I agree with you alasdair. I think I really meant to say "on a
philosophical note"..
I think the reductionist approach is perhaps the easy bit of the isovist
analysis.
I am fairly confident that given a sufficiently dense (or in worst-caes
oversampled) discretisation of open space with viewpoints, isovist analysis
will lead to a clearly defined set of axial lines. We can also do checks if
it doesn't so its a very good (albeit computationally intensive) tractable
experimental setup.
The reason for my convinction lies in the "confined" and "static" nature of
obstacles (walls etc.) in open spaces. The complexity of the computation is
fixed unlike in dynamical spaces (e.g. people moving about doing shopping,
revellers in a carnival etc.). The later in my view could also be the third
stage of space syntax analyses.
I think thats the really difficult as it involves an non-static dynamic (in
location, number, non-physical properties such as intelligence
etc.) "organic" component of space (ie. us) and we need to do more on that.
Your work on agent-based modelling goes some way along that direction.
sanjay.
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