Tim Stonor

Category: Space Syntax

  • The art of modelling

    This film was a pleasure to make: sitting with Kayvan Karimi, chatting with Anna Rose and creating an ‘old-school’ #spacesyntax model by hand with pen, ruler and trace. 

    The film explores the pros and cons of digital versus analogue methods of analysis and design. The potentials of immersive digital experiences are enormous and, as I say in film, the capabilities of digital tools outstrip what we did previously without them.

    Nevertheless, concerns are often raised about the loss of hand skills in architecture (such as sketching and model-making) witthe implication being that the digital designprocess is less natural than the analogue. 

    Having worked in an ‘electronic environment’ for over 40 years, I no longer see the difference between drawing on paper, tablet or screen. But I prefer to work digitally for ease of creation, editing, storage and sharing. 

    I don’t see anything diminishing or dehumanising about the digital world. For me it’s akin to thinking and to dreaming: seeing images and places without tangible form. And then it adds something else: the ability to bring other people into those places, wherever they happen to be. 

    However, I know that many people over my age (58) have worked largely, if not entirely, in analogue. The digital world is less familiar and it’s possible to imagine why it can appear alien or inferior. 

    The same is not so true of people younger than me. And increasingly so. In the next decade, as the current generation of analogue leaders gives way to digital natives, the production, development and dissemination of design ideas will, I believe, be greatly enhanced. Each part of the design process will benefit from the digital input of, for example, an immersive projection or AI algorithm. 

    But whether it’s in sketching, engagement or critical review, the design process relies on human judgment – not least because the combined effects of cultures, climates and contexts mean that no two buildings and no two places are ever truly the same. 

    Will it take another decade for the machines to figure those out? We seem to be close with climate and context. Or will the unpredictability of cultural change be the elusive phenomenon that sustains the relevance of the imaginative brain and the creative hand?

  • The urban cortex

    The urban cortex

    A talk given at Lombardini22 architects in Milan on 13th May 2025.

    The idea I’d like to explore this evening is that cities serve a higher purpose than we typically credit them with, and this idea is that cities are natural extensions of the human brain. Far from being artificial, alien objects, cities work with us, their users, to help us solve the problems of our times. Cities are extensions of our brains and, just like our brains, cities are sophisticated computers.

    At least they are, if we design them well. 

    Great cities are not just beautiful to look at and stimulating to be in. They are also highly efficient human transactions machines: bringing people together to form relationships and generate outcomes. Cities are the outermost layer of our common existence. Hence the title of this talk: the ‘urban cortex’.  

    One challenge when discussing cities is that urban commentators often begin by describing cities as chaotic, that their street networks are ‘labyrinthine’. This is a lazy approach to urbanism – and not one that we share at Space Syntax. Instead, we’ve spent the last 50 years studying the apparent chaos of cities and discovering regularities within them – of spatial layout, of land use distribution, of density, mobility and the distribution of inequalities. 

    These discoveries help us both to understand cities and to better design them. 

    Cities are not chaotic. We don’t build them by chance. Within their apparently labyrinthine randomness there are structures that organise the ways we move through cities – and interact with each other within them.

    There are regularities that allow us to understand cities – not just as urban scientists might pick them apart but as every day users make sense of the places they’re in:

    • how they feel comfortable in them
    • feel like they want to visit and explore them
    • meet people in them
    • go to work in them
    • invest their time and their money 
    • have fun
    • feel excitement. 

    This is the ‘urban buzz’ that draws people to cities.  

    (more…)
  • All ravens are crows but not all crows are ravens_Reflections on Transit Oriented Developments & Walkable Urban Centres

    All ravens are crows but not all crows are ravens_Reflections on Transit Oriented Developments & Walkable Urban Centres

    Sometimes confused for being the same thing, Transit Oriented Developments (TODs) and Walkable Urban Centres (WUCs) are two distinctly different urban creatures. TODs create efficiencies of urban movement, reducing car-dependency by providing proximity for residents and office workers to public transport infrastructure. WUCs sit at the heart of communities, providing mixed-use environments that foster social, economic and cultural productivity.

    In the same way that all ravens are crows but not all crows are ravens, so it is that all WUCs are TODs but not all TODs are WUCs. Why should this be?…

    (more…)
  • World Cities Summit: leveraging the science of cities

    World Cities Summit: leveraging the science of cities

    As an architect & urban planner my principal concern is to make cities work for people. This means understanding how their streets connect to either encourage low carbon transport such as walking and public transport. Or, if they’re disconnected, do they lock in car dependence and its carbon impacts?

