Space Syntax in The Guardian
Choice quotes from Philip Ball’s Guardian article “Going with the flow,” via Computing for Emergent Architecture:
“Town planning began as an attempt not to understand cities but to replace them with something better,” says Bill Hillier, director of the Space Syntax Laboratory at University College London. Idealists like Robert Owen aimed to create a bucolic-industrial utopia, and paved the way for “balanced urban environments” such as garden cities.
... What made the problem particularly hard was that no one was quite sure what urban design was. To some, it was architecture writ large, which meant it should embrace the modernism of Le Corbusier. To others, it was a form of social planning that should be rooted in economics.
... If we are going to design good cities, says Hillier, we need first to observe them scientifically to deduce their fundamental rules. He believes good urban planning means relinquishing some control. Cities are organic: they grow, evolve and adapt.