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Vini,
You are much more sanguine than I am regarding the possibility that other modes of space/society interpretation will open themselves to space syntax. Look at some of the recent texts in urban design—for example Carmona et al.’s PUBLIC PLACES, URBAN SPACES (2003), which at least in the States is a well-used intro text. These authors mention space syntax only once, and that in passing! And this is one of the best overviews currently in terms of urban design! Or take Michael Southworth’s fine book on the history of street design—not one mention of space syntax! Or attend an annual EDRA meeting and discover very little interest in space syntax work, other than a few explict space-syntax researchers organizing special sessions.
Part of the dilemma, I think, is the fact that too many researchers see space syntax as a new kind of environmental determinism. As a phenomenologist, I find that concern laughable. To me, space syntax is a radical new way of seeing the people/place relationship because it provides a way of seeing that gets beyond the conventional objectivist/subjectivist lenses. True, most of the space syntax work so far has been analytic (Laura Vaughn’s wonderful work is one exception) and is thus more toward the “objectivist” side. But, as I have argued in earlier posts and in my keynote address at the 2007 Istanbul space syntax conference, there is a place for phenomenological investigation, esp. in-depth descriptive studies of the sorts of place-based lifeworlds indicated by the various space syntax measures and cartographic representations (what, for example, is the daily lifeworld like of the most integrated pathways in a particular neighborhood or town? This topic cries out for a film version!).
In short, I welcome the new space syntax journal and wish it gobs and gobs of success. Let it be a beacon to “convert” outsiders. But as far as bringing space syntax to other styles of conceiving and analyzing, I am much more doubtful than you because space syntax is so radically different in the way it holds people/world together through space and place—in short, it identifies one dimension of Heidegger’s being-in-the-world as well as Merleau-Ponty’s body-subject and environmental embodiment as extending invisibly into lived space and time and helping foster (or not) robust places.
David Seamon
Dr. David Seamon
Architecture Department, Kansas State University
211 Seaton Hall
Manhattan, KS 66506-2901
785-532-1121