Lars Hilding Marcus

Chalmers University of Technology · Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering

Due to unsustainable land management and climate change, floods have become more frequent and severe over the past few decades and the problem is exacerbated in urban environments. In the context of climate-proofing cities, the importance of nature-based solutions (NBSs), obtaining relevant outcomes in the form of ecosystem services, has been highl...

Resilience thinking provides valuable insights into the dynamics of complex adaptive systems. To achieve resilience in urban systems, it can be fruitful to delve into the intricacies of resilience processes. This paper theorizes about how the specific characteristics of resilient systems can be integrated into the spatial design of cities. Emphasiz...

The Crowd Movement Milestone Project, initiated by the Digital Twin City Centre, aims to develop a hybrid model, coupling a macroscopic network model of the built environment and a microscopic agent-based model of pedestrians, to simulate pedestrian movement.

Transport infrastructure such as railways, motorways and arterial roads increases regional accessibility for motorised transport but simultaneously can create barriers in local street networks that can decrease accessibility for pedestrians and cyclists. Although several tools for an objective assessment of these barrier effects have been developed...

PST is an open source tool for performing spatial analyses. It combines the space syntax description of the urban environment with conventional descriptions of attraction into a combined accessibility analysis tool. It is currently available as a plugin for QGIS, an open source GIS software. Earlier PST versions are also available as a plugin for t...

A closer partnership between urban design and urban ecology can yield new knowledge with the predictive advancement of both fields. However, achieving such partnership is not always a straight-forward process due to different epistemological departures. This chapter provides a rudimentary background of the fields of urban design and urban ecology a...

This paper focuses on the need for a widened definition of the notion of technology within the smart city discourse, with a particular focus on the "built environment". The first part of the paper describes how current tendencies in urban design and architecture are inclined to prioritize high tech-solutions at the expense of low-tech functionaliti...

The objective of this project is to provide a user-friendly software that allows for effective knowledge transfer. The software will support the evaluation of different urban scenario’s as well as mirror these against a references database. The project is expected to impact decision making in urban development projects, especially during the initia...

Interest in the green infrastructure of cities has rapidly increased in recent years. The reasons are several but generally relate to the great increase of research and policy on sustainable urban development. Of particular importance here is the more recent shift in this field towards greater emphasis on biodiversity and urban ecosystems and not o...

The GIS-based Time model of Gothenburg aims to map the process of urban development in Gothenburg since 1960 and in particular document the changes in the spatial form of the city - streets, buildings and plots - through time. Major steps have in recent decades been taken when it comes to understanding how cities work. Essential is the change fro...

PST is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. The GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change all versions of a program--to...

The importance of the plot (also referred to as ‘property’) as one of the fundamental elements of urban form is well recognized within the field of urban morphology. Despite the fact that it is often described as the basic element in the pattern of land divisions, which are essential as organizational frameworks for urban form, studies offering com...

A better understanding of the relationship between the built environment and urban processes is central in guiding urban processes in more sustainable trajectories. Of particular importance to this endeavour is the idea of urban types. However, on closer scrutiny, while such types may capture the symbolic dimension of urban form, they frequently do...

Typologies have always played an important role in urban planning and design practice and formal studies have been central to the field of urban morphology. These studies have predominantly been of a historical-qualitative nature and do not support quantitative comparisons between urban areas and between different cities, nor offer the precise and...

Land is, besides labour and capital, one of the classic production factors in economic theory. However, neoclassical economics dominating the 20 th century, simplified production theory to only labour and capital, treating land either as just another form of capital or as the natural resources it harbours. This hides the central role of land-in the...

Plot systems (also referred to as "property", "parcel", or "lot") are generally recognised as the organisational framework of urban form that contributes to the economic performance of cities. However, studies that link the spatial form of plots to economic data are limited. The paper builds on the theory of Webster and Lai, which argues that the p...

This work follows a long line of studies and empirical investigations in Space Syntax research, that, in general, try to conceptualise, describe and quantify the relation between physical space and human agency. How many people share public space is known to affect many socioeconomic processes in cities, such as segregation, vitality and local comm...