    (more…)
  • Choosing the office of the future: a time for quality, not quantity

    Choosing the office of the future: a time for quality, not quantity

    Released today, Deloitte Real Estate’s London Office Crane Survey reports a 50% reduction in the construction of new office space in central London in six months. Yet even such a significant reduction in supply may not be enough to offset a greater reduction in demand. As a result, there is likely to be an oversupply of office space in central London. 

    Mike Cracknell, director at Deloitte Real Estate, said, “By transforming outdated buildings into COVID-safe, high-quality workspaces, developers are looking to upgrade and futureproof their offices in a market where occupational demand is increasingly discerning.”

    Indeed, in a buyers’ market, what matters is quality not quantity. And not only the functional specification of office space in terms of health and safety – such as air quality, general environmental cleanliness and the presence or not of touchless interfaces – but also in terms of organisational performance: is this an office in which my organisation can thrive?

    When evaluating their needs, organisations must consider the fundamental purpose of an office. 

    It is no longer enough – if ever it were – to think of an office as a place that’s big enough to get most people together to give them a place to work from where they can occasionally gather in large rooms for group meetings. That can all be done, to some degree of success, on Zoom. Nor is it about having a desk where everyone can work from. For most, a kitchen table or home office may still be good enough. 

    No, what matters is everything that doesn’t get programmed into the working day: the incidental, the serendipitous. Sometimes thought only of in terms of ‘the social side of things’, the informal interactions that occur in offices are actually the hard currency of operational effectiveness. Offices that ‘buzz’ are places where ideas are born and shared. Where people not only want to work but want to stay working. And where outsiders want to visit, bringing with them their own ideas, their own colleagues and, in so doing, enhancing the melting pot of creativity.

    (more…)

  • How do we measure connectivity, walkability & car-dependence at Space Syntax?

    How do we measure connectivity, walkability & car-dependence at Space Syntax?

    SPATIAL LAYOUT ATTRACTION MODELLING
    ‘Spatial Layout Attraction Modelling’ is a computer modelling technique that calculates the relative importance of each street segment – each piece of street between two intersections – for people moving within towns and cities. 

    We begin by analysing road the geometry of the street network, using road centreline data.

    By finding the simplest routes from all street segment origins to all destinations – the shortest routes that involve the fewest twists and turns – an algorithm calculates how likely it is that movement will pass along any individual route.

    Segments that are part of straighter, more connected and more central streets tend to be used more frequently as part of journeys across the urban network. 

    Journey catchments
    However, the overall importance of any street segment may vary depending on the scale of the journey. Some segments are more likely to be used as part of longer journeys, some as part of shorter journeys, some at both scales and some at neither. 

    For this reason, Spatial Layout Attraction modelling is undertaken at two different scales: first, for a catchment of 10km, which typically identifies the movement hierarchy of people making longer journeys in vehicles and on bikes:

    (more…)

  • Office or home – where’s the best place to work from in the New Normal?

    Office or home – where’s the best place to work from in the New Normal?

    Screenshot 2020-05-04 at 16.53.58

    The question about when we return to work is also a question about how we return to work. For many, remote working has been a revelation. Perhaps not ideal in every respect but certainly helpful in many: the convenience of not commuting, the realisation that Zoom, Teams, Miro, Skype, Whatsapp and other platforms mean it’s possible to stay in touch in ways we hadn’t realised.

    So there’s a fair amount of “unlock inertia” going around and a good set of very reasonable questions being asked:

    • will anyone want to work 9-5 anymore?
    • and on every day of the week?
    • can we carry on having those online meetings because they seem, at least for some purposes, to be more efficient than round-table events?
    • and how do we stop ourselves drifting back to the Old Normal?

    We’ve been discussing the future of work at Space Syntax, both for ourselves and for our clients who we help create workplaces that foster interaction, encourage serendipitous encounters and nurture creativity. I wrote recently about what the office of the future might look like, with no desks and board rooms – a little provocatively for some as it turned out, but deliberately done to stimulate our thinking about why we need offices. (more…)

  • Is physical distancing possible on city streets?

    Is physical distancing possible on city streets?

    Until a vaccine is found for COVID-19, and perhaps beyond, it will be important to practise physical distancing in towns and cities.

    Whether this is possible will come down to the “carrying capacity” of the urban infrastructure: in particular, the relationship between Pedestrian Supply in the form of sufficiently wide footways and Pedestrian Demand in terms of the need for people to walk, whether that is to work, home, school, the shops or for leisure and pleasure.

    Both supply and demand are calculable using tools from tape measures to multi-variable modelling algorithms.

