The general idea is that spaces can be broken down into components, analyzed as networks of choices, then represented

as maps and graphs that describe the relative connectivity and integration of those spaces. It rests on three basic conceptions of space:

an isovist (popularised by Michael Benedikt at University of Texas), or viewshed or visibility polygon, the field of view from any particular point axial space (idea popularized by Bill Hillier at UCL), a straight sight-line and possible path, and convex space (popularized by John Peponis and his collaborators at Georgia Tech), an occupiable void where, if imagined as a wireframe diagram, no line between two of its points goes outside its perimeter, in other words, all points within the polygon are visible to all other points within the polygon.

The three most popular Space Syntax analysis methods of a street network are Integration, Choice and Depth Distance.

Integration measures how many turns one has to make from a street segment to reach all other street segments in the network, using shortest paths. If the amount of turns required for reaching all segments in the graph is analyzed, then the analysis is said to measure integration at radius 'n'. The first intersecting segment requires only one turn, the second two turns and so on. The street segments that require the least amount of turns to reach all other streets are called 'most integrate' and are usually represented with hotter colors, such as red or yellow. Integration can also be analyzed in local scale, instead of the scale of the whole network. In case of radius 4, for instance, only four turns are counted departing from each street segment. Theoretically, the integration measure shows the cognitive complexity of reaching a street, and is often argued to 'predict' the pedestrian use of a street. It is argued that the easier it is to reach a street, the more popularly it should be used. While there is some evidence of this being true, the method is also biased towards long, straight streets that intersect with lots of other streets. Such streets, as Oxford street in London, come out as especially strongly integrated. However, a slightly curvy street of the same length would typically not be counted as a single line, but instead be segmented into individual straight segments, which makes curvy streets appear less integrated in the analysis. Choice measure is easiest to understand as a 'water-flow' in the street network. Imagine that each street segment is given an initial load of one unit of water, which then starts pouring out of the starting street segment onto all the other segments that successively connect to it. Each time an intersection appears, the remaining value of flow is divided equally amongst the splitting streets, until all the other street segments in the graph are reached. For instance, at the first intersection with a single other street, the initial value of one is split into two remaining values of one half, and allocated to the two intersecting street segments.Moving further down, the remaining one half value is again split among the intersecting streets and so on. When the same procedure has been conducted using each segment as a starting point for the initial value of one, then a graph of final values appears. The streets with the highest total values of accumulated flow are said to have the highest choice values. Like Integration, Choice analysis too can be restricted to limited local radii, for instance 400m, 800m, 1600m etc. Interpreting Choice analysis is trickier than Integration. Space Syntax argues that these values often predict the car traffic flow of streets.

However, strictly speaking, Choice analysis can also be thought to represent the amount of intersections that need to be crossed to reach a street. However, since flow values are divided, not subtracted at each intersection, the output shows an exponential distribution. It is considered best to take a log of base two of the final values in order to get a more accurate picture. Depth Distance is the most intuitive of the three analysis methods, it explains the linear distance from the center point of each street segment to the center points of all the other segments. If every segment is successively chosen as a starting point, then a graph of accumulative final values is achieved. The streets with lowest Depth Distance values are said to be nearest to all the other streets. Again, the search radius can be limited to any distance.

[edit] Applications
From these components it is thought to be possible to quantify and describe how easily navigable any space is, useful for the design of museums, airports, hospitals, and other settings where wayfinding is a significant issue. Space syntax has also been applied to predict the correlation between spatial layouts and social effects such as crime, traffic flow, sales per unit area, and so on.

[edit] History
It has since grown to become a tool used around the world in a variety of research and areas and design applications in the fields of architecture, urban design, planning, transport and interior design. In general, the analysis uses one of many software programs that allow researchers to analyse graphs of one (or more) of the primary spatial components. Over the past decade, space syntax techniques have also been used for research in fields as diverse as archaeology, information technology, urban and human geography, and anthropology. Since 1997, the space syntax community has held a series of biennial conferences, and many journal papers have been published on the subject, chiefly in Environment and Planning B.

[edit] Criticism
Space syntax's mathematical reliability has recently come under scrutiny because of a number of paradoxes that arise under certain geometric configurations. These paradoxes have been highlighted by Carlo Ratti at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in a passionate academic exchange with Bill Hiller and Alan Penn[citation needed]. There have also been moves to return to combine space syntax with more traditional transport engineering models, using intersections as nodes and constructing visibility graphs to link them by various researchers, including Bin Jiang, Valerio Cutini and Mike Batty. Recently there has also been research development that combines space syntax with geographic accessibility analysis in GIS, such as the place syntax-models developed by the research group Spatial Analysis and Design at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.

