Urban Street Networks, a Comparative Analysis of Ten European Cities

Emanuele Strano, Matheus Viana, Luciano da Fontoura Costa, Alessio Cardillo, Sergio Porta and Vito Latora
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Emanuele Strano: Laboratory of Geographic Information Systems, School of Architecture, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ecole Polytechique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), and Urban Design Studies Unit, Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
Alessio Cardillo: Departamento de Física de Materia Condensada, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50009 Zaragoza, Spain, and Institute for Biocomputation and Physics of Complex Systems, Universidad de Zaragoza, E-50018 Zaragoza, Spain, and Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università de Catania and INFN, Via S Sofia, 64, 95123 Catania, Italy
Sergio Porta: Urban Design Studies Unit, Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland
Vito Latora: School of Mathematical Sciences, Queen Mary, University of London, London, England, and Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia, Università di Catania and INFN, Via S Sofia, 64, 95123 Catania, Italy, and Laboratorio sui Sistemi Complessi, Scuola Superiore de Catania, Via San Nullo 5/I, 95123 Catania, Italy

Environment and Planning B, 2013, vol. 40, issue 6, 1071-1086

Abstract: We compare the structural properties of the street networks of ten different European cities using their primal representation. We investigate the properties of the geometry of the networks and a set of centrality measures highlighting differences and similarities between cases. In particular, we found that cities share structural similarities due to their quasiplanarity but that there are also several distinctive geometrical properties. A principal component analysis is performed on the distributions of centralities and their respective moments, which is used to find distinctive characteristics by which we can classify cities into families. We believe that, beyond the improvement of the empirical knowledge on streets' network properties, our findings can open new perspectives into the scientific relationship between city planning and complex networks, stimulating the debate on the effectiveness of the set of knowledge that statistical physics can contribute for city planning and urban-morphology studies.

Keywords: complex street networks; urban form; city classification; centrality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:40:y:2013:i:6:p:1071-1086

DOI: 10.1068/b38216

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