Urban Grammar

Decoding urban form and function in Great Britain

Department of Geography and Environment - LSE
Dani Arribas-Bel
@darribas
Martin Fleischmann
@martinfleis

This talk…

… is not about:

  • Exogenous sources of variation
  • Local Average Treatment Effects
  • Quasi-natural experiments

This talk…

… is about:

  • 🏙️ (Urban) form & function
  • 📈 Detailed, consistent & scalable (open) data
  • Also: 🗺️ maps, 🧱 city structure, 🛰️ satellites…

(Urban)
Form & Function

F&F: What

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”

F&F: Why

Encode the past
Frame the future
  • Geography
  • History
  • Technology
  • …
  • Productivity
  • Sustainability
  • Quality of Life
  • …

F&F: Why

F&F: How

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

Building Spatial Signatures

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

Building Spatial Signatures

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

F&F Characters

Form
Function

Context

A panoramic of the British (urban) landscape

BRITISH SIGNATURES

Countryside (3)

Periphery (4)

Urban (9)

urbangrammarai.xyz/great-britain/

Coverage

94% (50%)

5% (40%)

1% (10%)

Signature Hierarchy

Urban Hierarchy
Signature Dish

Signature importance in each OECD’s Functional Urban Areas

A peak into the future

📡 🌎 + 💻 + 🤖

📡 🌎

Source: Sentinel-2 cloudless

Wild countryside (320x320m)

Urbanity (320x320m)

Predicted class (320x320m)

Wrap up

  • Urban F&F is important, interesting and relevant
  • We should (and can!) measure it in detailed, consistent and scalable ways
  • Once available (now!), we can build much on top (e.g., hierarchies)

Urban Grammar

Decoding urban form and function in Great Britain

Department of Geography and Environment - LSE
Dani Arribas-Bel
@darribas
Martin Fleischmann
@martinfleis

Appendix

Meaningful spatial units

Enclosed tessellation

Sub-classifications

Signature drivers

Signature proportion within ONS Travel to Work Areas