Controllability of Traditional Neighborhood and Its Simplified Layout

Street hierarchy, as a way of presenting intended information, conforms to social rules that underlay architectural and urban designs to create public, semi-public, and semi-private. These social rules have the responsibility to convey necessary information about place to outsiders as well as to insiders. This research looks at urban spaces as physical structures that represent foci of attention of users and that are collectively a part of the social pattern framework. The argument of this study is that connectivity and forms of streets house certain social rules that intended to serve users, so that any changes in the street layout lead to changes in its social rules. As a case study, the complexity of a walled Arab neighborhood was examined through Sur Lawatyia, located in Muscat Governorate, Oman. By replacing the curvilinear and broken streets of this neighborhood with straight ones; a simplified street layout was derived. Then, a comparison of both street layouts was carried out through mapping, tabulation, charts, correlation test, and with reliance on the method of measurement of street control values introduced by Hillier and Hanson in 1984. The result was that the simple form is far short to be the representation of the space syntax of the traditional street layout.

Ferwati, M. Salim. "Controllability of Traditional Neighborhood and Its Simplified Layout," in ArchNet-IJAR: International Journal of Architectural Research, vol. 4, issue 1 (2010).

M. Salim Ferwati

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