Spatial and Topological Analysis of an Urban Environment 

The first part of the course reviews and discusses approaches, methods and measures for spatial and topological analysis of urban environments, among them:  urban complex systems, space syntax theory, graph theory based measurement, network analysis, small world and scale-free networks. The students will learn to use software program based on geo-referenced data for analyzing various types of spatial geographical networks with respect to spatial, topological and visual representations relevant for spatial behavior. The second part deals with the question of how aspects of individuals’ perception and cognitive spatial representation and their spatial behavior are related to the spatial, morphological, physical and functional properties of the urban environment. The spatial behavior of people, as individuals and social groups, will be analyzed and discuss with respect to the following domains: wayfinding, selection of movement routes, pedestrian and vehicles movement patterns, land use patterns, emergence of retail centers and social geography of the city.

Prerequisite: Introduction to Geoinformatics part B (GIS)