order to type them spatially. Typically, space syntax analysis deciphers the spatial organization by the formation of ‘inequality genotypes’, which describe only the integration (and segregation) of spaces as per the access relations. To understand more about the Indian social and cultural norms that might have influenced the spatial organizations of the houses, the accessibility, adjacency, and orientation of the spaces also need to be studied. In this paper we explain the methodology used to generate ‘genotype strings’, incorporate the aforementioned information, and help to understand and document the ingrained social and cultural factors in spatial organizations of the houses more explicitly.