Spatial planning Category
What exactly is human scale?
Posted on May 9, 2014 Leave a Comment
Darwin City Centre Masterplan, Space Syntax For too long, architects and urban planners have pursued the myth that human scale means “local” scale. In doing so, they have downscaled space, thinking that by fragmenting and disconnecting towns and cities into small enclaves they would be creating “community”. They were wrong. Isolated and disconnected, people on inner -city […]
Spatial Layout as Critical Infrastructure
Posted on January 14, 2014 Leave a Comment
Stub…notes for an upcoming conference talk Key issue to be addressed: – Urban-Rural development – Urban Regeneration – Smart Cities. When a network of streets is laid out, planners and designers build in an enormous amount of “embedded potential”: the pattern of movement land use potential safety land value social interaction public health carbon emissions. […]
SkyCycle – elevated but not remote
Posted on January 3, 2014 Leave a Comment
The comparison between SkyCycle – a proposal to create a network of strategic cycling routes above London’s radial railway lines – and the City of London’s much maligned network of (unbuilt or demolished) upper level walkways is one worthy of attention. 1. The City of London “Pedways” often paralleled routes at street level. When they […]
A definition of “Smart” – screens, signs and shop windows
Posted on November 18, 2013 1 Comment
“Smart” is too often, too narrowly defined in terms of the benefits of digital technology. Of course, digital technology can help cities to be smarter. But being smart means much more than that. My own preference is to define “smart” by focusing on three factors: 1. people 2. the information that people receive 3. the […]
Spatial Planning and the Future of Cities
Posted on October 24, 2013 2 Comments
How might cities be planned in the future? This is not only a question of how they might look but also, and more importantly, about how they might be laid out as patterns of buildings and spatial connections. Laying out a city means answering two key questions: “what goes where?” and the “how does it all connect together?” […]
A short film about Space Syntax
Posted on May 12, 2012 Leave a Comment
Tim Stonor, Managing Director, Space Syntax “The population of the world is increasing and, as it increases, more and more of us are living in cities. As cities have grown in the 20th century they have often grown to disconnect people. Space Syntax has discovered that many of these problems in cities – disconnection, lack […]
The power of the network 