Dear Bin
I have not had time to fully digest your paper, just a quick look
enough to see what all the argument is about!
One thing I might suggest is that often the status and connectivity
of a road relates to when it was built - many of the most connected
roads are the oldest, and many of the oldest are the most connected.
However I have not seen a serious analysis of this - but it would be
fun for someone to do!
On the point of investing in the 20% of network to get maximum reward
- of course this assumes you are tying to maximum traffic capacity or
efficiency - but those main streets (arterial streets) may serve
other functions
The reference to developing embryos is interesting but it depends how
literally this is intended. Surely an embryo follows a developmental
programme that is reasonably predictable in advance - put another
way, if you plant a seed of a known type you will be able to guess
the rough shape, even if not in detail I just mention this because
Christopher Alexander often talks about "unfolding wholes" like this
(The Nature of Order), but it implies too much that something is
pre-programmed. However i think the self-organized angle is a good
one to make.
On the first page you say there are two ways of merging street
segments into meaningful streets - of course I can't help thinking at
this point of the route structure method I presented in Streets &
Patterns, which I think does do this, but not (I think) exactly in
either of the two ways you mention.
I think there is much interesting work to be done to relate the
empirical analysis of networks (e.g proportion of most connected
roads, or backbone, as you mention) to how roads authorities think
when they designate road classification (trunk roads, etc).
Sorry for the abrupt nature of these comments - I am having to type
fast and move on to some deadlines!
best wishes
stephen
At 15:49 30/05/2007, you wrote:
>this paper might be of interest to some of you,
>http://arxiv.org/ftp/physics/papers/0703/0703223.pdf
>
>your comments are welcome.
>
>Cheers.
>
>Bin
>--
>
>------------------------------------------------
>Bin Jiang
>Department of Land Surveying and Geo-informatics
>The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
>Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong.
>Tel: (852) 2766 4335, Fax: (852) 2330 2994
>Email: [log in to unmask]
>------------------------------------------------
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