The city as one thing

This paper summarises the latest theories in the field of space syntax. It opens with a discussion of the relationship between the form of urban grids and the process of how cities are formed by human activity; this is done by a comprehensive review of space syntax theory from its starting point in the1970s. The paper goes on to present research into how cities balance the micro-economic factors which shape the spatial structure of cities with the cultural factors that shape the underlying form of residential areas. It goes on to discuss the relationship between activity and space and how this relationship is formed by the way different activities make different demands on movement and co-presence. The paper ends with a discussion regarding the manner in which patterns of spatial integration influence the location of different classes and social groups in the city and contribute to the pathology of housing estates. The paper concludes that spatial form needs to be understood as a contributing factor in forming the patterns of integration and segregation in cities

Islamic Area Studies with Geographical Information Systems

In this volume the contributors use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to reassess both historic and contemporary Asian countries and traditionally Islamic areas. This highly illustrated and comprehensive work highlights how GIS can be applied to the social sciences. With its description of how to process, construct and manage geographical data the book is ideal for the non-specialist looking for a new and refreshing way to approach Islamic area studies

Modeling Barcelona sidewalks: a high resolution urban scale assessment of the geometric attributes of the walkable network

Within the framework of urban pedestrian networks, this paper presents a method of modeling the street network from the perspective of foot traffic, beyond the vehicle-focused street centerline representation approach in transportation research. A scalable method to extract the centerlines of the complete walkable urban area from its polygon representation at a one-meter resolution is discussed, using open-source tools. To evaluate the betweenness centrality in a spatially directed graph, the process is applied to the study of the ‘walkable Barcelona’, focusing on three key parameters: 1) the street width, 2) the longitudinal slope, and 3) the crosswalks connecting the sidewalk platforms. The results identify the uneven distribution of these parameters within a complex urban fabric, and the high-resolution cartography allows the identification of critical areas within the network, introducing future lines of research and applications of the workflow. This is especially relevant considering the increasing awareness of citizens and the urban agendas worldwide, aimed at improving and widening the sidewalk infrastructure that supports local activity in cities.Objectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::11 - Ciutats i Comunitats SosteniblesObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i InfraestructuraObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::11 - Ciutats i Comunitats Sostenibles::11.2 - Per a 2030, proporcionar accés a sistemes de transport segurs, assequibles, accessi­bles i sostenibles per a totes les persones, i millorar la seguretat viària, en particular mitjan­çant l’ampliació del transport públic, amb especial atenció a les necessitats de les persones en situació vulnerable, dones, nenes, nens, persones amb discapacitat i persones gransObjectius de Desenvolupament Sostenible::9 - Indústria, Innovació i Infraestructura::9.1 - Desenvolupar infraestructures fiables, sostenibles, resilients i de qualitat, incloent infraestructures regionals i transfrontereres, per tal de donar suport al desenvolupament econòmic i al benestar humà, amb especial atenció a l’accés assequible i equitatiu per a totes les personesPostprint (published version

Location Privacy for Mobile Crowd Sensing through Population Mapping

Opportunistic sensing allows applications to “task” mobile devices to measure context in a target region. For example, one could leverage sensor-equipped vehicles to measure traffic or pollution levels on a particular street or users\u27 mobile phones to locate (Bluetooth-enabled) objects in their vicinity. In most proposed applications, context reports include the time and location of the event, putting the privacy of users at increased risk: even if identifying information has been removed from a report, the accompanying time and location can reveal sufficient information to de-anonymize the user whose device sent the report. We propose and evaluate a novel spatiotemporal blurring mechanism based on tessellation and clustering to protect users\u27 privacy against the system while reporting context. Our technique employs a notion of probabilistic k-anonymity; it allows users to perform local blurring of reports efficiently without an online anonymization server before the data are sent to the system. The proposed scheme can control the degree of certainty in location privacy and the quality of reports through a system parameter. We outline the architecture and security properties of our approach and evaluate our tessellation and clustering algorithm against real mobility traces

Islamic Area Studies with Geographical Information Systems

In this volume the contributors use Geographical Information Systems (GIS) to reassess both historic and contemporary Asian countries and traditionally Islamic areas. This highly illustrated and comprehensive work highlights how GIS can be applied to the social sciences. With its description of how to process, construct and manage geographical data the book is ideal for the non-specialist looking for a new and refreshing way to approach Islamic area studies

