Space Syntax Approach for Articulating Space and Social Life

Author(s):  
Abdelbaseer A. Mohamed

This chapter sets out to provide a detailed description of the relationship between space and society. It begins by discussing how people co-live in spaces and how such spaces co-live as communities. Understanding the relationship between space and society requires shedding light on how (1) communities emerge and work and (2) people build their social network. The chapter's main premise is that spatial configuration is the container of activities and the way we construct our cities influences our social life. Therefore, the urban environment should be analyzed mathematically using urban models in order to evaluate and predict future urban policies. The chapter reviews a space-people paradigm, Space Syntax. It defines, elaborates, and interprets its main concepts and tools, showing how urban space is modelled and described in terms of various spatial measures including connectivity, integration, depth, choice, and isovist properties.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Esther Romeyn

This article analyses the way Horem Pádem (Up and Down, 2004) registers the neo-liberalizing effects of the post-socialist transition on urban space and urban sociality in its representation of Prague. The transition involved an ideological and ethical reorientation that challenged definitions of value and worth. Moreover, through the remaking of the urban environment, neo-liberalization is a contextually embedded process that restructures the conditions of the everyday. Post-transition, Prague was claimed by the logic of post-industrial capital accumulation, with investment in retail and tourist facilities transforming the urban core into a new consumption landscape. I argue that the film’s exploration of the relationship between urban space and identity maps the dislocations produced by the insertion of the periphery of Europe into the neo-liberal space of flows, and the serial displacements that are its effects. Rebordering, de-territorialization and displacement are the key metaphors through which the film captures the emotional horizons of the characters caught up in the multi-scalar reconfiguration of economy, society and space. The narrative presents itself as an allegory of Czech nationhood, whose insertion into a rescaled, capitalist Europe the ‘little people’ populating Hrejbek’s film meet with an admixture of opportunism, disaffection, tribalism and defensive localism.


2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110302
Author(s):  
Asha Best ◽  
Margaret M Ramírez

In this piece, we take up haunting as a spatial method to consider what geography can learn from ghosts. Following Avery Gordon’s theorizations of haunting as a sociological method, a consideration of the spectral offers a means of reckoning with the shadows of social life that are not always readily apparent. Drawing upon art installations in Brooklyn, NY, White Shoes (2012–2016), and Oakland, CA, House/Full of BlackWomen (2015–present), we find that in both installations, Black women artists perform hauntings, threading geographies of race, sex, and speculation across past and present. We observe how these installations operate through spectacle, embodiment, and temporal disjuncture, illuminating how Black life and labor have been central to the construction of property and urban space in the United States. In what follows, we explore the following questions: what does haunting reveal about the relationship between property, personhood, and the urban in a time of racial banishment? And the second, how might we think of haunting as a mode of refusing displacement, banishment, and archival erasure as a way of imagining “livable” urban futures in which Black life is neither static nor obsolete?


Author(s):  
Jean-Paul Thibaud ◽  
Pascal Amphoux

The notion of silence must be handled very carefully. In addition, its use reveals the way we deal with the urban environment as well as social life. What does the notion of silence convey about the current state of the urban sonic environment? How can we clarify the various meanings and the stakes involved in silence? Three themes are developed in order to answer these questions: silence as a research topic presents three complementary perspectives (acoustic, sociocultural, technological); silence as a polysemous notion emphasises the ideas of keeping quiet, tranquillity and pause; silence as a design issue relies on basic properties and principles in order to orient the design of the urban sonic environment.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
G Tola ◽  
V Talu ◽  
J Lindert

Abstract Background The opportunity for people functioning in an atypical way to autonomously and fully interact with the city is often compromised or denied, due to the gap between their specific spatial needs and the physical and functional organization of the urban environment. The need to reconsider the living environments taking into account the vast diversity of people gained an increasing importance in the overall debate and specifically in the field of urban planning and design. The research aims at investigating the relationship between the urban environment and people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Methods A scoping review of current available original studies research exploring the relationship between autism and built environment was conducted. PubMed, Scopus, PsychInfo and Web Of Science where searched. Studies included provided spatial requirements for designing autism friendly environment. Results In total, 801 studies were identified and 22 were included. Current researches and applications investigating the role of spatial configuration as a means for improving the autonomy of people with ASD almost exclusively focus on closed and dedicated spaces (residences, schools, care facilities, healing gardens) mostly devoted to children. Starting from this and the data collected, a first set of enabling urban spatial requirements addressing the atypical urban functioning of people with ASD - the reduction of sensory overload and the use of visual supports - in order to promote their possibility to walk autonomously and safely across the everyday city is proposed. Conclusions Despite the wide variability of the spectrum which makes it very difficult to define effective design criteria for all people with ASD, it's possible to identify a set of recurrent spatial needs. Furthermore, designing cities for people with ASD can also contribute to healthier and more inclusive urban environments for other groups of vulnerable inhabitants.


