Space syntax

The term space syntax encompasses a set of theories and techniques for the analysis of spatial configurations. It was conceived by Bill Hillier, Julienne Hanson and colleagues at The Bartlett, University College London in the late 1970s to early 1980s as a tool to help urban planners simulate the likely social effects of their designs.

The general idea is that spaces can be broken down into components, analyzed as networks of choices, then represented as maps and graphs that describe the relative connectivity and integration of those spaces. It rests on three basic conceptions of space:

The three most popular ways of analysing a street network are Integration, Choice and Depth Distance.

Theoretically, the integration measure shows the cognitive complexity of reaching a street, and is often argued to 'predict' the pedestrian use of a street: the easier it is to reach a street, the more popular it should be. While there is some evidence of this being true, the method is biased towards long, straight streets that intersect with lots of other streets. Such streets, as Oxford Street in London, come out as especially strongly integrated. However, a slightly curvy street of the same length would typically be segmented into individual straight segments, not counted as a single line, which makes curvy streets appear less integrated in the analysis.

Like Integration, Choice analysis can be restricted to limited local radii, for instance 400m, 800m, 1600m. Interpreting Choice analysis is trickier than Integration. Space syntax argues that these values often predict the car traffic flow of streets, but, strictly speaking, Choice analysis can also be thought to represent the number of intersections that need to be crossed to reach a street. However, since flow values are divided (not subtracted) at each intersection, the output shows an exponential distribution. It is considered best to take a log of base two of the final values in order to get a more accurate picture.

From these components it is thought to be possible to quantify and describe how easily navigable any space is, useful for the design of museums, airports, hospitals, and other settings where wayfinding is a significant issue. Space syntax has also been applied to predict the correlation between spatial layouts and social effects such as crime, traffic flow, and sales per unit area.

Space syntax has grown to become a tool used around the world in a variety of research areas and design applications in architecture, urban design, planning, transport and interior design. In general, the analysis uses one of many software programs that allow researchers to analyse graphs of one (or more) of the primary spatial components.

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