The Network Analysis of Urban Streets: A Primal Approach

The network metaphor in the analysis of urban and territorial cases has a long tradition especially in transportation/land-use planning and economic geography. More recently, urban design has brought its contribution by means of the "space syntax" methodology. All these approaches, though under different terms like accessibility, proximity, integration,connectivity, cost or effort, focus on the idea that some places (or streets) are more important than others because they are more central. The study of centrality in complex systems,however, originated in other scientific areas, namely in structural sociology, well before its use in urban studies; moreover, as a structural property of the system, centrality has never been extensively investigated metrically in geographic networks as it has been topologically in a wide range of other relational networks like social, biological or technological. After two previous works on some structural properties of the dual and primal graph representations of urban street networks (Porta et al. cond-mat/0411241; Crucitti et al. physics/0504163), in this paper we provide an in-depth investigation of centrality in the primal approach as compared to the dual one, with a special focus on potentials for urban design.Comment: 19 page, 4 figures. Paper related to the paper "The Network Analysis of Urban Streets: A Dual Approach" cond-mat/041124

Apšvietimas kaip architektūros modernumo simbolis

The paper is designed to reveal the aesthetics of artificial lighting and its influence on the architecture of the 20th century. The main topics discussed are electric lighting, which appeard in our history at the end of the 19th century, and the technical development of lighting till the middle of the 20th century. Connections of artificial lighting with visual arts, its influence on advertisement, building architecture and the whole city are analysed. An idea is proposed that although lighting by nature was purely functional, very soon it acquired symbolic ambitions to represent architecture. In modern times architects understood that lighting was both a technological development and a symbol of a new era, when there appeared an independent field of creation - lighting architecture. Santrauka Straipsnyje nagrinėjama dirbtinio apšvietimo estetika ir jos įtaka XX a. architektūrai. Išryškinta XIX a. pabaigoje atsiradusio elektrinio apšvietimo svarba ir atskleista apšvietimo techninė raida iki XX a. vidurio. Nagrinėjamos dirbtinio apšvietimo sąsajos su vizualiaisiais menais, apšvietimo įtaka reklamai, pastatų architektūrai bei visam miestui. Straipsnyje keliama idėja, kad nors apšvietimo prigimtis pradžioje buvo grynai funkcionali, ji greitai įgavo simbolinių ambicijų – reprezentuoti architektūrą. Architektai į apšvietimą žvelgė ne tik kaip į technologinę pažangą, tai buvo naują erą ženklinantis simbolis, erą, kurioje atsiranda didelės įtakos visoms kūrybinėms idėjoms turinti nauja savarankiška kūrybos sritis – šviesos architektūra. First Published Online: 22 May 2013 Reikšminiai žodžiai: meninis, dirbtinis, elektrinis apšvietimas, stiklo, šviesos architektūra, modernumas

Comparison of Ecological Risk among Different Urban Patterns Based on System Dynamics Modeling of Urban Development

In this study an urban development model was developed, based on system dynamics, in order to compare four urban layout patterns in terms of their effects on landscape ecology risk and environmental pollution. The four patterns are centralized urban model, green corridor urban model, decentralized urban model (satellite city model), and resource-based city model. Landscape ecology risk assessments based on simulation results show that the decentralized urban model is superior to the centralized urban model in terms of long-term landscape ecological development and environmental protection. The study also analyzed the relationships between the patch spacing index and the evaluation index

Developing a Citizen Social Science approach to understand urban stress and promote wellbeing in urban communities

This paper sets out the future potential and challenges for developing an interdisciplinary, mixed-method Citizen Social Science approach to researching urban emotions. It focuses on urban stress, which is increasingly noted as a global mental health challenge facing both urbanised and rapidly urbanising societies. The paper reviews the existing use of mobile psychophysiological or biosensing within urban environments—as means of ‘capturing’ the urban geographies of emotions. Methodological reflections are included on primary research using biosensing in a study of workplace and commuter stress for university employees in Birmingham (UK) and Salzburg (Austria) for illustrative purposes. In comparing perspectives on the conceptualisation and measurement of urban stress from psychology, neuroscience and urban planning, the difficulties of defining scientific constructs within Citizen Science are discussed to set out the groundwork for fostering interdisciplinary dialogue. The novel methods, geo-located sensor technologies and data-driven approaches to researching urban stress now available to researchers pose a number of ethical, political and conceptual challenges around defining and measuring emotions, stress, human behaviour and urban space. They also raise issues of rigour, participation and social scientific interpretation. Introducing methods informed by more critical Citizen Social Science perspectives can temper overly individualised forms of data collection to establish more effective ways of addressing urban stress and promoting wellbeing in urban communities

From ‘me towns’ to ‘we towns’: activist citizenship in UK town centres

Britain’s town centres have witnessed economic, social and physical upheaval over more than half a century, linked to sweeping changes in retailing and consumption. Yet they are also places where activists are seeking to fashion alternative futures and test social and economic models that challenge neoliberal norms. Reflecting on recent developments in the UK, this paper explores the potential of citizen-led economic activism in British town and city centres. Focusing on three case studies of urban activism, it contrasts policies and practices that frame the users of urban space as consumers with the marginal acts that seek to assert wider rights to the city. The article shows how ideas of ‘resilience’ have become a stake of struggle in debates over the future of urban centres and urban citizenship, deployed both to defend neoliberal economic configurations and to signal radical transitions towards more participatory and economically autonomous forms of society

Defining public open spaces: an investigation framework to inform planning and design decision-making processes

Typomorphological analysis has been used to study building types, but it is seldom applied to open spaces. This paper argues that the same systematic and rigorous approach can be applied to define public open spaces. It explores the potential of the application of a systematic analysis of types and forms to define urban landscapes. Drawing on existing literature, this paper identifies specific attributes related to urban landscape elements including formal and spatial aspects. This paper highlights the potential of open space networks to respond to the contemporary challenges facing urban designers working to create better places to live in. This paper contributes to the field of design research through the development of a method of survey and analysis to inform design decision-making processes. Its significance lies in proposing a comprehensive framework to contribute to a more detailed definition of urban landscape character and inform the development of sustainable urban strategies

From Prototyping to Allotyping. The invention of change of use and the crisis of building types

The chapter analyses the invention and the form of the discourse on building conversion as one particular instance of redefining what a technology is and how it operates. I describe a shift from expert defined closure to lay based openness and tinkering as a shift from prototyping to allotyping: Since the early 1970s, change of use and building conversion have become a central and fashionable discourse among architects and architectural theorists. Before the 1970s, buildings were understood as technologies, as ‘society made durable’. The notion of building type was central to link a building to a given use. A bank was a bank because architects applied existing templates, prototypes, to turn a building into a bank. In the 1970s, suddenly buildings became flexible – discursively, since building conversion always existed: ‘Building type’ no longer was a meaningful link between a building and its use. A bank should not stay a bank, but become a hotel, a theatre or a flat, in short: an allotype. The chapter elucidate this central shift in thinking about buildings and reflects on the special case of allotyping buildings and how it continues to vex thinking about buildings