Stephen Read raised some good questions,

I'm pretty sure no one has got a full or proper answer - these questions
are complex, and of course the correct ones to ask. I think that I have a
couple of contributions to make to the discussion though, however these are
very much based on UK experience and the UK planning/development system.
I'm sure that things are different on the continent, but I would be
interested in how different and whether the general framework I propose
holds.

First, development in the UK is pretty well dictated by private initiative.
Planning policies and other incentives (development subsidies, EC
development zones etc.) can aim to tip the balance of what gets done, but
by and large planning can only be reactive to initiatives framed in the
private sector. The Syntax Lab portfolio of work has been shaped by this,
and it is mainly used by private sector development. The reason for this is
that development is interested in forecasting and taking advantage of the
structural potentials of the city, and this is what the theoretical
understanding of urban sysytems and their relation to social and economic
structures developed through syntax research makes possible. The central
planning system run in the UK by local government has tended to frame its
policies in ways which are essentially aspatial, or at least not
particularly configurationally sensitive. This has made it rather slow to
take up syntax. (As an aside I dont think that this is necessarily the way
it should be. Guido Stegen's applications of syntax techniques to writing
local development plans in Brussels shows one way in which a planning
system can be made both proactive and can intervene at the fine scale at
which configuration matters, and this I understand has been highly
successful in attracting private sector investment to invest in the
implementation of the local plan.)

Second, I think that there is  theoretical level at which we can talk about
policy and syntax in the same breath. As I see it syntax helps us to
understand somthing about the structurally stable effects of urban
configuration. The problem with policy is that by and large all it can do
is aim to nudge the trajectory taken by the evolution of an urban system.
That is fine if policy and the underlaying structural inertia of the sytem
are headed in the same direction, but as often as not the aim of policy
interventions is to shift the natural pathway of development towards what
is seen as a more desirable direction (eg the northern business area in
Amsterdam). This might be successful, but only I think, under very specific
conditions.

The way I visualise this is as a landscape in which the trajectory of urban
development follows the valleys. If you happen to be relatively near a pass
between two valleys then policy can shift the trajectory of development
from one valley to the next, but usually all it will do is roll the sytem
up the hill a bit and then it will return into the same valley as before
(the southern development in Amsterdam). With hindsight it is pretty
obvious that the the pattern of integration, the airport, the motorway ring
and the regional scale transport links, as well as the central grid
structure of Amsterdam pointing towards the south and the density of
housing development on that side were all creating conditions that were
shifting accessibility to the south rather than the north. The
structural/configurational conditions would all point towards that being
the likely centre for car oriented business to develop. Policies aimed at
developing the north would have a severe hill to climb before that would
emerge as a 'natural' development path. Policy alone would be very likely
to fail. In might be possible if policy were linked to development of
infrastructure that could change the structural shape of the landscape and
so tilt the trajectory towards the north, but planners tend not to think
that way. Certainly in the UK where policy is pretty much the only tool and
infrastructure development is not fundable any longer, this is not really
an option.

I guess that the simple thing to say is that policy measures usually act
just as perturbations of the trajectory of urban development on a
landscape. Configuration on the other hand is a primary component in
structuring the shape of the landscape in the first place. This, in my
view, is why syntax and theories like the 'movement economy' or 'natural
movement' provide us with some of the tools needed to unpack somthing about
the shape of the landscape, and this is a necessity if we are to be
intelligent about targetting policy measures at those areas where they have
a chance of success, or specifying the infrastructure development necessary
to change the shape of the landscape so as to make a policy feasible.

It seems clear to me that syntax has a role to play in the debate you
raise, but it is also clear that the notion that private and public
interests are somehow naturally at odds is no longer obvious in the UK.
Most of our 'development' clients - who are undoubtdly a pretty enlightened
subset of all developers, but also a financially successful lot! - seem to
have realised that their financial success depends on backing developments
that change the shape of the landscape, and so capture value, or that make
use of potential that has not been realised so far but that has been
created by the recent evolution of the system. In both of these situations
'capital' is investing in and gaining profit from the changing shape of the
'landscape', however that landscape and its evolution is somthing that is
actualy created by the way that everyone else in the society behaves.
Capital will not ultimately profit is it acts against the majority
interest, and it stands to make its greatest gains if it uses the 'common
good' as leverage. Get the shops in the right place and that is good for
the developer, the shop owner and the shopper. Get the shops in the wrong
place and everyone loses out. In fact I think that probably the only
unenlightened developers who may act against common interest are the ones
who act as the planners would wish, and take advantage of fiscal incentives
to develop, make short term gains, but leave developed infrastructure that
can never be successful as it is not coherent with the shape of the
landscape.

