Urban Grammar

Developing better characterisations of
(urban) form and function

Social Data Science
The Alan Turing Institute
Dani Arribas-Bel
@darribas
Martin Fleischmann
@martinfleis

Today

  • Urban Form & Function
  • Urban Grammar
  • A peek into the future

(Urban) Form & Function

How we arrange “stuff” in cities matters…

Source: A map of every building in America (New York Times)

Form & Function

Form

What does it look like?
“Physical structure and appearance of cities”

Function

What is it used for?
“Activities that take place within an environment”

Why Form & Function?

Encodes the past
Frames the future
  • Geography
  • History
  • Technology
  • …
  • Productivity
  • Sustainability
  • Quality of Life
  • …

F&F in Social Science/Policy

F&F in Social Science

Critical to understand:
But often:
  • Agglomeration economies
  • Neighborhood effects
  • Environmental sustainability
  • …
  • Coarse
  • Aggregate
  • Ad-hoc
  • …

Detail matters…

Source: Six 15-minute walks capture the diversity, history of Houston neighborhoods (Urban Edge)

Urban Grammar

Characterisations of space based on form and function designed to understand urban environments

Characterisations of space based on form and function designed to understand urban environments

Characterisations of space based on form and function designed to understand urban environments

Characterisations of space based on form and function designed to understand urban environments

British Signatures

Sub-classifications

Building Spatial Signatures

[STAGE] Delimiters Enclosure Anchors Encl. Tess. Characters Clusters Signatures
Enclosed Tessellation
Embedding form & function
Spatial Signatures
+

Meaningful spatial units

Enclosed tessellation

“Open by default”
  • Data, data, data
  • Methods, code
  • Infrastructure
  • Dissemination
  • Open Data Products
  • Journaling/reporting
    		•
    https://urbangrammarai.xyz

    Lessons

    Encoding

    Geography
    History
    Technology

    Hierarchy

    Framing?

    A peek into the future

    📡 🌎 + 💻 + 🤖

    Two examples on Form & Function…

    Source: Sentinel-2 cloudless

    Wild countryside (320x320m)

    Urbanity (320x320m)

    Predicted class (320x320m)

    The Future

    • Are we there yet? Certainly not
    • Can we even get there? Maybe
    • Worth trying? Absolutely!

    Wrap up

    (Urban) form & function…

    • underpin many social processes
    • are becoming easier to measure better
    • You should use them more in your work!

    Urban Grammar

    Developing better characterisations of
    (urban) form and function

    Social Data Science
    The Alan Turing Institute
    Dani Arribas-Bel
    @darribas
    Martin Fleischmann
    @martinfleis