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Sophia,

I appreciate your email, but I don't see clearly what' you're saying. The original premise of space syntax is simple but remarkable: that qualities of space, especially spatial configuration of pathways, plays a central role in how human life unfolds one way rather than another. As a phenomenologist, I have never been comfortable with the emphasis on the "social"--to me, the crucial dimension is experiential in the sense that face-to-face co-presence (and perhaps co-awareness and co-interaction) is enhanced or stymied by pathway configuration.

I realize that more recent work has sought to make links between particular spatial configurations and way finding; also, the question as to how digital agents recreate (or do not) the possibilities of pathways configuration (and from what I can see, there is considerable difference in how digital agents maneuver through space vs. possibilities offered by the various space-syntax measures of configuration, particularly integration).

Again, I come back to my central point: There is no introductory, accessible overview of what space syntax offers for newcomers. The possibilities are huge, yet so much of the recent work gets caught up in nonessentials, whether technical (it is discouraging that most of the emails on this site deal with "how to" questions rather than broader conceptual concerns) or now this "fashionable" interest in cognitive science and the relation between social-space principles and cognitive neuroscience (which to me is a sideshow and loses track of the original remarkable possibilities of space syntax).

Obviously, there are lots or research monies available for the cognitive-science aspect currently, but I'm doubtful that it will lead in the fruitful directions that the original space-syntax work led.

What am I saying? I'm saying that I worry that too much of the more recent work dealing with space syntax is moving the tradition away from its core principles and value--this potential intimacy of relationship between lifeworlds and qualities of the spatial environment.

David Seamon