Abstract
Syntactic analyses focus on analyzing space from a general perspective, where connections of ‘visibility and access’ are analyzed through different geometrical abstractions. In universal design research, the point of origin is that what is ‘visible’ or ‘accessible’ is different for different people depending on for example age or disability. This paper addresses challenges in the way models are made, used and theorized in space syntax research as capturing or describing relations between people and environment, specifically from the perspective that if people are different, so are their respective ‘connections of access and visibility’, and potentially their subsequent patterns of centrality and accessibility. Such difference, as recognized in universal design research, may appear on both the local (molecular) and the global (molar) scale; i.e., the effects of accessibility difference can be on a local scale of whether a relative detour is needed or not, but also on global structures of centrality in a city or municipality as a whole. However, there is need for structured understanding of the ‘molar’ level, and the interrelation between scales. Following Gibson’s theory that affordances exist neither in the environment nor in species, but in the specific relation between them, this paper engages with how such differences can be empirically, methodologically and theoretically understood based on empirical research in the city of Uppsala, Sweden. This work utilizes municipal data and input from disability rights organizations to explore the problem and presents important considerations for both research and practice as comes to inclusiveness in spatial analysis and accessibility.
Biographies
Daniel Koch is a Docent in Architecture and researcher at KTH School of Architecture, where he is also co-director of the cross-disciplinary Master’s Programme in Sustainable Urban Planning and Design. He has also worked as researcher and/or teacher at for example the department of Architecture and Civil Engineering at Chalmers University of Technology and at the Stockholm Center for Fashion Studies. At the core of Daniel’s research work lies examination of relations between architectural space, social structures, and subjects of becoming on a wide range of scales, which has repeatedly engaged with challenges of difference and specificity in spatial analysis. Central to the investigations have been questions of modeling as an investigative and critical method for analysis, building towards a tentatively named research profile of “Critical Morphology”. Recent research, amongst other things, investigates socio-economic effects of urban developments over time in the Senseable Stockholm Lab, and engages with social, economic and cultural challenges of digitalization in rural areas in the context of global climate change and equality in a project in the small settlement Duved. Over the coming period, work will also return to closer studies of architecture.
Ann Legeby, PhD and professor in Applied Urban Design at KTH, School of Architecture. The research concerns society-space relations and central for the research is to increase the understanding about the role of architecture in relation to social segregation and unequal living conditions including the conditions for everyday life. Urban analysis is central and methodologies and theories are developed how to analyse, model, and visualize urban form, defined by architecture and urban design, and how it relates to urban processes. Several of the research projects are conducted in close collaboration with public actors. Beside research, Ann is teaching urban design and planning at KTH and other universities.
