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Actually have been engaged in data collection for a transportation planning simuation I was surprised at how poor the data representation was. For example Atlanta had no map of the one way system. They had very poor maps of the traffic lights. While the main traffic network was done with great detail (how many lanes,road condition) there where large numbers of local roads which where missed. That said there was a huge amount of 'non' network data (average income, house hold size e.c.t). This information too had floors for example the first pass though the data had non one in Atlanta under the age of 7! Naturally the bigest input was the current flow rates for vehicals - which is definitly not one of the *INPUTS* in space syntax. This too is not precise for example Atlanta knew the numbers of axles which passed over a sensor but had to have an 'factor' which converted axels to vehicals (the number was slightly bigger than 2). That said I think Traditional space syntax complements transportation planning nicely. Space syntax can operate with comparatively 'tiny' amounts of information which it makes very good as a preliminary investigation tool. In Atlanta there was a 5 year turn around for traffic modeling. By the time it was done the preditions where almost out of date. The data collection process was a huge undertakeing. Mean while traditional transportation planning can answer questions like,"what happens if we doubled the price of parking?" which traditional space syntax would have problems with. sheep User of Axman and TRANSIM ! > I think Mike's paper and Shinichi's work suggests that to some degree > the concept of transport network planning, which is a different and well > established discipline, has strong (and perhaps inevitable) links with > conventional space syntax research. In addition transport planning based > research appears to be a somewhat more developed version of the Space > syntax research as it generally includes parameters other than space > (i.e. network) such as traffic (i.e. whether road, rail etc.) load, road > types, nature of transport, gravity models and many others into account > during modelling while space syntax, in my view, starts and ends with > generation of mostly "topological" (i.e. not neccessarily real) networks > and > characterising them using graph measures. > > Perhaps, I am actually wondering whether this overlap enpowers or > challenges the methodology of conventional space syntax techniques.