Description Although Apartheid officially ended in 1994, scant empirical evidence exists into spatial factors which may serve to afford the generation of racial heterogeneity. This research, centred on Cape Town, as a primary case study is an empirical examination of the relationship between demographic racial integration and urban configuration in South African cities. The principal argument of this dissertation is that the spatial configuration and mobility systems of an urban environment can either reinforce existing racial homogeneity or allow for the creation of new networks of racial heterogeneity. Furthermore, it is argued that within this context, urban systems, which emerged organically, have the strongest relation with demographic racial integration. The research required a methodological approach which could encompass both physical and behavioural aspects. The precise descriptions offered by the evidence-based research techniques of space syntax allowed for a configurational understanding of both the spatial and social aspects of this study. A morphological analysis of Cape Town over three crucial time periods using space syntax analytical techniques, South African Census and GIS data confirmed that, on a global scale, the city remains predominantly racially and economically stratified. Despite the global trend of segregation, a local analysis of demographic racial integration, revealed that, residential racial heterogeneity is emerging in particular neighbourhoods. Through a compendium of neighbourhood case studies, specific spatial morphological characteristics were identified and shown to have a relation with demographic residential racial integration. Finally, the research examined mobility systems, from the perspective of how they may provide affordances for the creation of patterns of multi-racial co-presence, with a specific emphasis on the emergent minibus taxi system. Whilst this system has been widely stigmatised as chaotic and haphazard, the evidence has shown that it has an intrinsic spatial and social logic, forming the largest network of accessibility in the city. Finally, the thesis draws a series of conclusions which lead to a broad set of proposed recommendations.

This project investigates the spatial factors influencing violence patterns in contested urban environments. It explores whether there is a relationship between urban configurations and patterns of warfare or terrorism, with a focus on Paris and Mumbai, revealing insights into the interplay of integration, visibility, and landmark proximity in urban security dynamics.

The research presents a spatial transport simulation based on the spatial network and the viewer of public roads BPR congestion function as an implementation of transport modelling and quantifies the impact of changes in particular road attributes through blockages and widening.

The dissertation is a space syntax analysis on the spatial manifestations of collective memory, the case study is the city of Asuncion, Paraguay. The study has two sections: first, the spatial analysis of the historical growth of the city and centralities through time, the current spatial structure present in the city nowadays and centralities in different scales, as well as the concentration of elements of urban layers to define six local named areas. Second, a network-based study of the main elements of permanence - representatives of collective events and history- to reveal in this manner the place of collective memory in each area

This dissertation analyses the founding principles and evolution of Chandigarh, India's first planned city since its establishment 75 years ago, contributing to the understanding of its spatial and socio-political aspects

A study analysing the effects of historical privatised enclosure and patterns of imposed colonial urbanism and the contemporary urban condition of Metro Manila, Philippines

The results reveal that the rail network has an important optimization effect Spatial Accessibility in at multi dimensions

With the rise of modernism and consumerist culture in contemporary Iran, the city of Tehran became the setting of social and spatial dichotomies. New spaces were introduced one after another to serve the modern lifestyle, and manifest distinction from the existing situation. Shemiran, a large historical area in north of Tehran, is tied with stereotypes asa socially and spatially heterogeneous hub of prosperous and modern lifestyle. However, considering the local centres within this region, the urban aspects of distinctive lifestyles create diverse patterns. Some local centres seem to be more open to modern consumption spaces, such as shopping centres, while some local centres hold live streets with several small traditional businesses. This diversity does not limit to socio-spatial aspects. Local centres of Shemiran tend to have sharp differences in the urban form too.All these distinctions raise a principal question of the relationship between the diverse urban forms of local centres and their distributionpattern of consumption spaces. Since the consumption spaces serve and promote distinctive lifestyles, the question could be restated as the relationship between urban form and spatial aspects of lifestyles.Eager to find an evidence-based answer, this research resorted to sociological theories as well as spatial. Sociological theories, mainly Bourdieu’s theory of distinction, suggest a relationship between capital combination, taste and lifestyle. On the other side, the spatial theory of Space Syntax, suggests analytical methods and tools for estimating the amount of capital generated and accumulated by the urban form. Thus, the concept of capital was chosen as a link or mediator to explore the assumed relationship between urban form and spatial aspects of lifestyle. The findings suggested the dependency of traditional consumption spaces on local capital and modern consumption spaces on global capitalof urban form.

A model based on space syntax is introduced in simulating the transmission of COVID-19 and quantifying the impact of non-pharmaceutical interventions.

