The sociability of the street interface – revisiting West Village, Manhattan

This paper examines themicromorphology of street interfaces, considering how street life is shaped by the emergent pattern of spatial layout and built form. In an effort to reassess Jane Jacobs’s conception of liveability, the study uses urban form and space syntax methods to record the changing micro socio-spatial texture of West Village, Manhattan. The paper shows that West Village contains a wide range of morphological street vistas, in which residential buildings are differentially interspersed with institutional and commercial uses while being in close proximity with the industrial west waterfront. The paper considers the way in which pedestrian experience varies and changes as the characteristicsof street facades change: from the postmodern solid block front to an alignment of short row house facades or from a wholly domestic setting, to a street lined with shops and businesses. In order to understand the urban streetscape as a place of social activity, the study uses novel techniques for measuring built volume in terms of building-street connections aggregated within a block frontage. The resulting pattern is analysed to consider how morphological properties might give rise to street interaction.The study also maps the mixture of buildings by age and relates this pattern to the spatial distribution of non-domestic land uses, the street network configuration and associated urban interfaces to draw the conclusion that –notwithstanding the area’s conservation status –it has maintained its street-life characteristics in part due to the stability of its built form coupled with its inherent spatial adaptability

Reclaiming the virtual community for spatial cultures: Functional generality and cultural specificity at the interface of building and street

This paper engages with the formation of spatial cultures at a micro-morphological level to advance a general argument for the need to further study the contribution of building morphology to the collective realm of the quotidian city. It suggests how the macro-scale approach in analysing spatiotemporal phenomena in urban space lacks a sensitivity to historical urban processes at the micro-scale where the generic and culturally specific aspects of the diachronic city interact to give rise to actual communities. This recalibration of scales, it is claimed, is an epistemological prerequisite for urban design theories to engage productively with the social theory of space. The paper problematizes the idea of the building-street interface and its implications for conditioning urban encounters at the threshold of architectural and urban scales. The argument develops the space syntax concept of ‘virtual community’ as a means to understand how the theoretical capacity for individual buildings to aggregate into a streetscape becomes culturally particular at the level of users’ co-presence in physical space. It looks at the rules of built form aggregation and their implications for shaping the building-street interface in terms of probabilistic encounters over historical time. The argument is then illustrated through an analysis of the historical building-street connectivity as a cultural articulation of spatial-morphogenetic processes. Two urban settings are examined: terraced house morphologies in London and row houses in Manhattan. It is proposed that a micro-morphological approach to the description and analysis of the building-street interface helps to supply a ‘missing link’ in theorising space-society relationship as part of a broader project of rethinking what 'design' means in an urban context

Space after dark: Measuring the impact of public lighting at night on visibility, movement, and spatial configuration in urban parks

On 19 August 2016, Transport for London (TFL) launched their first Night Tube, which offers 24-hour service on Fridays and Saturdays. With more lines coming in autumn 2016, London follows the lead of other cities such as New York, Berlin, and Tokyo to be deemed a 24-hour city. Aside from debates concerning the energy waste, pollution, and security caused by the policy, one question is evident: How does the city 'work' at night? Humans navigate through space using vision which involves cue or landmark recognition, turn angle estimation, network comprehension, and route plotting strategies (Golledge, 1995). The situation changes at night when the configuration of space is altered by the presence of artificial light. This applies predominantly to outdoor spaces where lighting designers or urban planners classify the type of luminaires according to the street hierarchy: white light is used for the 'core' areas and main roads, yellow light for secondary roads, and reddish light for residential pathways (Meier, 2015, p.251). This study aims to explore whether or not there is a change of selected or most frequently used routes due to the impact of altered visual perception of space, and how the locus and quantity of the artificial illumination may change the perceived urban structure. It uses Dalton's (2001) research on cognition and movement, and the theory of natural movement (Hillier et al., 1993) as a base. Two parks in London were selected as the main case studies: Green Park and Clapham Common, along with a pilot project in The Meadows, Edinburgh. The parks were examined using a combination of street network analysis, detailed observations on people's movement and occupancy patterns, and survey on the existing lighting conditions. Correlations between movement, space, and lighting were analysed using 'multiple linear regression' method to discover a link between the fields of urban planning and lighting design. The results reveal that artificial illumination at night alters the perception of the spatial configuration. These results may contribute to the development of lighting master plans in cities. The research presented here produces parallel results with a recent study by Del-Negro (2015) that reveals how the lighting situation affects people's choice of routes through a series of experiments conducted in Lisbon and London. The correlation between Normalised Angular Choice and illuminance values suggests that these two factors are reliable predictors in an urban configuration at night, which allows us to use the illumination factor as a variable when applying Space Syntax analytical methods to predict nocturnal movement patterns

Exploring the relationship between compact urban form and green infrastructure

Compact Urban Form (CUF) and Green Infrastructure (GI) are widely used in sustainability approaches. GI can be understood as a system of green components (e.g. parks, gardens, allotments, etc.) and has multiple benefits for the green and blue urban agendas. Alongside, CUF is an effective strategy used to address urban sprawl. The integration of the two approaches is challenging due to the limited availability of space in CUF and the lack of an analysis of existing and potential GI offerings in compact built environments. This paper looks at the relationship between urban form patterns and green space patterns at the urban scale. It seeks to identify the variables that can describe the compactness and greenness of CUF and the structure of GI, the typologies of CUF and GI, and their potential interrelationships. The method introduces selected variables for quantitative description of CUF and GI, and cluster-based typologies of CUF and GI based on the reproduced components. The three pattern variables are identified (using statistical analysis and spatial analysis) for CUF and GI respectively based on the degree of the greenness, density (e.g. Berghauser Pont and Haupt, 2007), landscape structure (FRAGSTATS) and space syntax measurements (e.g. connectivity). Subsequently, the clusters of CUF and GI are generated using fuzzy c-means clustering analysis (FCM). The method is applied to London, UK. Overall, this paper introduces a quantitative approach to understand CUF and GI as well as their relationship. The methods – which are reproducible because of the use of open-access data – take a fundamental step towards a deeper understanding of the way compact urban fabrics can become greener by activating and embedding green networks into the urban fabric

