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To Alan, Bill and Noah, Thanks for your input re/ the spatial configuration of Canadian arctic communities. I've included a powerpoint file with the axial maps of Arviat and Rankin Inlet - two communities on the west coast of Hudson Bay. The scatterplots for ATC (all terrain cycle) and pedestrian movement are also included (both r and r^2 values). I've also included a sample of the axial maps of a few other Arctic communities as a pdf file. There seem to be two primary types of layouts - radial and linear. Of the 23 communties I've analyzed, intelligibility ranges from 0.079 to .410 At the present time, I've only been able to collect movement data for Arviat. Gate positions were set up on every street - usually midway along. Observations were made for 8 minutes at a variety of times during the day. Each Gate was visited at least 5 times during the field season (summer). The pattern of movement may differ radically by season. For example, in winter snowmobiles are used instead of all terrain cycles and cold temperatures may alter where people go, how frequently they go there, and how they get there. My current thinking is that the low pedestrian movement correlations may have something to do with 'what' is attracting movement and how that 'what' is distributed within the community. The land use pattern in Arviat is one in which retail outlets (primarily the Hudson Bay Company store) and Government services lie along the most integrated routes. People (households), on the other hand, are distributed along the edges of the community. I "shadowed" the movements of several Inuit (with their permission) and observed that they spent 75% of their time circulating around the outer edges of the community visiting with family, and 25% of their time accessing retail businesses and government services in the integration 'core'. This strikes me as opposite to what one would expect to see in a southern Euro-Canadian town where people spend far more time cirulating around integrated locations accessing retail outlets, workplaces, government services, etc, and far less time circulating around their neighborhoods systematically visiting neighbor after neighbor (as do Inuit). In Inuit society, the family is the essential socio-economic unit of production and an important network of mutual assistance. Many families obtain most of their food through hunting, and pool their labour and equipment (ATC's, rifles, GPS's) to do so. So, I'm wondering if the pattern of movement I observed in Arviat is used to sustain these types of relationships? If so, then this might represent an example of how 'cultural effects' can occasionally cirumvent or at least reduce the influence that the configuration of the community might have on human movement. As Bill has suggested, the other possiblility is that the low correlations could simply reflect the fact that the landuse pattern in these implanted and predetermined communities has not been shaped over time by the natural movement pattern. Perhaps it is some combination of the two. Regardless, would the mis-match between human movement and spatial configuration eventually have social consequences? Could the natural movement patterns of Inuit be used to develop new urban planning principles for Arctic communities? I'd be interested in getting some opinions from the space syntax community on this. I'm fairly new to space syntax, but I'd like to expand this study to other communities in the Canadian Arctic to see if the pattern persists. Noah - I am familiar with Doug Anderson...small world! I had no idea that he was interested in space syntax! cheers, Peter