This is a dissertation project completed as part of the MSc Space Syntax: Architecture and Cities course at the Bartlett School of Architecture, which explores the urban morphological implications of the motorway in the city centre. The study takes the Westway motorway as an example of a Modernist approach to urban transport infrastructure and analyses its long-term impact on the hierarchy of centrality in the neighbourhood. Relations between change in spatial configurations and building attributes such as land use diversity and density are statistically examined. Finally, the study discusses to what extent the impact of top-down urban design manifested in urban growth would implicate community severance.

Spatial morphological study of post-Soviet cities

The aim of this dissertation is to discover methodological tools and approaches to define a spatio-social classification system to understand the rivers as social interfaces in the city

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Sketch mapping is a popular technique in spatial cognition research to collect information about an experimental participant

London lost more than half of its queer night-time venues in the ten years leading up to 2017 (Campkin & Marshall, 2017) and in 2022, there is only one singular lesbian bar left (Allenby, 2022). It is in this context that an increasing interest in spatiality is being established within queer studies. Comparatively, in Space Syntax research, there still is a shortage of consideration of current gender and sexuality studies beyond hetero- and cis-normativity. This study researches the social and spatial paradoxes of queer space from the perspective of queer theory and Space Syntax theory respectively. The work is put in context of Greater London, with a slight focus on lesbian space. First, a definition of queer space is reached by recognizing queer space as a dynamic entity, enabling transgression and revolution alike while providing a space protected from fear and shame induced by social norms, encouraging unfiltered self-expression. Second, it is argued that Space Syntax analysis like angular integration or isovist studies could contribute to queer theory through quantitative methods and promises budding potential in this area, yet the quantitative analysis reveals that these methods so far are predisposed to portray space in a rather limiting logic requiring field specific advancement to adequately express the unique essence of queer space. Third, the novel framework queer theory provides for socio-spatial concepts like integration and visibility is investigated, affirming its value as an extension to “The Social Logic of Space“ (Hillier & Hanson 1984) by revealing a dyadic relationship of power in space. Demonstrated by examining queer space, this phenomenon is relevant to any association between human behaviour and the built environment. Due to the hitherto scarcity of research in this area, this work is positioned as a starting point of challenging norms and conventions by introducing queer theories to the realm of Space Syntax.

An Analytical Exploration of Beirut Digital District

Canal structure was designed alongside the planning of the street configuration in Amsterdam and it was added to the existing urban form in London during the city’s growth. On that basis this study aims to demonstrate the possible impact of this difference on the potential movement and spatial distribution of functions between Amsterdam and London.

The global pandemic of Coronavirus has led to a rethink of people’s interaction with public spaces. As the spreading of infection is still not controlled, it is the role of spatial designers to figure out proper approaches for keeping social distance between people through spatial modification of public buildings as well as urban spaces. This study focuses on the reopening strategy of art museums in post-COVID-19 time, asking: what are the strategies for reopening adopted by museums and which spatial factors affect the adaptation of their layout and curatorial organisation? The purpose is to provide not only practical solutions but also a theoretical model for the future evaluation of the capability of museums for doing so. Building on Hillier’s theory of spatial types and spatial structures (Hillier 2019), four British museums have been chosen for the investigation of the socio-spatial changes implicated in their reopening process. These are: The National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern and The Wallace Collection. The Museum of Modern Art in New York is also explored in terms of the changes in its spatial layout brought about by successive strategies of expansion. The study attempts to have a more in-depth understanding of the role the spatial structure plays in the organisation of movement in art museums, both spatial and transpatial, based on the analytical findings. The study suggests that the use of d-spaces in spatial layouts is the determinant factor for the capability of museums to successfully respond to specialists’ guidance for the reopening. It also proposes a model for a multilayered spatial system in relation to the global-local network. On each layer, d-spaces present the particularity for the spatial configuration and transpatial intention in the meantime.

This paper intends to prove that the underlying spatial logic of central Singapore has been shaped by the evolving ethnic discourse, and by extension, language.

This research is to be seen as an initial step that brings analytical descriptions to aid the understanding of Indian cities that are widely perceived to be complex and chaotic, by taking the space first approach.

