IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/envirb/v20y1993i1p29-66.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Natural Movement: Or, Configuration and Attraction in Urban Pedestrian Movement

Author

Listed:
  • B Hillier
  • A Penn
  • J Hanson
  • T Grajewski
  • J Xu

Abstract

Existing theories relating patterns of pedestrian and vehicular movement to urban form characterise the problem in terms of flows to and from ‘attractor’ land uses. This paper contains evidence in support of a new ‘configurational’ paradigm in which a primary property of the form of the urban grid is to privilege certain spaces over others for through movement. In this way it is suggested that the configuration of the urban grid itself is the main generator of patterns of movement. Retail land uses are then located to take advantage of the opportunities offered by the passing trade and may well act as multipliers on the basic pattern of ‘natural movement’ generated by the grid configuration. The configurational correlates of movement patterns are found to be measures of global properties of the grid with the ‘space syntax’ measure of ‘integration’ consistently found to be the most important. This has clear implications for urban design suggesting that if we wish to design for well used urban space, then it is not the local properties of a space that are important in the main but its configurational relations to the larger urban system.

Suggested Citation

  • B Hillier & A Penn & J Hanson & T Grajewski & J Xu, 1993. "Natural Movement: Or, Configuration and Attraction in Urban Pedestrian Movement," Environment and Planning B, , vol. 20(1), pages 29-66, February.
  • Handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:20:y:1993:i:1:p:29-66
    DOI: 10.1068/b200029
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1068/b200029
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1068/b200029?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kayvan Karimi, 2018. "Space syntax: consolidation and transformation of an urban research field," Journal of Urban Design, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(1), pages 1-4, January.
    2. Abhijit Paul, 2013. "Reviewing the axial-line approach to capturing vehicular trip-makers’ route-choice decisions with ground reality," Transportation, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 697-711, May.
    3. Wagner, Roy, 2008. "On the metric, topological and functional structures of urban networks," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 387(8), pages 2120-2132.
    4. Daeyoung Jeong & Yun Eui Choi & Lilan Jin & Jinhyung Chon, 2019. "Impact of Spatial Change on Tourism by Bridge Connections between Islands: A Case Study of Ganghwa County in South Korea," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(22), pages 1-17, November.
    5. Rafael Henrique Moraes Pereira & Frederico Rosa Borges de Holanda & Valério Augusto Soares de Medeiros & Ana Paula Borba Gonçalves Barros, 2015. "The Use Of Space Syntax In Urban Transport Analysis: Limits And Potentials," Discussion Papers 0188, Instituto de Pesquisa Econômica Aplicada - IPEA.
    6. Zhao, Shuangming & Zhao, Pengxiang & Cui, Yunfan, 2017. "A network centrality measure framework for analyzing urban traffic flow: A case study of Wuhan, China," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 478(C), pages 143-157.
    7. Peixue Liu & Xiao Xiao & Jie Zhang & Ronghua Wu & Honglei Zhang, 2018. "Spatial Configuration and Online Attention: A Space Syntax Perspective," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(1), pages 1-15, January.
    8. Su, Shiliang & Zhou, Hao & Xu, Mengya & Ru, Hu & Wang, Wen & Weng, Min, 2019. "Auditing street walkability and associated social inequalities for planning implications," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 62-76.
    9. Shatu, Farjana & Yigitcanlar, Tan & Bunker, Jonathan, 2019. "Shortest path distance vs. least directional change: Empirical testing of space syntax and geographic theories concerning pedestrian route choice behaviour," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 37-52.
    10. Li, Yuan & Xiao, Longzhu & Ye, Yu & Xu, Wangtu & Law, Andrew, 2016. "Understanding tourist space at a historic site through space syntax analysis: The case of Gulangyu, China," Tourism Management, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 30-43.
    11. Li, Linbo & Ren, Huan & Zhao, Shanshan & Duan, Zhengyu & Zhang, Yahua & Zhang, Anming, 2017. "Two dimensional accessibility analysis of metro stations in Xi’an, China," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 414-426.
    12. Valerio Cutini & Valerio Di Pinto & Antonio Maria Rinaldi & Francesco Rossini, 2020. "Proximal Cities: Does Walkability Drive Informal Settlements?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(3), pages 1-20, January.
    13. Abhijit Paul, 2014. "A comparative assessment of edge-effect with syntax integration generated in axial and unit-segment approaches to modelling vehicular movement networks," International Journal of Urban Sciences, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 18(3), pages 340-354, November.
    14. Javier Delso & Belén Martín & Emilio Ortega & Isabel Otero, 2017. "A Model for Assessing Pedestrian Corridors. Application to Vitoria-Gasteiz City (Spain)," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 9(3), pages 1-15, March.
    15. Lowry, Michael, 2014. "Spatial interpolation of traffic counts based on origin–destination centrality," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 98-105.
    16. Dhanani, Ashley & Tarkhanyan, Lusine & Vaughan, Laura, 2017. "Estimating pedestrian demand for active transport evaluation and planning," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 54-69.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:envirb:v:20:y:1993:i:1:p:29-66. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.