    Screenshot 2020-04-28 at 17.40.49

    Much well-deserved attention has been paid to the Sidewalk Widths NYC project, a digital map that “is intended to give an impression of how sidewalk widths impact the ability of pedestrians to practice social distancing.” By measuring the available width of footways, the map indicates which footways may or may not be suitable for physical distancing.

    Sidewalk width provides an important piece of the “Pedestrian Supply” equation. However, it is not on its own capable of answering the central question: is physical distancing possible?

    First because it is a one-dimensional measure and physical distancing is at least two-dimensional: it may be possible to keep 6 feet to the side of someone else, but is it possible to keep 6 feet in front and 6 feet behind? Given the length of many streets in New York City it may seem apparent that there is plenty of space to go around but the generously wide sidewalks of Times Square demonstrate that, under normal circumstances it is possible for these to be swamped with human activity and, as a result unsuitable for physical distancing under the new normal. Furthermore, it may be possible to observe distancing while walking mid-block but what happens at street intersections? Is there space to queue? Are the street lights synchronised to let one “platoon” of users cross before the next arrives behind them? Is flow predominantly one-directional (which it may often, but not always, be in the rush hour) or two-directional (as it can be at lunchtime)? One-way flows may have less of the “ordered chaos”, the urban ballet of two-way flows and so one-way flows may be more efficient.  (more…)

  • Reflecting ourselves in the city

    Reflecting ourselves in the city

    What can the form of cities tell us about the structure of the brain? And what can the structure of the brain tell us about the form of cities? These are questions that I’d like to address in this talk. In summary, I believe we can learn a good deal about the interaction between the mind and the urban places in which the global majority of people now lives.

    After all, the city is the largest intentional product of the human species. We’ve had them for millennia and, in them, we’ve manifested our societies, created our industries and developed our cultures. They are the product of our imaginations, the places where we take decisions – and they are the inspiration for new thought. The link, I want to suggest though, is not just contextual. It’s much deeper than that. (more…)

  • Beyond placemaking: 7 dimensions of “Place Performance”

    Beyond placemaking: 7 dimensions of “Place Performance”

    Notes from a talk at the Bartlett Real Estate Institute, University College London, 24th April 2019.

     

    Placemaking is the art and science of planning and designing spaces for human activity, however that is done: ‬

    – by a single hand (usually not a good approach) or by multiple hands (usually a good approach)

    – by academics, professionals and non-professionals. ‬‬

    ‪But beyond placemaking is “place working”, or “place functioning”, or “place performance”: when the planning, design and construction work is finished and the place becomes operational. When it fills with the mysterious liquid called human behaviour. ‬‬‬

    And key to which is human transaction: the everyday social and economic exchanges that take place between people – these transactions not only sustain lives but bring about inventions that shape cultures.

    Place Performance has many dimensions. Here are seven that I have seen work in practice: (more…)

  • Transport & housing: tools, standards, principles

    Transport & housing: tools, standards, principles

    Notes for presentation at Transport & Housing conference:

    https://www.transportxtra.com/tx-events/?id=2400

    To understand where we are & where we need to go, we first need to understand where we come from. And where we come from is a relationship with the car that has fragmented cities & damaged lives.

    Transport & housing

    Big problems:

    – obesity

    – mental health

    – social unrest.

    The irony. The paradox.

    We have never been as connected.

    We have never been as spatially segregated. (more…)

  • Cities from scratch – Astana Economic Forum

    Cities from scratch – Astana Economic Forum

    Good afternoon. I’m delighted to be a member of this panel today.

    Let me start by describing my organisation’s approach to the creation of cities from scratch.

    Space Syntax is an international urban planning and design studio and has been involved in plans for new cities and new city extensions throughout the world, including here in Kazakhstan.

    Our approach is built on three key ingredients: (more…)

  • The return of the impossible – Astana Economic Forum

    The return of the impossible – Astana Economic Forum

    Good afternoon. It’s an honour and a pleasure to be here in Astana today with this distinguished panel.

    In speaking about the cities of the future I’d like to speak about three technologies that I think are not only exciting but are also capable of genuinely addressing the “Global Challenges” theme of this Forum.

    The first is a mobility technology. The second is a physical transaction technology. The third is a digital technology.

    As an architect involved in the design of everything from new buildings and public spaces to entirely new cities, these are three technologies that I’m particularly invested in. (more…)

  • Intense relationships: measuring urban intensity

    Enriching design practice by the mapping of human behaviour patterns could transform urban space

    An article published in the Architectural Review on 30th April 2018.

