Dalton, Ruth

English

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PAGE 36 SUSTAIN’ v08 i02As an academic, I attend, on average, two tothree conferences a year, often in far-flunglocations and I confess that it’s notunknown for me to take into account a conference’sgeographic location in order to decide whether ornot to submit a paper: “New York – yes please; York– perhaps not…” Such trips constitute one of the few remainingperks of modern academic life, but one about whichI feel increasingly guilt-stricken due to the annual air-miles that I regularly accrue (this year’s schedulealready features Istanbul, Fredericton, Canada andMelbourne, Australia). Of course, the chance to visithitherto personally unknown destinations is only asmall part of why academics, and other professionals,converge and congregate at regular intervals. So whatis so valuable about face-to-face interactions and couldit ever be possible to hold, for example, an academicconference without the attendant physical travel?SPACE AND SOCIETYWell, I am no futurologist, and I would thereforehesitate to give an unequivocal answer to the abovequestion, but I would certainly suggest that anypossible answer would have as much to do withspace and the design of virtual spaces as with theemergence of any new technologies (although thesetoo are obviously important). There is a set ofarchitectural theories and techniques, known as‘space syntax’, which originated in the early 1970sat University College London and which is concernedwith the relationship between space and society. In particular, space syntax theories start from thepremise that space, that stuff that surrounds usall, is not merely a neutral backdrop for humanactivity, but rather it plays a fundamental role inguiding and shaping all manner of socialinteractions. Space syntax analyses start bybringing space to the foreground of our enquiry asopposed to built form: all spaces within a building,neighbourhood or city are identified (often bysubdividing continuous, flowing space into discrete‘chunks’) and then the relationships betweenthese discrete spaces are considered. Forexample, if it is possible to move freely from onespace to another, without passing through anyintervening, third space/s, then these spaces areheld to be adjacent and are represented as being‘connected’ within the larger spatial system. In space syntax theory, space is considered to bea ‘configuration’: a term that we use to mean acomplex set of spatial relations, in which any onerelationship is affected by and, in turn, affects allothers. One of the problems that designers haveis that we have no terms in our language todescribe spatial relationships that involve morethan two or three objects, and yet, as socialanimals we appear to be remarkably good at‘reading’ or intuiting such complex spatial patterns.Once a spatial system has been identified andrepresented in this way, it is subjected tomathematical analyses, based on specific graph-theoretic techniques, which sort the spaces into asystem of hierarchies from which some spacesemerge as being intrinsically more strategic andprominent and, at the same time, others areidentified as being more segregated. (Typically thishierarchy is represented visually by a spectrum ofcolours, in which red signifies the integrated andstrategic spaces, through orange, yellow, greenand finally to blue indicating the most segregatedor spatially cut-off spaces).by DR RUTH CONROY DALTON, Lecturer in Architectural Morphology and Theory at The Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCLCancel the Plane:I’ll meet you in the Second LifeCan virtual environments lead to a more sustainable world?SUSTAIN’ v08 i02 PAGE 37REAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDSIt so happens that, by analysing space in this manner,we are able to understand the role that space plays ina whole range of social behaviour. One of the earlyfindings of space syntax research was that our socialuse of space is inherently lawful, hence the title ofthe first book published on this research, ‘The SocialLogic of Space’, by Bill Hiller and Julienne Hanson(1984). The kinds of human behaviour that appearto be particularly structured by space are pedestrianmovement, or navigation, and the potential for chanceencounter (the second is obviously related to thefirst). Co-presence, or the act of two people comingtogether in the same space at the same time, isclearly a prerequisite for a whole range of associatedhuman activity, from informal chats around the officewater-cooler to bumping into a distant acquaintancewhilst shopping. However, what began to be offascination was the question of whether virtual spacewas as equally ‘lawful’ as real space or whether it wasa ‘horse of a different colour’.The first stage of such an enquiry was to determinewhether patterns of navigation were similar in realand virtual worlds. However, what is meant by virtualspace? After all, as John Perry Barlow famouslyclaimed, virtual reality could even be considered tobe where you are when you are on the phone. To beprecise, most of the research in this area has tendedto focus on 3D simulations, which are, in manyrespects, as close to real-world environments as it iscurrently possible to create (such worlds oftencontain photo-realistic textures, have sophisticatedmechanisms of depth perception and simulatedphysical constraints such as solidity and gravity).Anyone who has played a modern computer game,such as Grand Theft Auto, will immediatelyunderstand the kind of virtual universe (or ‘metaverse’to borrow a term from Neal Stephenson’s cyberpunknovel, Snow Crash) I am describing. Some