Time use and movement behaviour of young people in cities:The application of GPS tracking in tracing movement pattern of young people for a week in Aalborg

This paper explores how well the space syntax methodology is capable of predicting the actual movement of people in a city. The space syntax methodology has been surrounded by a debate in recent years about its applicability, see for example the debate between (Ratti 2004a;Ratti 2004b) and (Hillier & Penn 2004), as well as guest editorial by (Steadman 2004) on developments in space syntax. To evaluate the usefulness of the space syntax methodology this paper explores one case, mobility in Aalborg, a city in Northern Jutland Denmark . The spatial centrality potential of each road in the centre of Aalborg was calculated using the space syntax methodology. The actual use of each road was investigated empirically using GPS tracking equipment on a population of 169 16-20 years old respondents taken from statistically representative sample in Aalborg, an empirical investigation conducted by researchers in the research group Diverse Urban Spaces at Aalborg University. As the results shows, the method is capable of pinpointing the main transportation corridors for motorized traffic when a high metrical radius is used, as well as locating centres within the city when a low radius is used. Somewhat predictable, coherence is attained between the space syntax classification of centre areas and the time consumption registrations. More surprisingly, coherence also exists for the high classified roads which primarily serve cars