    There’s much debate about how to measure density – dwellings per hectare, bedrooms per hectare or people per hectare; including or excluding major highways, parks and open spaces; the permanent population only or the transient one too? 

    While this gives urban planners something to disagree about, it risks missing the point: great urban places are not created by density; they’re created by intensity. The difference matters. When people describe the buzz of a market they don’t say, ‘Wow – it was so dense’. They’re much more likely to say how intense it was. Density is a word used by planners. Intensity is a word that real people use, and perhaps because it describes the outcomes that people experience rather than the inputs that have gone into creating them. It’s the outcomes that are ultimately more important.

    But planning professionals like density. Even though density doesn’t capture the essence of what it feels like to be somewhere, the term appeals to professional instincts. It describes the raw ingredients that planners have to handle and, once you choose which version of the formula to use, density is easy to measure. It involves a simple calculation of straightforward urban quantities such as the number of people, of houses or of bedrooms, all divided by the geographic area over which those ingredients occur. Easy.

    By contrast, intensity seems more difficult to pin down, not least because it appears to have a subjectively emotional dimension; it speaks of feelings, responses, stimuli; raising problems about how it can be measured. But intensity is also a response to context, to place and above all to people – and here we find clues to its measurement.

    (more…)
  • Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture

    Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture

    Slide 1      

    Good evening. It’s a great honour to have been asked to give this evening’s Kevin Lynch Memorial Lecture, and a special honour to be doing so on behalf of Bill Hillier, who is unable to join us. Bill sends his best wishes to the Urban Design Group.

    Slide 2      

    First, I can’t do justice in the time available to the breadth and depth of Bill’s genius. And I use the word genius carefully. I believe, as do many others, that he is a genius.

    I may only this evening touch on concepts that each deserve a more lengthy explanation and discussion. And, likewise, on the hundreds of urban planning and building design projects that Bill and Space Syntax have helped create over the past four decades.

    But what I hope I will do is paint a picture of Bill’s achievement – albeit a personal one.

    I want to talk especially about the future directions that his work is taking. The future is important because Bill is not obviously sentimental. He is far more likely to want to talk about something he is currently working on, or something he doesn’t yet understand, than to dwell on the past. He hasn’t ever, to my knowledge, sought prizes. He’s enjoyed them when they’ve appeared, but he hasn’t gone after them.

    And, I suspect like anyone receiving a Lifetime Achievement Award, he has wondered why it was being given so soon, before his lifetime is fully achieved. When I spoke with him last weekend he explained that what he’d really like to be talking about is what he’s currently working on. But, as is often the case with emerging theory, he’s not sure he’s right about it yet. In other words there’s always more to be done.

    But Bill was keen to shape this evening’s presentation. So let’s begin with some words from him: (more…)

  • Intelligent mobility: risks & rewards

    第一页   技术就是答案
    Slide 1       Technology is the answer

    Slide01

    1966年，塞德里克·普莱斯说，我喜欢一开始就对新技术进行一点质疑。当然，“技术就是答案”。他也强调：“不过问题是什么？”。
    I’d like to begin with a little scepticism about new technology. Of course “Technology is the answer“, said Cedric Price in 1966. He also said, “But what is the question?”

    这些问题就是我们试图去获得无人驾驶技术。
    What are the questions that we are trying to answer in the pursuit of autonomous vehicle technologies?

    我认为仅仅从驾驶员的角度去谈论智慧出行，并不充分。 我喜欢从整个城市的角度去考虑收益。如果我们过度关注车辆而不是城市，那么风险也是需要考虑的。
    I don’t think it’s enough to talk about intelligent mobility from the perspective of the driver alone. I’d like us to think about its benefits for cities as a whole. And the risks too, if we focus too much on the vehicle and not enough on what’s around it: the city. (more…)

  • We are what we street. The elements of successful #urban placemaking

    PART ONE – THE ELEMENTS OF SUCCESSFUL URBAN PLACEMAKING
    Location
    How the site fits into its context, including complementary and competitive attractions; in other words, what else is nearby to which the design should respond? The success of any development, no matter how large, is a function of the wider setting.

    Linkage
    The specific points at which connections can be made into this context, including public transport connections; in other words the “gateways” into the design.

    Layout
    The spatial layout design of the project itself in terms of its streets and spaces, whether public/private or open/covered, and the importance of:

    – first, encouraging through movement connections between gateways

    – second, providing a simple, intelligible internal circulation network through a grid of streets and other connections.

    This is the most important of the five elements since the spatial layout, once created, tends to be the most permanent part of the development. It is the most expensive to alter once constructed since it sets out the footprints of buildings and, importantly, since it carries the bulk of major services such as energy, water and data supply as well as waste handling.

