Emergent Urbanism

Rediscovering Urban Complexity

Space Syntax

Emergent Urbanism at the University of Montreal

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Thu, 10/29/2009 - 15:24, last updated Mon, 09/05/2011 - 21:47

I was invited to the complex systems laboratory of the Université de Montréal this week to present emergent urbanism to their twenty-member large research group. Click through to SlideShare in order to see the full text of the presentation under the "notes on" tab. The entire text is in French, however I know a significant share of this website's visitors enjoy French once in a while.

The Fundamentals of Urban Complexity

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Mon, 05/11/2009 - 10:00, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 01:02

This is part II in an ongoing series of excerpts of an article set to be published this summer in The International Journal of Architectural Research, tentatively titled The Principles of Emergent Urbanism. Click here for part I, The Journey to Emergence.

The complex grid

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 19:52, last updated Mon, 04/09/2012 - 15:29

In a medieval-era city the pace of urban growth is slow to a point where the growth of the city is not consciously noticed. Buildings are added sporadically, in random shape and order, as the extremely scarce economic situation makes no other pattern possible. Typically this means that the shape of streets will match the existing natural paths of movement, giving the street network an organic structure that is preserved through successive transformations in the urban fabric.

The movement economies

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Tue, 04/15/2008 - 01:36, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 01:13

Bill Hillier of Space Syntax is, along with Christopher Alexander and Michael Batty, part of the British old school of urban complexity researchers. (Hillier has joked that he would have used the term "Pattern Language" instead of Space Syntax had Alexander not used it first.) He has studied the functional impact of spatial relationships on human behavior over a career spanning several decades, and came upon some very insightful results.

Further comment

Please send your comments by email at mthl@mthl.info, or find me on Twitter @mathieuhelie. The commenting system is closed at the moment as no measures can hold back blog spamming bots.

Subscribe to Space Syntax
Loading