2018 ◽  
Vol 74 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Geel ◽  
Jaco Beyers

The apparatus theory is used to challenge the interpretation of religion and also to determine whether religion is a factor to contend with in modern society. Religion could be the element that keeps the city intact or could be the one element that is busy ruining our understanding of reality and the way this interacts with society in the urban environment. Paradigms determine our relationships. In this case, the apparatus theory would be a more precise way of describing not only our relationship towards the city but also the way in which we try to perceive our relationship with religion and the urban conditions we live in. This article gives theoretical background to the interpretation and understanding of the relationship between various entities within the city. The apparatus of the city creates space for religion to function as a binding form. Religion could bind different cultures, diverse backgrounds and create space for growth.


2019 ◽  
Vol 74 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-58
Author(s):  
Zoé Codeluppi

Abstract. The article aims to provide a better understanding of the urban practices of young people living with a diagnosis of psychosis while recovering. I show the way practices are adjusted according to the temporal dynamics of psychosis. I argue that the continuous variability of symptoms over the recovery period implies alternately practices of withdrawal and reconquest of the urban space. I first outline participants' reconquest of urban spaces, which starts in well-known places and then extends to less familiar ones. In doing so, I point out the diversity of urban spaces inhabited by participants during the recovery process which includes institutional, private, as well as public places. I then outline the various material, relational and sensory resources available in these spaces. I show how participants use them according to the temporal dynamics. I finally highlight the way participants are gradually getting involved in the relationship with a large array of resources as the intensity of symptoms is reducing. My analysis is based on a three months ethnography in a therapeutic institution in Lausanne.


2017 ◽  
pp. 94-108
Author(s):  
Erick Alessandro Schunig F ◽  
Paulo Cesar Scarin

As transformações do espaço urbano vêm introduzindo novos padrões que revelam elementos da dinâmica capitalista. Nesse aspecto, o apartamento residencial é apresentado como um produto dotado de novos conceitos em sintonia com as mudanças do capitalismo. Este estudo tem como objetivo desenvolver uma análise sobre as propagandas imobiliárias na cidade de Vitória, entre as décadas de 1950 a 1970, no qual identificamos as estratégias do setor da construção imobiliária em relação a cozinha como item diferencial do imóvel e inserido no sistema de produção da sociedade de consumo.ABSTRACTThis study aims to develop an analysis of the kitchen of the residential apartments in the city of Vitoria, between the 1950s and 1970s, as a space connected to the transformations promoted by capitalism. It was carried out a qualitative survey of advertisements published in a newspaper, as well as the use of authors who approach the relationship between the production of the urban space and the food. From this analysis, it was possible to verify that the transformation in the kitchen is indicative of the way of life established by the Brazilian urbanization during this period.Keywords: Kitchen; Urban space; Advertising.


2014 ◽  
Vol 1044-1045 ◽  
pp. 1011-1015
Author(s):  
Chang Hua Li ◽  
Zhi Jie Li ◽  
Long Fei Yuan ◽  
Xin Liu ◽  
Fan Zhang

With the application of space syntax theory in urban planning and architecture designing is growing continuously, the number of the urban spatial configuration models based on space syntax will be more and more. However, the use of these models still lacks of some intelligent retrieval models currently. This paper splits the urban spatial configuration into regular grid structure, and uses visibility segmentation to construct the relationship diagrams and then extracts space syntax variables from each node to form the four-dimensional histogram. Furthermore, this method calculates the similarity among models through the measurement of the histogram distance, thus realizes the retrieval of the urban spatial configuration. Experimental results show that this model has a satisfactory retrieval results.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (SI4) ◽  
pp. 67-72
Author(s):  
Noor Kamilah Kezuwani ◽  
Shahrul Yani Said

Understanding crime has been in focus for a few decades. Significant research has begun to understand the relationship between spatial configuration and crime occurrence, which related back to human behaviour. In recent year, space syntax has been used as a method to analyse space and its spatial properties. Urban design researchers have employed the space syntax technique to analyse the geographic distribution of crime due to spatial and socio-demographic factors that could influence crime patterns. This paper describes how space syntax could be used to assess crime possibility in heritage areas, and the result supports the hypothesis. Keywords: Urban planning, Crime prevention theory, Space syntax, Spatial configuration eISSN: 2398-4287© 2021. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians) and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning & Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v6iSI4.2903


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