“The Structure of Public Space and Everyday Life”
My favorite lecture at Micro/Macro1 was that of Lars Marcus, architect and researcher, titled as above. Just a few days ago I encountered the concept of “space syntax,” so I was very happy to discover that the lecture essentially was an introduction. For now, I’ll just dump my notes along with some shots of his slides.
Planning is a design process – 2 kinds of knowledge: generative knowledge + predictive knowledge. Phases. Natural process. Part of any design process.
Problem: huge tasks – cities grow more rapidly, lack of predictive knowledge. – Proposals (Roppongi) – but will they work?
Easily stress differences when comparing cities. Good, but – also stress similarities – maybe the differences aren’t HUGE?
12 cities, images of – very similar.
Maybe the amazing thing about cities are [that they are] similar – Bill Hillis? Hillary? Hillier? [Yes, Hillier.] Founder of Space Syntax.
Proposal: All cities look like this [picture below] – spaces, barriers. 2 fundamental uses: movement (in spaces), occupation (work, live, shop, ...) – spaces for this. MOVEMENT + OCCUPATION.
You cannot use M space for O, and vice versa.
Don’t get too caught up with differences.
Starting point: cities are similar in this regard – now what? Let’s not look at parts but at the relation of parts [between]. Typologies:
Lamella: tree-like, “lollipop” street structure. Block: grid. We change the movement system, but keep the parts [i.e. lollipop structure with blocks; grid with lamellas; not sure I get this]. Impact on quality.
How do I analyze this? – drawing an axial map [?] – fewest possible lines – then we can see the relation:
Look at how accessible Hornsgatan [is] from all the other streets? – For all the streets, do this. [This is called] calculating the integration red = more integrated; yellow = less; blue = less; green ? (probably > blue) [In the picture below, Hornsgatan is the red straight line from left to right.]
How the spaces are used (Hornsgatan / Götgatan red [Götgatan is the red street top to bottom.]) Götgatan = most integrated + used.
Now: the space for occupation. Look at legally defined, rather than the physically defined space.
Lot of different land owners – plot density of Södermalm. Land-owners – primary actors; people living – secondary ~. Larger [higher] plot-density → higher diversity.
Put them together. [The picture of Södermalm showing the axial map, and one not included here, showing plot density. See below.]
Picture of SoFo [South of Folkungagatan], [another of] Katarina Bangata. More diversity, higher integration. [These are probably only interesting if you’re familiar with Stockholm’s Södermalm district.]
Neutral system, you can’t tell from the tell (like [as] in Manhattan) where centers are – from the map & centers move.
[What you’ll find are] different patterns – [which] overrides typology [it doesn’t matter] – busy streets + quiet streets. Less diversity in quiet streets (obviously)
[Shows a picture of] Södra station – segregated, low level of movement, few actors, low diversity.
Conclusion: develop predictive tools! [Usually:] hope rather than confidence that something will work
Tokyo + Stockholm → similar, then: we can say that they are different (first/then) we can analyze these cities in a more rewarding way.
And that was the end of my notes. Great talk, and I hope my notes are of any use. I’ll probably revisit this soon. See the Space Syntax website, where there’s for instance an axial map of London. The article The Common Language of Space also looks interesting; for instance it maps crime rates to plot density and level of integration.
1 At the Museum of Architecture in Stockholm, subtitled “An urban meeting between Stockholm and Tokyo”; see also my notes from the lecture “Evolution of [Minato City] 1960’s to the Present Day.”