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Quantitative tools to measure adjacency, permeability and inter-visibility between buildings and streets

Book chapter (2018)

Authors

A. van Nes Spatial Planning and Strategy - Architecture and the Built Environment , University College Bergen
Manuel López Inholland University of Applied Sciences
Research Group
Spatial Planning and Strategy (Architecture and the Built Environment) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2018 A. van Nes, Manuel López
Social integration Private and public space Analyses tools Crime
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Published Date

2018

Language

English

Reuse Rights

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Faculty

Architecture and the Built Environment

Department

Urbanism

Research Group

Spatial Planning and Strategy

Abstract

One of Jane Jacob’s key observations was that we need “eyes on the streets” from buildings to ensure safety. How can it be quantified? Research on urban environment by means of space syntax methods tend to focus on macro scale spatial conditions. However, micro scale conditions should not be neglected. In research on dispersal of burglaries in urban areas, spatial analyses methods as regards topological relationships between private and public space was developed and tested out. The following issues were taken into account: Degree of inter-visibility of windows and doors and their inter-relationship to street segments, the density of entrances of private houses connected to streets, the number of semi-private or semi-public spaces between various kinds of private and public space, the degree of constitutedness of streets and the degree of visibility from windows to parking lots. As these results show, measuring the private-public interface offers knowledge about the spatial conditions for vital street life, urban safety, social interactions and their interdependence. Quantifying a built environment’s spatial layout can therefore provide understandings on how urban space shape possibilities for social integration and exclusion. All seems to depend on various degrees of adjacency, permeability and inter-visibility taken into account on different scale levels.