Space syntax visibility graph analysis is not robust to changes in spatial and temporal resolution

Jonathan D Ericson, Elizabeth R Chrastil and William H Warren
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Jonathan D Ericson: 8243Bentley University, USA
Elizabeth R Chrastil: University of California, Irvine, USA

Environment and Planning B, 2021, vol. 48, issue 6, 1478-1494

Abstract: Space syntax is an influential framework for quantifying the relationship between environmental geometry and human behavior. Although many studies report high syntactic–behavioral correlations, previous pedestrian data were collected at low spatiotemporal resolutions, and data transformations and sampling strategies vary widely; here, we systematically test the robustness of space syntax’s predictive strength by examining how these factors impact correlations. We used virtual reality and motion tracking to correlate 30 syntactic measures with high resolution walking trajectories downsampled at 10 grid resolutions and subjected to various log transformations. Overall, correlations declined with increasing grid resolution and were sensitive to data transformations. Moreover, simulations revealed spuriously high correlations (e.g. R 2  = 1) with sparsely sampled data (

Keywords: Space syntax; virtual reality; spatial behavior; simulation; architecture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envirb:v:48:y:2021:i:6:p:1478-1494

DOI: 10.1177/2399808319897624

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