Street network and home-based business patterns in Cairo's informal areas

Identifying the economic potential of informal urban areas is a topic of increasing interest for policymakers and practitioners in less developed countries, yet little is known of how informal street design influences the type and count of business opportunities. By adapting a space syntax framework, this study aims to quantitatively verify...

Morphological evaluation and regeneration of informal settlements: An experience-based urban design approach

Informal urbanism has been generally studied within social, econmic and political frameworks, yet little is known of how it performs in terms of urban vitality. The aim of this article is to better understand the urban vitality of informal settlements and how they can be improved by using a combined morphological approach that encompasses...

The Impact of the Ring Roads on the Location Pattern of Shops in Town and City Centres: A Space Syntax Approach

This contribution demonstrates how inner ring roads change the location pattern of shops in urban areas with the application of the space syntax method. A market rational behaviour persists, in that shop owners always search for an optimal location to reach as many customers as possible. If the accessibility to this optimal location is affected...

Noise and Spatial Configuration in Biskra, Algeria: A Space Syntax Approach to Understand the Built Environment for Visually Impaired People

This contribution investigates the correlation between street noise levels and the spatial configuration of the street network in four different types of neighbourhoods in the Algerian city of Biskra. Space syntax methods are used to analyse spatial relationships, where accessibility, intelligibility, and legibility of urban spaces can be...

Bill hillier’s legacy: Space syntax—a synopsis of basic concepts, measures, and empirical application

Bill Hillier’s space syntax method and theory enables us to describe the spatial properties of a sustainable city. Empirical testing of the space syntax method over time has confirmed the capacity and innovativeness of analyzing spatial relationships with the purpose of understanding and explaining the socio-spatial organization of built...

Spatial Configurations and Walkability Potentials: Measuring Urban Compactness with Space Syntax

This contribution demonstrates how space syntax methods on various scale levels can be used to identify and describe the spatial features of a compact city. Firstly, the term urban compactness is discussed. A short discussion of some writings on the compact city are elaborated. As it transpired, urban compactness can best be approached from a...

Exploring Challenges in Space Syntax Theory Building: The Use of Positivist and Hermeneutic Explanatory Models

The planning and building of sustainable cities and communities yields operational theories on urban space. The novelty of this paper is that it discusses and explores the challenges for space syntax theory building within two key research traditions: positivism and hermeneutics. Applying a theory of science perspective, we first discuss the...

Sexual Violence in the City: Space, Gender, and the Occurrence of Sexual Violence in Rotterdam

There is a need for knowledge of how the spatial features of the urban environment can shape the potential for safe streets and a gender inclusive society. This research reveals the relationship between a built environment’s spatial features, the presence of various types of people, and gender-based sexual violence in the public space of four...

Assessing Spatial Configurations and Transport Energy Usage for Planning Sustainable Communities

Energy usage in cities is intertwined with its spatial configuration—the denser and more compact the city, the more concentrated and efficient the energy usage is to be expected. To achieve sustainable communities, cities (and their inhabitants) must reconsider its spatial configurations in the context of rapid urbanisation and growth in light...

A Scientific Approach to the Densification Debate in Bergen Centre in Norway

The municipality of Bergen in Norway aims to densify fifty per cent of new housing within the city’s central parts. The Ministry of Local Government and Modernisation ordered and financed an investigation to be carried out by the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences and the consulting firm Asplan Viak to give research-based input to the...

Using spatial indicators to predict ventilation and energy performance-Correlation analysis for an apartment building in five Chinese cities

In the early design stages, architects are in constant search of a design direction that can determine the success or failure of the final design. However, in real design practice, most of the prediction methods for building performances, in this paper energy and thermal comfort, are utilised in the later design stages. Spatial configuration is...

Designing a Blue-Green Infrastructure (BGI) network: Toward water-sensitive urban growth planning in Dhaka, Bangladesh

In a warming world, urban environmental stresses are exacerbated by population-increase-induced development of grey infrastructure that usually leaves minimal scope for blue (and green) elements and processes, potentially resulting in mismanagement of stormwater and flooding issues. This paper explores how urban growth planning in the...

Street morphology as a starting point for understanding sexual harassment

Incidents of sexual harassment are unequally distributed in the Greater Cairo Region because cities, generally speaking, have uneven patterns of movement and activity with higher rates of pedestrian and vehicular movement and activities in some quarters than others. Central areas usually have concentrations of people and activity, hence higher...

Development of a configurational typology for micro-businesses integrating geometric and configurational variables

In cities manifold actors are continuously taking decisions and proposing interventions, which are driven by, but also change, spatial conditions and their performance on a variety of scales. Understanding how this interplay works is crucial for urban designers and planners. However, this complexity asks for new methods of analysis or...

The socio-spatial development of Jaffa-Tel Aviv: The emergence and fade-away of ethnic divisions and distinctions

This paper examines how a cognitive boundary with no physical presence has affected life in the cities of Jaffa and Tel Aviv, not only during its time of existence (1921-1950) but many decades after it was erased from all official documents. In 1921, the national aspirations of Jews in Jaffa, embraced by the local British Mandate government,...

Spatial accessibility and commercial land use patterns planned versus unplanned areas in Cairo

This paper shows the research results from a research project investigating the relationship between spatial configuration and the distribution of commercial activities in throughout planned and informal urban environments. The research methodology uses space syntax analysis as well as statistical calculations. The spatial accessibility model...

Quantitative comparison of cities: Distribution of street and building types based on density and centrality measures

It has been argued that different urban configurations-planned vs. organic, treelike vs. grid like-perform differently when it comes to the intensity and distribution of pedestrian flows, built density and land uses. However, definitions of urban configurations are often rather abstract, ill-defined and at worse end in fixed stereotypes...

Spatial tools for diagnosing the degree of safety and liveability, and to regenerate urban areas in The Netherlands

This contribution describes the tool Social Safe Urban Design (SSUD), seen<br/>together with socio-spatial and linguistic challenges when applying space syntax in the regenerating of problem urban areas. The Space Syntax jargon is technical and needs to be translated into a language understandable and acceptable to stakeholders who are...