The perceived safety and spatial behaviour in three different neighbourhoods in Rotterdam

There is a difference between registered safety and perceived safety. An inquiry was done to register how people use space in three different neighbourhoods from different time periods during a weekday. The following spatial parameters were taken into account: Axial and angular analyses with topological and metrical radiuses of the street and...

Easiest paths for walking and cycling: Combining syntactic and geographic analyses in studying walking and cycling mobility

We discuss fundamentals of a new computational approach to configurative analysis and synthesis and present a number of advancements we have made in the direction of computational analysis of walking and cycling mobility. We have scrutinized the notion of distance and addressed it in correspondence with the notion of geodesic or optimum path. We...

Space and protest: A tale of two Egyptian squares

Protests and revolts take place in public space. How they can be controlled or how protests develop depend on the physical layout of the built environment. This study reveals the relationship between urban space and protest for two Egyptian squares: Tahrir Square and Rabaa Al-Adawiya in Cairo. For analysis, the research uses space syntax method....

Ethnic groups and spatial behaviour in Rotterdam's neighbourhoods

Little knowledge exists on the relationship between urban space and the behaviour pattern of various ethnical groups. For this purpose four different neighbourhoods with a high number of various ethnical groups were investigated in different time periods during a weekday. A difference was made between Europeans, Turkish, Moroccans, and...

Beyond informality: Traders as space experts in their own informal settlements

The spatial layout of built environments influences the distribution of commercial activities. As literature has shown, commercial activities can enhance the process of urban consolidation of informal areas (Hillier et al, 2000; Shafiei, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to investigate the correlation between spatial factors and the...