Space syntax: consolidation and transformation of an urban research field

Space Syntax is a set of theories and methods for modelling and analyzing cities, using space as the fundamental generator of the city. A major virtue of this approach is that it is supported by a powerful social theory of space. Founded in the 1970s and 1980s by Bill Hillier and his colleagues (Hillier and Hanson 1984; Hillier et al. 1987), and developed further in the following decades, space syntax theory describes the logic of society through its manifestation in spatial systems: how the way spaces are put together ‒ or the configuration of space ‒ relates directly with how people perceive, move through and use spatial systems of any kind, ranging from small domestic spaces to large-scale cities (Penn et al. 1998). This sounds like a common sense way of understanding cities, but yet has been overlooked in many urban theories, particularly in the recent decades, when rapid growth and urbanization have demanded new ways of dealing with cities.

The configuration-function relationship, or the space-society paradigm in more general terms, has a direct consequence for design and planning. Since there is a direct relationship between spatial configuration and urban functions, analysis of spatial configuration provides a powerful tool for designing, shaping, maintaining and changing urban functions. Based on this assumption, which is strongly supported by research, a series of methods and modelling techniques have been developed for analyzing spatial configuration (Penn 2008). These techniques are predominantly based on very fundamental concepts of human behaviour, such as movement, visual perception and human occupation, which directly link physical space with people. The models use simple geometrical attributes, such as lines of sight and movement or visual fields of perception, to create a network of spatial elements. This network is then turned into a pattern of relationships, or a graph representation (Freeman 1977), which can be quantitatively analyzed to determine the relative role that each space plays in the configuration of the system, as a whole or in its parts.

Due to the nature of the elements used in simulation, any analysis of spatial configuration by space syntax methods relates directly to how the urban system functions. This simply turns a set of analytical spatial models into a useful method for measuring how movement, activity and behaviour are distributed within the system (Karimi 2012). These methods are simple in nature, but they have the capability to become more complex by linking spatial configuration with other spatial attributes, such as movement, land use, density, social interactions and practically any attribute of the city that has a spatial nature. The model is also multi-scalar, since the configuration can be analyzed in different contexts and is multi-disciplinary, since spatial attributes are embedded into various disciplines. The product is an analytical tool that can be used effectively to understand complex spatial systems and design them more effectively using analytical evidence.

Under the overarching theoretical framework of space syntax, further sub-theories have been developed to explain and underpin various aspects of urban systems. The theory of ‘natural movement’ argues that it is the movement generated by the spatial grid that creates the life of the city, rejecting the commonly-thought idea of place as one thing and movement between places as another (Hillier et al. 1993). Complementary to that, the theory of ‘movement economy’ explains that the activities in the city adapt to take maximum advantage of the movement (Hillier and Penn 1996). The ‘pervasive centrality’ theory implies that centrality functions diffuse throughout the network, generating a pattern that is far more complex than envisaged in theories of poly-centrality, but can be captured by the configurational analysis of the spatial network (Hillier 2001). Further theoretical propositions have been developed to deal with various facets of urbanism, including: urban migration and ethnic clustering (Vaughan and Arbaci 2011), behaviour and interaction in working places (Penn, Desyllas, and Vaughan 1999), linking accessibility, density and diversity to explain the ‘spatial capitals’ (Marcus 2010), on informal settlements and organic cities (Hillier 1996; Karimi 2002). These inter-connected sets of theories create a diverse yet unified platform for space syntax research.

In parallel, academic researchers have pushed the boundaries of the field by developing new tools and methods, such as segment-angular spatial network analysis (Hillier and Iida 2005), Visual Graph Analysis, or VGA (Turner et al. 2001), vision-guided Agent-Based Modelling (Turner, Penn, and Alasdair 2002), origin-destination weighted network analysis to advance the methods of spatial accessibility analysis (Ferguson, Fridrisch, and Karimi 2012), GIS-linked tools and software to generate and use the space syntax analysis within a GIS environment (Gil et al. 2015), Place Syntax, a combined accessibility and the urban environment elements analysis tool (Stahle, Marcus, and Karlstrom 2008), and many other methods, techniques and software that follow the principles of the overarching space syntax theory.

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when space syntax research was heavily under way in University College London (UCL), and indeed in many other universities around the world, an increasing demand emerged for using this approach in real life urban and architectural design projects. The very early projects undertaken by Space Syntax Laboratory, a research centre at the Bartlett, demonstrated great potential for using the methodology in consultancy. The desire to use this approach was shared by various groups. Designers, developers and local authorities were all interested, since analytical tools could help optimize the plans and avoid risk in urban developments. Currently, there are a growing number of urban consultancy firms that utilize space syntax research in their projects, or provide specialized space syntax consultancy services.

Today, space syntax research cannot be considered a specialized or novel field anymore. The research is extending in various ways and links with other disciplines or research areas. This is happening in many directions, to develop further research on: evidence-based design approaches and tools (Sailer et al. 2008), transport planning and public transport systems (De Koning et al. 2017), resilience and urban planning for hazards and disasters (Maureira and Karimi 2017), social media and co-presence (Shen and Karimi 2016), environmental and spatial cognition (Dalton 2003; Marcus, Giusti, and Barthel 2016), urban sprawl and regional planning, walkability studies (Dhanani, Tarkhanyan, and Vaughan 2017), cycling studies (Raford, Chiaradia, and Gil 2007; McCahil and Garrick 2008), urban regeneration and slum upgrading (Karimi and Parham 2012), Transport-Orientated Design (TOD) and other major infrastructural studies, urban lighting and night economies (Dwimirnani and Karimi 2017), and many other areas of research that have not conventionally been part of the morphological or architectural research. This shows that while the research field is maturing and consolidating, it also becomes more accessible and useful to the other fields of research.

In this themed issue, three papers are presented which attempt to push the boundaries of the space syntax field further and connect with the other fields. In ‘Space syntax investigation of Lubbock, a grid-like American city and some insights into isotropic layouts’, Haq and Berhie apply the old and new space syntax methods of analysis to an American city to explore the applicability of the methods to a perfect grid structure. Their work proves an important concept in this type of spatial grids; local structure is more appropriately defined by metric distance, but the global structure follows a topo-geometric logic. In their paper, ‘Combining multi-criteria and space syntax analysis to assess a pedestrian network: the case of Oporto’, Jabbari, Fonseca and Ramos describe a GIS-based integrated method to assess a pedestrian network by combining multiple criteria and link them with space syntax analysis. They use this approach to evaluate the ‘walkability’ of the routes within the City Centre of Porto, a method which could be applied to other types and conditions of urban centres. Finally, in ‘Urban evolution as a spatio-functional interaction process: the case of central Shanghai’, Shen and Karimi explore the transformation of urban centrality structures by the shifting the interdependence between spatial centrality indices and delivered urban function connectivity metrics, generated in tandem by spatial network and land-use patterns. The study shows that the complex interrelationships between the spatial network and land-use patterns are the major determinants of the formation of the urban function regions.

These three papers, published in this themed issue of the Journal of Urban Design, present an interesting sample of the ways the space syntax research is developing and connecting with the other fields such as morphological, planning, transport and urban design studies. Today the term ‘space syntax’ should be considered an umbrella for socio-spatial studies that employ configurational spatial network tools and intend to bring analytical, evidence-based rigour into urban design and planning.