An exploration of the effects of urban renewal, discriminatory lending practices, and large scale infrastructure on the New York City borough of the Bronx from the Great Depression to present day

House prices have long been considered to be closely related to the built environment of cities. The hedonic house price model is a well-known theoretical model that encompasses four dimensions: house structure attributes, location attributes, neighbourhood attributes and environmental attributes. In recent years, some scholars have used the urban morphology research tool space syntax instead of location attributes to study the built environment's impact on house prices at multiple scales. At the same time, subjective perception analysis of cities using street view images as a database has become a popular research trend in recent years and is considered to impact house prices. This study investigates the impact of subjective urban perceptions on house prices in combination with other objective urban elements at multiple scales of urban morphology. In particular, subjective urban perceptions were assessed through street images, where a perception survey based on 300 street images was conducted among the population, and the results were subsequently used to build a machine learning model to predict street perception scores for areas around house price points across Greater London. The integration and choice values analyse the multi-scale urban morphology in the space syntax, combined with a number of other functional variables, to create the hedonic house price model, which is then placed in the OLS regression model for analysis. The final results indicate that the impact of subjective perception on house prices is second only to location attributes and higher than neighbourhood attributes and house structure attributes. There is considerable differentiation in the impact at multiple scales of urban morphology. In the global analysis, subjective perceptions have a greater impact in the micro-scale urban morphology, which is higher than the location attributes, and a more negligible impact in the macro-scale urban morphology, which is lower than the location attributes, with 'enclosure' and 'sense of comfort' being more important than the other perception variables in influencing house prices. In the analysis of the four local areas, the study reveals that local urban form has a greater impact on house prices in the urban centres than in the city's peripheral areas, while the opposite trend is observed for the subjective perception variables.

Entrepreneurship Guest Lecture Series December 4, 2008 featuring a panel of entrepreneurs who are Tim Stonor, Daniel Hume and Sally Broom from Space Syntax, NP Complete and YourSafePlanet respectively. They talk about their experiences as entrepreneurs.

In the last decade the Indian subcontinent has seen unprecedented urbanization and a unique political situation. As cities often become models to project certain identities, one such case has been taken up here to understand this phenomenon through a recent urban intervention. The Sabarmati Riverfront development project has been a landmark in urban design in contemporary India as it is an instance where political agenda is furthered through an urban design project. The study analyses how this project altered the city’s relationship with its river by altering the spatial structure of the city itself. It then proceeds to examine how the project performs on its goals of creating inclusive public space for the city. The spatial structure of the city and the alternations to it by the project, are described using a spatial network analysis based in Space Syntax theories and methods. The shift in centralities (from before to after the SRFD)are observed in conjunction with what is known from other layers of geo-located data such as ward wise population densities, point of interest clusters, observed movement counts and public transportation network. Based on this information the study examines to what extent the riverfront is integrated into, and hence accessible to, the city of Ahmedabad. The analysis highlights the major difference in the performance of the 4 project at global(city wide)scale versus a local(walk able distance) scale, suggesting a need for better integration into the local context, this is corroborated by the network catchment from the nearest public transportation nodes. The findings also hint at a problematic private vehicle centric approach to urban design. These examinations of the riverfront’s accessibility specify where and how it underperforms socially as an inclusive and vibrant public centre. The attempt here is to identify the potentials for improving the performance of the riverfront as a public space in itself as well as its effect on the spatial structure of of the city. In this light some speculative design strategies are tested.

Amid a global dementia epidemic and the absence of a definitive cure, creating supportive environments that promote physical and social activity is paramount for slowing disease progression. Moreover, inconsistencies and ofttimes subjective metrics persist in the evidence base behind dementia-sensitive design. This study, conducted in three long-term care facilities in Bavaria, Germany, employs ethnographic observations to investigate residents’ space use patterns. For the first time, the comprehensive suite of space syntax techniques is tested for assessing the behavior of people with dementia. Results suggest that spatial configuration (visual integration) can effectively explain movement patterns (r2≈.5-.6). Best correlations are found for wandering – despite potential somatosensory impairments. Purposeful behaviors are more conditioned by the institutional regime. Social activities are nuanced, influenced by care culture, persons involved, and cluster in the main common room (MCR). A novel computational tool, MCR Step Depth analysis, is introduced to illustrate the spatial dynamics of interactions. Comparative examination of special care units yields new insights – ample daylight and views appear as attractors to wandering, and strategic positioning of furniture may mitigate agitated behaviors. The research emphasises the efficacy of space syntax as a qualitative, evaluative tool for care home designs, providing practical recommendations for architects, and advancing the discourse on dementia-sensitive design, ultimately seeking to enhance the well-being and quality of life for people with dementia in long-term care settings.