Stephen, hi
Don't let these papers put you off your idea of a review article.
> I'm afraid we were there in 2005...
> http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=b31128
>
> you can also find the CASA working paper here:
> http://www.casa.ucl.ac.uk/working_papers/paper73.pdf
These are generally quite out of date in syntax terms and only
covered a fraction of the syntax thinking even when written ( which
is not a criticism of the papers - they only attempted to investigate
specific phenomena such as axiality not generally as over views of
the discipline). No mention for convex overlapping spaces for example.
While there are many areas which you could almost draw a comparison
table of comparison terms ( status vs integration, degree vs
connectivity) with an in-depth description of elements. I think it
would be interesting clarify about other terms such as Space -
geographers even social geographers use it in the more mathematical
sense while as space syntax use it in an architectural sense which
makes for problematic cross-reading.
More problematically for a review is expressing some of the
differences of approach. For example space syntax tends to think of
the individual node is significant and looks to find ways to
differentiate node from node. General network theory ( and again this
is damming a large diverse subject but hold with mw for the sake of
comparison) tends to think about the graph/network either wholly or
as a typology.
For example general network theory looks at a network and asks is it
a small world or if it's scale free. Or is it Hamiltonian or
connected, is it disjoint, what's the diameter, what's the chromatic
polynomial, is it planar, can it be coloured in four colours, whats
the average ?The list is very very long, but knowing New York is a
Turan in syntax terms doesn't tell you much about New York its self.
Even in social networks people work as types is this hierarchical, is
it more flat or flower. Again network characterisation drawing
general conclusions about whole systems.
The closest space syntax gets to single network measures is
intelligibility or synergy (but even these are applied on a per
neighbourhood basis). Generally space syntax will be looking at the
individual values rather than general summations. Equally space
syntax computes at the graph level rather than the matrix level.
While most other subjects looking at the matrix level. This sounds
inconsequential but has a big impact on the final out come. I was
once talking to a transport engineer about why not applying origin
destinations at the street by street level rather than zones or DMZs.
The answer was that real software couldn't handle inverting a 640,000
by 640,000 element matrix - something which syntactical software
could compute in tractable time scales.
This creates a strongly orthogonal approaches which I think lay more
at the heart of the division between space syntax and other
approaches, rather than terminology.
Good luck.
Sheep
ps if someone ever does write the piece please please tell me. I
often requested for a singular introduction to space syntax for non
architects.
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