Alain

I am not suggesting that there is anything wrong with
the ideas behind Space Syntax, only that there seems
to be a resistance to formulating a theory as such, or
perhaps several competing theories.  As Didem
suggests, it seems more like a lucky dip of methods of
measurement, statistical techniques and more general
ideas.  This might explain why, almost every year,
this list gets postings from ex-students of UCL asking
something like "What is Space Syntax all about."

Of course it is about human movement, and also about
surveillance and co-presence, but HOW is it ‘about’
these things?  We have the famous ‘correlation’
between axial configuration and pedestrian traffic,
but why does this happen?  What are the limiting
factors?  In other words,  what is the theoretical
mechanism forming a causal link between configuration
and traffic density?  When I raised this previously,
Alan wrote "You are asking us to get on with the
science."  Well – yes.

It seems tantalising that so much is implied, yet so
little is set out in concepts which we outsiders can
understand.  This is frustrating because it does not
seem to be too difficult in principle.  The SLoS set
out long ago that the measurable aspects of
configuration that relate to human use of space are
the affordances of vision and of movement.  From these
you derive the zones of co-presence, or zones of
surveillance in Peponis’s work.  But everyone wants to
talk about lines and spaces, not the affordance of
co-presence and surveillance.  Yet these affordances
are physical facts about places as they can be used by
people, with implications for methodology.   And they
are ideas we can understand.

The second part of the theory needs to explain how
patterns of co-presence, traffic and surveillance can
afford (not determine, but afford) different uses of
space, including potential levels of traffic between
spaces.  Again we have the ‘correlation’ between crime
and pedestrian traffic, hotly contested by the Police.
Here we have  Hillier’s idea of ‘Virtual community’
which is perhaps the nearest to a theory of how a
social effect afforded by a configurational feature.

However, it is not really a testable, refutable causal
theory, is it?   I feel that ‘Decoding Homes’ may
offer more potential for this part of a social theory,
since it looks in more detail of how people occupy
space, and control other spaces by doing so.  I feel
that the potential or occupation is as much a
predictable aspect of the use of space as the
potential for traffic through it.  But the insights of
‘decoding Homes’ do not seem to have been conceived as
a generally applicable theory.  

As far as I know, we do not yet have theory which can
take configurational values and make predictions of
the general type of social use for which the space
will be good, on the basis of the patterns of human
interaction which would be possible.

That would be my idea of a social science of space,
based in a theory (or some theories) of space syntax.

Regards,   Tom

--- Alain Chiaradia <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Tom 
> Can you elaborate on what would be needed to be a
> social theory of space?
> "Space syntax does not seem to be a social science
> of space There is no theoretical mechanism to show
that the
> two have a causal link?"
> Is not mobility a fundamental part of being social? 
> Have you read the report by the Social Exclusion
> Unit and the role of mobility... they may beg to
differ.
> _______________________________________
> 
> Alain 
> ______________________________________


	
	
		
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