Project Description:

Space Syntax is an advanced spatial technology as well as a highly influential theory of architecture and town planning. It was originally developed by Professor Bill Hillier and his colleagues at University College London (UCL). Through over twenty years of research-informed consulting, they have developed a powerful computer-based modelling technique that demonstrates the key role of spatial layout in shaping patterns of human behaviour. These patterns include movement on foot, on cycles and in vehicles; wayfinding and purchasing in retail environments; vulnerability and criminal activity in buildings and urban settings; co-presence and communications in the workplace. Their technology is underpinned by spatial design principles that have influenced planning and design policy throughout the world. Their mission is to help create environments that are socially and economically sustainable

Spatial network analysis software are computer tools used to prepare various graphbased analysis of spatial networks. They stem from the research field of space syntax in the domain of architecture, although they can now be used to analyse road networks over an entire continent. As the domain of space syntax has expanded, there are now a plethora of tools associated with it. Since most were developed within the academic community, most tend to be free for academic use, and some are open source. In historical order:

Axman The (near) original developed by Nick Sheep Dalton of UCL to perform axial line analysis on computers running Mac OS, currently used in more than 50 countries. This spawned many offshoots such as Pesh (for the analysis of convex space networks) and SpaceBox (for the analysis of 'all-line' axial maps). Spatialist Developed at Georgia Institute of Technology to implement theoretical innovations principally introduced by John Peponis, this software is plugs into the MicroStation CAD package to analyse networks of automatically generated 'e-spaces' and 's-spaces'. Axwoman, written by Bin Jiang while at UCL, is a tool to perform axial analysis as a plug-in to ESRI products. Depthmap Developed by Alasdair Turner of UCL, this software was first developed to generate isovists and perform visibility graph analysis of building systems on computers running Windows, but now includes the automatic generation of axial line networks and analysis of axial line networks and road segment line networks at anything up to the level of the USA or Europe. OmniVista Developed by Nick Sheep Dalton and Ruth Conroy Dalton to perform a range of isovist measures on Mac OS computers. Fathom, a commercial implementation of visibility graph analysis written by the Intelligent Space Partnership. Mindwalk Developed by Lucas Figueiredo, This software performs spatial analysis over standard axial maps and new continuity maps. It is written in Java and runs on several platforms. Also known as xSpace, Mindwalk has been used

as a research and teaching tool at several institutions since 2002 and now it is being distributed worldwide for academic and non-commercial purposes.

Isovist Analyst by Sanjay Rana while at UCL, this program creates isovists from building plans as a plug-in to ESRI products. Ajanachara. Open source software developed by Gerald Franz at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics to perform visibility graph analysis of 3D Studio Max and VRML models. Webmap Also developed by Nick Sheep Dalton at UCL, this software is free to use (although it requires registration), and allows users to analyse axial maps through a web browser interface. Confeego Developed by the commercial company Space Syntax Limited, but available free for academic use, this software plugs directly into MapInfo to analyse line axial networks. AJAX by Mike Batty of UCL, performs both traditional axial network analysis (Batty calls this the primal analysis), and point-based visibility analysis introduced by Bin Jiang (which Batty calls the dual analysis). In a recent paper, Batty shows the elegant mathematical relationship between the two analyses. OverView plug-in to AutoCad by Christian Derix for Aedas Architects in collaboration with the Center for Evolutionary Computing in Architecture CECA. Allows architects to do quick visual integration mapping via isovist analysis on their projects. Contains also the possibility to analyse non-planar environments to take volumes and hilly sites into account. AXess 1.0 by Jennifer Brisbane at the City University of New York. A context menu tool for ArcGIS 9.x that calculates connectivity, control, mean depth, global integration, and local integration for all nodes in an axial line layer. Free download available at ESRI ArcScripts. Webmap-At-Home by Nick Sheep Dalton UCL. A Java implementation of the original Axman program with a number of extra features added. This is a platform neutral full application capable of reading DXF files and the original Axman binary format. Free download available at WebmapAthome . AxialGen 1.0 by Bin Jiang and Xintao Liu at the University of Gvle, Sweden. It is a plugin to ArcGIS 9.2 that generates automatically the axial lines for a complex polygon with holes. Layout-iQ 1.0 Developed by Nelson Lee at Rapid Modeling. Used extensively in healthcare, manufacturing, banking, retail, and office space, Layout-iQ is a software that evaluates the frequency of flow in a workspace and measures the total travel distance that resources will travel to navigate through the workspace. The software integrates CAD drawings with a diagram of flow between points. The thickness and color of the flow lines indicate the intensity of flow in each line, so users can visually see high priority point to point relationships. As the user moves locations in the diagram, the software dynamically calculates the

impact on travel distance and users can immediately see the impact of the change on operations. The software also allows for the creation of improved aisles and paths using the aisle effectiveness measurement and actual path diagramming.

The morphology lab at the Georgia Institute of Technology

Space Syntax
John Peponis, Ph.D.