To put it simply what I'm saying is that by and large everyone's interests
are the same, just so long as short term profiteering can be controlled.
The sad paradox is that the effects of policy measures (arbitary
perturbations in trajectories on the landscape)  is to create the
conditions under which short term profits can be made by unscrupulous
developers which are often at odds with the common good.

>Alan and all,
>
>All the detailed experience and knowledge that the SSL has aquired over the
>years must be an increadible resource - but not much of it gets published -
>perhaps, as you have intimated, for very good reasons. I hope someone's got
>a book in mind to get at least some of it into the public domain
>eventually. My point is that there are some generalities - as far as cities
>are concerned at least - I haven't been following the use of space syntax
>in buildings nearly as closely - which do not rely on a detailed
>understanding of specific cases, and which relate to an argument - more
>like a struggle - taking place in the academic, professional and political
>arenas, not to mention in the space of the city, for the future of the city
>and its public space. I'm not entirely in touch with how this argument is
>running in the UK, but here in Holland the future of the city, or rather
>the entire urbanised landscape, is a big subject. We see some big changes
>here with business and local and national government sometimes working
>together, sometimes at odds and the interests of local communities and 'the
>common good' always under pressure. Sometimes events seem to run away with
>things and take everyone by surprise. The proposed business area on the
>north of Amsterdam has been trumped by the (supposedly) unexpected
>emergence of a new business zone to the south. Some of us are less
>surprised than others and the surprise may be a bit of a pose by some who
>should have seen it coming if they were thinking clearly. But politics is a
>factor in all this and individuals and their egos and vested interests and
>pet projects play no small part.
>
>I've been playing with the axial map of Amsterdam for years now and I have
>learned gradually that the anomolies that one finds in it - and there are
>quite a few - relate either to connection beyond the limits of the map
>itself - I've come to think of the train lines to Alkmaar and Haarlem as
>part of the whole picture, the road connection to Duivendrecht and the ring
>likewise - or they relate to perspective. Who's view of the city are you
>taking? This is a power thing and for me probably the crux of the whole
>issue. The city seen from the perspective of someone who lives there (often
>without a car) and takes his/her kids to school every day is very different
>to the city seen from the perspective of the chairman of Philips trying to
>decide where set up his headquarters. Likewise the interests of local
>government trying to break the spatial monopoly of the sex industry in a
>part of the centre is different to those of the monopolists. I'm aware that
>architects are capable of working beyond the narrow confines of their brief
>- I've done it myself in designing housing in South Africa and the UK - but
>the question of design performance must raise the question of who's
>criteria and in who's interests. I'm not saying that the SSL has got this
>issue wrong - I'm quite sure they've got it right - but its not a question
>that should be left to be taken by implication. There is an
>argument/struggle going on as I said and it relates ultimately to
>power/democracy and to social justice. The city of the future is in the
>process of being made and the shape in which it is made will affect the
>power/viability of different groups differently. The shape in which it is
>being made will also affect its possibilities for change and adaptation
>when the future turns out to be not exactly as we expected it. Do we have a
>view on the future city? If so its going to affect the nature of those
>performance criteria that we apply when looking at designs.
>
>Stephen Read


________________________________________________
Alan Penn
Director, VR Centre for the Built Environment
The Bartlett School of Architecture and Planning
1-19 Torrington Place  (Room 335)
University College London, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
tel. (+44) (0)171 387 7050 ext 5919   fax. (+44) (0)171 916 1887
mobile. (+44) (0)411 696875
email. [log in to unmask]
www.   http://www.vr.ucl.ac.uk/
________________________________________________




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