A study of the spatial characteristics of the Jews in London 1695 & 1895

This paper suggests that the settlement pattern of Jews in London is in a distinct cluster, but contradicts the accepted belief about the nature of the 'ghetto'; finding that the traditional conception of the 'ghetto', as an enclosed, inward-looking immigrant quarter is incorrect in this case. It is shown that despite the fact that the Jews sometimes constituted up to 100% of the population of a street, that in general, the greater the concentration of Jews in a street, the better connected (more 'integrated') the street was into the main spacial structure of the city. It is also suggested here that the Jewish East End worked both as an internally strong structure of space, with local institutions relating to and reinforcing the local pattern of space; and also externally, with strong links tying the Jewish East End with its host society. It is proposed that this duality of internal/external links not only strengthens Jewish society but possibly contradicts accepted beliefs on the structure of immigrant societies

Teaching Space Syntax Through Reflective Practice

12-15 June 200

Book review: beyond live/work: the architecture of home-based work

Despite having existed for hundreds, if not thousands, of years in every country across the globe this dual-use building type has long gone unnoticed. This book analyses the lives and premises of 90 contemporary UK and US home-based workers from across the social spectrum and in diverse occupations. Laura Vaughan recommends readers study the book alongside the Workhome Project’s handsome website, which carries a wealth of additional material including a pattern book and information on policy and governance

Book review: The ghetto by Bryan Cheyette

In The Ghetto, Bryan Cheyette offers a new addition to the Oxford University Press series of ‘Very Short Introductions’, distilling the long history of the changing meaning of the ‘ghetto’ across the globe and through time over six succinct chapters. With the author’s expertise in modern literature and culture bringing a new angle on the topic, Laura Vaughan highly recommends the book to readers new to the subject, as well as to those who wish to deepen their knowledge through its excellent bibliography

Mapping Society

From a rare map of yellow fever in eighteenth-century New York, to Charles Booth’s famous maps of poverty in nineteenth-century London, an Italian racial zoning map of early twentieth-century Asmara, to a map of wealth disparities in the banlieues of twenty-first-century Paris, Mapping Society traces the evolution of social cartography over the past two centuries. In this richly illustrated book, Laura Vaughan examines maps of ethnic or religious difference, poverty, and health inequalities, demonstrating how they not only serve as historical records of social enquiry, but also constitute inscriptions of social patterns that have been etched deeply on the surface of cities. The book covers themes such as the use of visual rhetoric to change public opinion, the evolution of sociology as an academic practice, changing attitudes to physical disorder, and the complexity of segregation as an urban phenomenon. While the focus is on historical maps, the narrative carries the discussion of the spatial dimensions of social cartography forward to the present day, showing how disciplines such as public health, crime science, and urban planning, chart spatial data in their current practice. Containing examples of space syntax analysis alongside full colour maps and photographs, this volume will appeal to all those interested in the long-term forces that shape how people live in cities

The Spatial Signature of the Enclosure Paradigm in Chinese Housing: Evidence from Twelve Housing Areas

‘Enclosure, hierarchy and repetition’ became a leading paradigm for housing design, especially in the West after WWII. This paradigm began to be questioned in the Anglophone literature, notably in early space syntax research. However, enclosed housing forms were a commonplace architectural solution for the past centuries in China. Consequently, little attention has been paid to date to the social constitution and spatial layout of Chinese enclosed housing areas, particularly from a configurational perspective. Therefore, this paper aims to unravel the spatial signature of the enclosure paradigm in China by comparing six pairs of gated and non-gated housing schemes in the city of Wuhan. We compared the paired cases in relation to: (i) their setting within the city; (ii) tensions between peripheral and internal measures of centrality; (iii) multi-scale spatial cores; and (iv) overlap between potential to- and through-movement. We also aggregated land-use data at the junction segment level and compared functional density and diversity as an additional measure of local vs. neighbourhood vitality. Our evidence suggests that compared with their non-gated counterparts, the gated housing estates are overall more segregated. Even if the gated estates occasionally demonstrate higher centrality on the periphery, their internal spaces are relatively isolated. Additionally, the gated compounds reveal a weaker overlap between movements, implying a lower likelihood of encounters. Furthermore, the gated estates tend to be mono-functional enclaves with lower functional density and diversity. We conclude that designing housing with the enclosure paradigm may contribute to an absence of internal vitality

Does area type matter for pedestrian distribution? Testing movement economy theory on gated and non-gated housing estates in Wuhan, China

This study investigates how the built environment influences pedestrian distribution in housing estates and whether its influence differs between gated and non-gated housing types. This study is built upon the theoretical framework of the movement economy, initially proposed by scholars from the Space Syntax Laboratory and recently extended by others. The extended movement economy framework conceptualises the interrelationship between street configuration, functional uses, physical structures, and pedestrian movement. To evaluate the hypothesised associations within this theoretical framework, we constructed structural equation modelling using pedestrian movement data of 606 locations from six pairs of gated and non-gated housing estates in Wuhan, China. We assessed the direct, indirect, and total effects of street configuration, functional uses, and physical structures on pedestrian movement. We then conducted a multigroup analysis to determine whether statistically significant differences exist between gated and non-gated housing areas regarding how the three spatial factors affect pedestrian movement. The findings indicated that the structural model could explain over 60 % of variances on pedestrian movement data, regardless of housing types. Although pedestrian movement demonstrated statistically significant correlations with street configuration, functional use, and physical structure, the street configuration was the most powerful and reliable predictor of all. This paper also evidenced that functional use and physical structure were two effective mediators between street configuration and pedestrian movement, albeit with small mediating effect sizes. More importantly, the results also uncovered several statistically significant differences in the builtenvironmental influences between gated and non-gated models. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that (i) verifies the direct, indirect, and total effects of the built environment on pedestrian movement in Chinese housing estates; and (ii) confirms statistically significant differences between gated and non-gated housing types in their built-environmental impacts on pedestrian movement

Spatio-Historical Impact of Urban Canals on the Street Configuration of Cities Diachronic Analysis of Amsterdam and London

Constructed waterways have played a major transportation role since the earliest days of cities’ recorded history, connecting cities and enhancing commerce. There does seem a possibility that canal networks are associated with the growth of the world’s first cities and their spatial structure. Therefore, the aim of the study is to investigate the canal structure in shaping the urban form through the city-growing process and its spatio-cultural outcomes in the city environment. It intends to perform a comparative analysis of Amsterdam and London, two diverse structures within their urban configurations and represent a different paradigm of the canal-street structure relationship. The study analyses the main spatial effect of differences in the canal structure overtime on the street configurations of the two cities. Diachronic spatial analysis has been undertaken for three periods for both cities: the 1850s, the 1950s, and the contemporary period. The study uses space syntax techniques as the main methodology; further, the spatial analysis results are geographically projected in GIS, and the statistical analysis is performed on the analysis results of historical maps to measure the physical effects of canal systems on the potential mobility in both cities. The Amsterdam and London analysis results show different examples in terms of street interconnections with canals in the formation of urban structures. While the urban form has been shaped with a top-down planning process in the form of a regular grid structure designed with canals in Amsterdam, the urban form of London is a dominant landbased spatial structure with regard to its movement potentials. Hence, Amsterdam shows an intermediate spatial structure between water- and land-based networks. On the other hand, places are locally and globally more accessible with land-based transportation systems in London

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