Urban landscape and spatial heritage: the case of gateway-pathways in Zagreb, Croatia

The paper examines theoretical and analytical premises for developing a systematic characterisation of spatial heritage in the urban landscape. Spatial heritage is proposed as alternative and active link between material and immaterial agencies in the formation of the cultural landscape over time. We probe the application of interdisciplinary research at the interface of spatial history, urban heritage, and space syntax studies to expand heritage definitions and understand the role of diachronic spatial elements in urban sustainability. With the use of space syntax analytical methods, we test quantitative descriptions of typological definition of 'gateway-pathways' in the urban landscape. The term refers to routes that historically connected peripheral settlements to the urban core of contemporary cities. The typology was developed during on-going research by the first author at the University of Zagreb as a part of Heritage Urbanism project with reference to a sample of 18 Central European cities that were formerly provincial capital cities of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This paper looks at the city of Zagreb, Croatia and assesses its historic pathway typologies via syntactical analysis using the transect method established by Hillier (1999). Results give a quantitative validation of the spatial significance of some historical urban pathways over others

Urban morphology in support of disaster risk reduction : toward theory and methods for a spatial approach to tackling urban vulnerability to earthquakes

Among the most recent directions of urban morphology research is its integration with disaster studies, in support of disaster risk reduction (DRR) efforts at the urban scale. Yet, the built and unbuilt components of urban form are still disproportionately investigated for DRR purposes, with predominant approaches centred on buildings leaving the DRR potential of the urban spatial network relatively under-investigated. This paper, at the intersection of urban morphology and disaster studies, is the first of a series looking at the spatial component of urban form through the lens of risk, with a focus on urban vulnerability to earthquakes. After discussing how the interplay of configuration, governance, and use of space impact urban disaster risk in earthquake-prone settlements, the paper introduces a method for the exposure assessment of urban spatial layout. The method, applied on the configurational analysis of four settlements hit by the 2016 Central Italy Earthquakes, associates disaster risk variables to the urban spatial network’s core elements. It develops (i) a theoretical re-definition of the significant disaster risk variables in relation to configurational measures; and (ii) an integrated spatial analysis workflow for visualisation and classification of street segments and routes based on their degree of exposure, to inform both ordinary and emergency planning. In (i), the spatial-configurational dimensions of disaster concepts (hazard, exposure) are identified to unfold the spatial potential in DRR. In (ii), the spatial analysis workflow builds upon the recently developed applications of space syntax angular segment analysis on OSM RCL network, by combining Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) with land use and disaster-related datasets, to generate hybrid exposure segment maps within the ArcGIS environment. The paper provides a twofold contribution : recontextualization and incorporation of space syntax theoretical knowledge into DRR, and innovative employ of existing applications for multidisciplinary and comprehensive approach to urban vulnerability assessment

Gateway-pathway heritage and urban growth Zagreb case study

This paper is a part of on-going research into the typological definition of 'urban gateway-pathways'. This term refers to routes used to connect peripheral settlements to the urban core of contemporary cities. The typology was developed with reference to a sample of 18 Central European cities that were formerly provincial capital cities of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. This paper provides the first authoritative syntactical description of the city of Zagreb and reports on initial syntactical analysis of its historic pathway typology using the transect method established by Hi II ier (1999). The results from the transect analysis are then used to provide more refined typological descriptions of the gateway-pathways and their historical transformations, and to frame a future phase of research using segment analysis

Pavilions in architecture studio—assessment of design-build approach in architecture education

Pavilion construction projects are an emergent paradigm in architecture education. Nevertheless, their efficiency has not yet been assessed in terms of their added contribution to learning experience and pedagogical outcomes. This paper reviews the development, challenges and learning outcomes of the ‘Element Pavilion’ projects for Year One undergraduate architecture students and offers a quantitative and qualitative assessment over their impact on learning. A systematic analysis on students’ perceived learning outcomes using psychometric evaluation is presented here for the first time. The paper introduces a hypothetical pavilion project pedagogy model (HPPP model) which can be used and developed further by architects and educators. Analysis results and the model identify four aspects that students perceive as critical factors in pavilion design-build learning experience: construction, design process, engagement and participation, and teamwork

New perspectives in urban heritage – Theory, policy, and practice [Editorial]

New perspectives in urban heritage – Theory, policy, and practice [Editorial

Survey analysis: 'Pavilion project in Design Studio A: Questionnaire Survey'

The files contain SPSS (version 23) outputs from the statistical analysis of responses to the 'Pavilion project in Design Studio A: Questionnaire Survey'. The survey was distributed to 130 Loughborough Architecture students in June 2020. The sample size of completed questionnaires is N=78. The SPV files report the outcomes of Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and One-way ANOVA tests. Results from the survey are submitted for publication.</div