    Land use
    The quantum of different land use attractions and the disposition of these within the spatial layout both in two and three dimensions; in other words where uses are and how they stack up, especially the land uses that occur at street level and any other principal pedestrian levels.

    The location of land uses should follow the hierarchy of spatial connections created by the spatial layout design, with the most movement-sensitive land uses located on the most spatially important connections and so on. This alignment of land use attraction with spatial layout attraction is a fundamental property of both historic cities and successful modern places.

    Landscape
    How the spatial layout is “dressed” both in terms of the “green/blue” landscape of planting and water and the “architectural” landscape of building frontages at the principal pedestrian levels.

    Here what matters is that the spatial layout is not overly fragmented or dispersed by planting and that the principal pedestrian levels are lined with open, active frontages.

    PART TWO – THE DESIGN
    The five elements of successful placemaking establish a framework for design practice. What matters next is the way in which these generic principles are translated into a specific design proposal. This is a creative step, which relies on a blend of imagination and craft, honed by experience.

    The challenge for future urban practice is that the five elements are not commonly appreciated in the field of retail development, which has instead adopted principles of gravitational attraction that tend to create anchored, inward-facing, covered malls rather than open, street-based shopping streets, whether we call such streets “high streets” or “souqs”.

    PART THREE – THE WAY FORWARD
    It has been, and will continue to be, down to pioneering organisations to point out what is increasingly obvious to all but those who are too immersed in it: that anchored malls create sterile places; and then for these pioneers to deliver new places that work because they employ the timeless elements of successful placemaking.

    Fortunately, this challenge is facilitated by the continued emergence of technology-based tools for analysing location, identifying points of linkage, testing different layout concepts and modelling the interaction of these with different land use and landscape treatments.

  • How cities connect people across space & time

    How cities connect people across space & time

    The subject of “connectivity” is much mentioned in urban planning practice, not least by the Space Syntax community. 

    But what do we mean by connectivity? 

    1. Urban practice should connect across different scales of activity:

    Urban Planning (macro scale)

    Urban Design (meso scale)

    Building Design (micro scale)

    ie 3 scales of space.

    2. Urban practice should also connect across different phases of activity:

    Design (before construction)

    Construction (during construction)

    Operations (after construction)

    ie 3 phases of time. 

    This gives urban practice a clear space/time organisational framework. 

    3. This framework can then be used to discuss the subject of connectivity according to several key dimensions:

    Physical connections – connecting buildings, streets and spaces.

    Human connections – connecting people with each other.

    Environmental connections – connecting human interventions to the natural environment: climate, topography. 

    Digital connections – using data to support physical connections and enhance human connections. 

    Professional connections – connecting across practice boundaries. 

    Connectivity is key. But how we connect is complex and multi-dimensional.

  • Space Syntax in China

    How has Space Syntax been applied in China and are the findings different to those outside China? 

    Space Syntax is not a prescriptive planning and design methodology. Instead it is a culturally responsive planning methodology. It begins by analysing the spatial layout of urban and rural areas and studying patterns of human behaviour, land use and land value. It then shows how spatial layouts influence these patterns. And it allows planners and designers to predict the outcomes of their proposals with greater accuracy than they could before. But it doesn’t prescribe a particular solution. Instead it responds to local cultural differences.

    For this reason I am keen that Space Syntax is used by Chinese people to study and to plan Chinese cities, towns and villages. Only Chinese people fully understand Chinese life. We can train Chinese practitioners how to use Space Syntax tools, but how the findings of the research are interpreted is a different problem. It is a problem best answered by Chinese planners and designers.

  • Sustainable cities of the future – sketch

    Notes for keynote at UK Green Building Council Annual City Summit, Birmingham.

    1. Spatial planning & human behaviour implications of sustainability – reduction of transport carbon through shift towards walking, cycling & public transport

    2. A massive shift needed in transport + land use planning, urban + landscape design, architecture. Professional inertia. Turning the supertanker.

    3. A massive opportunity. Reason to turn.

    4. Lessons from the past eg Pompeii, Brindley Place.

    5. Examples from the present eg Darwin, London SkyCycle, Birmingham Charette.

    6. UK government: Smart & Future cities agenda is a sustainability agenda.

    7. Social inequalities dimension of sustainability.

    8. Need to act at all scales simultaneously ie there’s work for all of us to do.

    9. Challenge for modelling.

    10. Challenge for research.

    11. Challenge for practice: design, development & real estate investment.

    12. Already being acted on. The supertanker is turning.