Embedded, Embodied, Adaptive: Architecture and Computation

This catalogue of work marks the second year of the MSc Adaptive Architecture and Computation, UCL Bartlett\'s one-year taught MSc in the field of digital design. Bringing together research at the Bartlett with cutting edge practice, this course aims to give students a solid theoretical and technical foundation for the use of computation as a means to realise their designs, understand the built environment, and create architecture. Themes of investigation include how the built environment can be adapted to its occupants; how form may be generated or evolved parametrically; how the experience of space can be enhanced through the integrated use of new media. In each case, computational methods are sought to improve the design and use of architecture, rather than simply be a mechanical tool for its representation. With this in mind, students are taught the fundamental theory and skills necessary to manipulate their technology at a sophisticated level. Studio time is dedicated to learning scripting and programming within a series of workshops conceived especially for designers

Space is the machine, part one: theoretical preliminaries

‘Theoretical Preliminaries’ deals with the most basic of all questions which architectural theory tries to answer: what is architecture, and what are theories, that they can be needed in architecture? In the first chapter, ‘What architecture adds to building’, the key concepts of the book are set out on the way to a definition of architecture. The argument is that in addition to functioning as bodily protection, buildings operate socially in two ways: they constitute the social organisation of everyday life as the spatial configurations of space in which we live and move, and represent social organisation as physical configurations of forms and elements that we see. Both social dimensions of building are therefore configurational in nature, and it is the habit of the human mind to handle configuration unconsciously and intuitively, in much the same way as we handle the grammatical and semantic structures of a language intuitively. Our minds are very effective in handling configuration in this way, but because we do work this way, we find it very difficult to analyse and talk rationally about the configurational aspects of things. Configuration is in general ‘non-discursive’, meaning that we do not know how to talk about it and do not in general talk about it even when we are most actively using it. In vernacular buildings, the configurational, or non-discursive, aspects of space and form are handled exactly like the grammar of language, that is, as an implication of the manipulation of the surface elements, or words and groups of words in the language case, building elements and geometrical coordinations in building. In the vernacular the act of building reproduces cultural given spatial and formal patterns. This is why it seldom seems ‘wrong’. Architecture, in contrast, is the taking into conscious, reflective thought of these non-discursive and configurational aspects of space and form, leading to the exercise of choice within a wide field of possibility, rather than the reduplication of the patterns specific to a culture. Architecture is, in essence, the application of speculative and abstract thought to the non-discursive aspects of building, and because it is so, it is also its application to the social and cultural contents of building. Chapter 2, ‘The need for an analytic theory of architecture’, then takes this argument into architectural theory. Architectural theories are essentially attempts to subject the non-discursive aspects of space and form to rational analysis, and to establish principles to guide design in the field of choice, principles which are now needed as cultural guidance is no longer automatic as it is in a vernacular tradition. Architectural theories are both analytic in that they always depend on conjectures about what human beings are like, but they are also normative, and say how the world should be rather more strongly than they say how it is. This means that architecture can be innovative and experimental through the agency of theories, but it can also be wrong. Because theories can be wrong, architects need to be able to evaluate how good their theories are in practice, since the repetition of theoretical error - as in much of the modernist housing programme - will inevitably lead to the curtailment of architectural freedom. The consequence of this is the need for a truly analytic theory of architecture, that is, one which permits the investigation of the non-discursive without bias towards one or other specific non-discursive style. Chapter 3, ‘Non-discursive technique’, outlines the prime requirement for permitting architects to begin this theoretical learning: the need for neutral techniques for the description and analysis of the non-discursive aspects of space and form, that is, techniques that are not simply expressions of partisanship for a particular type of configuration, as most architectural theories have been in the past. The chapter notes a critical difference between regularities and theories. Regularities are repeated phenomena, either in the form of apparent typing or apparent consistencies in the time order in which events occur. Regularities are patterns in surface phenomena. Theories are attempts to model the underlying processes that produce regularities. Every science theorises on the basis of its regularities. Social sciences tend to be weak not because they lack theories but because they lack regularities which theories can seek to explain and which therefore offer the prime test of theories. The first task in the quest for an analytic theory of architecture is therefore to seek regularities. The first purpose of ‘non-discursive technique’ is to pursue this task

Resample-smoothing of Voronoi intensity estimators

Voronoi estimators are non-parametric and adaptive estimators of the intensity of a point process. The intensity estimate at a given location is equal to the reciprocal of the size of the Voronoi/Dirichlet cell containing that location. Their major drawback is that they tend to paradoxically under-smooth the data in regions where the point density of the observed point pattern is high, and over-smooth where the point density is low. To remedy this behaviour, we propose to apply an additional smoothing operation to the Voronoi estimator, based on resampling the point pattern by independent random thinning. Through a simulation study we show that our resample-smoothing technique improves the estimation substantially. In addition, we study statistical properties such as unbiasedness and variance, and propose a rule-of-thumb and a data-driven cross-validation approach to choose the amount of smoothing to apply. Finally we apply our proposed intensity estimation scheme to two datasets: locations of pine saplings (planar point pattern) and motor vehicle traffic accidents (linear network point pattern)