Quantifying urban visibility using 3D space syntax: technical report. Unpublished Unpublished MSc Thesis

A city is a container of activities – a palimpsest of inter-related processes operating at various spatio-temporal scales. Examples of these social processes include pedestrian movement (Hillier et al, 1993; Jiang, 1999), crime (Hillier and Sahbaz, 2005; Nubani and Wineman, 2005), and social deprivation (Vaughan et al., 2005). In various ways these processes are affected by the architectural space and the built form. Furthermore these structures affect other key activities such as way-finding processes in complex built environments (Peponis et al., 1990), vehicle driver movements (Penn et al., 1998), and environmental processes such as traffic pollution (Penn and Croxford, 1997). It is not surprising then that much effort has been devoted to how we can model the various characteristics of the urban environment, in order to improve their design, and to understand the interdependencies and interactions between the built world and its occupiers. Hillier and Hanson, in the early 80s, developed the idea of space syntax to help simulate the likely effects of their designs on the surrounding area (Hillier and Hanson, 1984). Space syntax is defined as ‘a family of techniques for representing and analysing spatial layout of all kinds ’ (Hillier 1999, 165), and its aim is to develop strategies o