Hi Danjuma,
>
> I will like to pick on the question of GIS you mentioned (in
> passing?). It
> seems to me that the more options that are built into a model,
> the better it
> could be in generationg desired outcomes. However, I think Space
> syntax and
> GIS are bias to certain operating systems, which somehow restricts
> integrated analysis. The only practical attempt to the best of my
> knowledge,
> is CASA's VENUE project, that looked at the possibilities of generating
> axial maps within AV GIS.

There have been a number of other pieces of work in this direction over the
years. Fiona Redfern developed syntax analysis using OS road centre lines
within Arcview (ie. without the axial lines). This looked promising, but at
the time the extent of data cleaning required to get a reasonable map made
it more time consuming than manual axial input. Fofi Kontou developed a
version of VGA in Arcview. I think Jake's version of VGA is also Arcview
based. The nice thing about Bin Jiang's Axwoman was that it included (and
enhanced) the databrushing features that Axman developed, and demonstrated
that it was possible in principal to do some kind of analysis in GIS. The
downside was that since it was developed in Avenue script it couldnt process
realistic sized systems (I think there was a 256 line limit). Bin Jiang has
since developed a version 2 of Axwoman as a web based stand alone tool -
rather nice looking in fact, but at an early stage of development. A really
impressive piece of software providing integrated support for urban planning
and design along the lines of the Venue project but more comprehensive and
with a user interface was produced by Benamy Turkeiniz some years earlier.

The other form of integration followed by John Peponis in his Spatialist
software is with CAD rather than GIS - in his case with Microstation, but
others have developed add-ons for Autocad I believe.

What we tend to do here is use a GIS for data input, integration and
storage, and a standalone processing package - Ovation - to do the axial
analysis and produce the table of variables itself. We work in the same way
with VGA using Depthmap to do the analysis. This works well, but GIS's lack
of decent integrated statistics and statistical visualisation means we still
use Axman during the design process, as well as for 'ideas testing'
research. I find that the purpose made tool is often better than a generic
one.

Sheep is currently working on a new 'web based' version of axman, and
hopefully that will soon make the platfrm issue a thing of the past, at
least so far as axial analysis is concerned.

Alan
>
> I have tried Axwoman in a number of cases and found some shortcomings,
> compared to Axman. Is there any development in this direction so far?
> I tried getting some insight from Dodge without success. Perhaps
> Jiang and
> Sheep or anyone out there can provide some useful comments on this.
>
> My perception is that a system that anchores these techniques within a
> common platform or some reasonable crossover, can help in aportioning
> options for VGA or AN and space syntax.
>
> Danjuma
>
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