Limits of space syntax for urban design: Axiality, scale and sinuosity

Elek Pafka, Kim Dovey and Gideon DPA Aschwanden

Environment and Planning B, 2020, vol. 47, issue 3, 508-522

Abstract: Space syntax analysis of the city as a movement economy has made major contributions to our understanding of the spatial structure of cities, particularly the importance of a mapping of network integration in relation to density, functional mix and streetlife vitality. It has focused attention of urban researchers onto the importance of the relations between the sociality and spatiality of the city. The primary methods of syntactic analysis involve a reduction of urban morphology to a set of spatial axes; here, we explore some limits to such analysis for urban design. Topological analysis of axial models has long recognized problems in accounting for distance, scale and sinuous streetscapes. Existing adaptations to axial methods that address such problems are modelled and shown to produce a broad range of results for the same urban morphology. In each case, we also compare different capacities for to-movement and through-movement – the distinction between ‘closeness centrality’ and ‘betweenness centrality’ that shows that network integration is multiple. We argue that axial analyses privilege visibility over accessibility and can produce distorted mapping at walkable scales; only one of the methods tested measures permeability and walkable access. Space syntax analysis is a powerful tool that will be more useful the better such limits are understood.

Keywords: Space syntax; urban morphology; urban design; multi-scale; street network (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2399808318786512 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:47:y:2020:i:3:p:508-522

DOI: 10.1177/2399808318786512

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning B
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().