of myown initial research (dating from the mid to late1990s) was undertaken to determine the similarity,if any, between patterns of navigation in real andvirtual worlds: 3D simulations of a series of real-world environments were created and through theuse of a VR headset, people were able toimmersively explore these worlds. Their routes orpaths through the environments could then becompared to observations made of pedestrians inthe equivalent real-world settings. To my surprise,even when the simulations of the real-worldenvironments were extremely basic and unsophisticated,there were extremely good correlations foundbetween patterns of movement in the real andvirtual worlds. It appeared that, at a most basic level,we seem to use virtual space, in terms of paths ofmovement, as if it were, in some sense, ‘real’. Thiswas an important research finding as it was the firsttime that such results had been established ratherthan simply conjectured.MUDS & MOOSHowever, space syntax research of virtual space hasnot been confined to such high-level environments;attention has also been focused on the use of virtualworlds known as MUDs/MOOs (multi-user domainsor multi-user object orientated environments), which,initially, seem to bear little or no resemblance to thereal-world, as they are text-based environments.However, these too, seem to follow an inherentlyspatial lawfulness. In research undertaken bystudents at the Georgia Institute of Technology,patterns of movement and occupancy were examinedin a series of MUD/MOO environments. A number oftext-based virtual worlds were exhaustively mapped,with each textual ‘space’ being represented as adistinct space in the system. The image that looks alittle like a complex chemical molecule is actually a3D space-map of such a world. The students then‘observed’ the pattern of occupancy (which spaceswere ‘occupied’ by whom over a period of time) andcompared these to how integrated or segregated thespaces were, using space syntax analysis. Therelationship between the relative importance of aspace, within the system, and its popularity over timewas found to be positive, in precisely the samemanner as would be expected in the analysis of, forexample, a complex building.OBEYING SPATIAL LAWSIn 2001, my attention turned to analysing patternsof movement and social interaction in one of theearly online, multi-user environments known asAlphaworld (an antecedent to the currently popularSecond Life online world). It was found that, despiteusers’ ability to ‘teleport’ (or spatially relocateinstantaneously) from one place to another,Alphaworld did appear, when analysed, to followsome of the basic spatial patterns found in any largecity, such as London. Two maps are shown here, oneabove the other: one shows the structure of ‘lines ofpotential movement’ in London and a similar map ofthe Grand Theft Auto game-world, San Andreas (thered to blue colour spectrum is used once again, inwhich the red lines are the strategic integrators andthe blue lines the quieter, more segregatedlocations). More recent studies examining the GrandTheft Auto game-world have found that its spatialstructure was remarkably similar to those found inreal cities and, in particular, the pattern ofdistribution of certain objects and ‘events’ in thegame seemed to obey the underlying spatial laws wewould expect of real-world events. Finally, I amcurrently analysing the online social world, SecondLife (see the image of the author in Second Life,opposite), and considering the spatial distribution ofpeople and events within that environment. Inconclusion, all research so far, appears to suggestthat, despite the immateriality of these worlds anddespite their frequent use of actions irreproducible inreality (such as teleportation), they do seem to mimicthe kinds of spatial paradigms found in the realworld. This is hardly surprising: human beings areinherently spatial animals, and our understanding ofspace and its social significance is fundamental toevery aspect of our lives. If only some of these arereproduced in virtual worlds, we will immediatelybegin to respond to them as if they functioned likereal-world spatial systems.INCREASE THE UNDERSTANDINGAnd where does this leave our future virtual-conferencedelegates? I would suggest that if we are given thetask of designing virtual environments that functionsuccessfully, from a social perspective, then it isimperative to increase our understanding of howsuch environments work in the real world and ensurethat any virtual equivalent can reproduce thesespatial factors. If an online environment is able to be,for example, intelligible and easily navigable, providea high potential for chance encounter and create awell-defined, hierarchical structure of spaces, then itis more likely to support a dynamic socialenvironment. Of course, ultimately, nothing will evercompletely take over from the real world (I ampleased to say), but perhaps the virtual realm mayserve to augment and sustain our social networks, ifdesigned efficiently and knowledgeablyIMAGE 1. San Andreas – the game world of Grand Theft Auto.Surprisingly, its spatial structure is remarkably similar tothose found in real cities, such as London, below.IMAGE 2.The structure of ‘lines of potential movement’ in London.Similarities between this and Alphaworld have beendiscovered when analysed.IMAGE 3. A number of text-based virtual worlds were exhaustivelymapped, with each textual ‘space’ being represented as adistinct space in the system. This is a 3D space map ofsuch a world1.3. 2.

Cancel the plane: I'll meet you in second life

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