Typologies have always played an important role in urban planning and design practice and formal studies have been central to the field of urban morphology. These studies have predominantly been of a historical-qualitative nature and do not support quantitative comparisons between urban areas and between different cities, nor offer the precise and...

The central variables in any urban model are distance and attraction. Space syntax research has contributed to the development of new geometric descriptions and measures of distance that have broken new ground, not least when it comes to capturing pedestrian movement. However, the description and measurement of attractions has not been central to t...

A better understanding of the relationship between the built environment and urban processes is central in guiding urban processes in more sustainable trajectories. Of particular importance to this endeavour is the idea of urban types. However, on closer scrutiny, while such types may capture the symbolic dimension of urban form, they frequently do...

The recent shift towards greater emphasis on biodiversity and urban ecosystems has increased the need for greater understanding of the green areas in cities as ecological environments. However, landscape ecology and urban morphology have yet to be integrated into a joint field. In this paper steps are taken towards developing an integrated socio-ec...

Smart growth (SG) is widely adopted by planners and policy makers as an environmentally friendly way of building cities. In this paper, we analyze the environmental validity of the SG-approach based on a review of the scientific literature. We found a lack of proof of environmental gains, in combination with a great inconsistency in the measurement...

We present the methodology and results of an international observational study on pedestrian movement, using innovative high-end technology of tracking anonymised Wi-Fi signals from mobile phones. The pedestrian survey was conducted during three weeks in October 2017 in 60 neighbourhoods across three cities in Europe - London, Amsterdam, Stockholm....

The world is witnessing unprecedented urbanization, bringing extreme challenges to contemporary practices in urban planning and design. This calls for improved urban models that can generate new knowledge and enhance practical skill. Importantly, any urban model embodies a conception of the relation between humans and the physical environment. In u...

If we are to promote urban sustainability and resilience, social-ecological knowledge must be better integrated in urban planning and design projects. Due to gaps in the two cultures of thinking that are associated with the disciplines of ecology and design, such integration has, however, proven to be challenging. In mainstream practice, ecologists...

The importance of the plot (also referred to as 'parcel', 'lot' or 'property') as one of the fundamental elements of urban form is well recognized within the field of urban morphology. It has been described as a basic element in the pattern of land divisions that works as an organizational grid for urban form. A distinctive feature of the plot is i...

Typologies play a role in urban studies since a long time, but definitions are often rather abstract, ill-defined and at worst end in fixed stereotypes hiding underlying spatial complexity. Traditional typologies are focussing on separate elements, which allow for understanding crucial differences of one spatial feature in greater detail, but lack...

The central variables in any urban model are distance and attraction (Wilson 2000). Space syntax research has contributed to the development of new geometric descriptions and measures of distance that have proven successful when it comes to capturing pedestrian movement. However, the description and measurement of attractions has not been central t...

The importance of the parcel (also referred to as ‘plot’ or ‘lot’) as one of the fundamental elements of urban form is well recognized within the field of urban morphology. It has been described as a basic element in the pattern of land divisions that works as an organizational grid for urban form. One of the distinctive features of the parcel is i...

Urban diversity is a widely recognized concept used to describe vitality in cities and is often associated with cities that perform successfully both from an economic and social perspective. The concept of urban diversity was introduced to the broader public by Jane Jacobs, later inherited by the New Urbanism movement and has been extensively used...

It has been argued that different urban configurations-planned vs. organic, treelike vs. grid like-perform differently when it comes to the intensity and distribution of pedestrian flows, built density and land uses. However, definitions of urban configurations are often rather abstract, ill-defined and at worse end in fixed stereotypes hiding unde...

The shift from Axial to Line-segment maps is one of the most important developments in Space Syntax analysis, both theoretically and methodologically. It followed a long line of investigations and discussions within the field of Space Syntax, which addressed critical issues related to the Axial map representation (e.g. Hillier and Iida,2005; Hillie...

The world is witnesses unprecedented urbanization bringing extreme challenges to contemporary practices in urban planning and design. Global knowledge production has in response ‘turned urban’ leading to a tremendous out-put of new knowledge about cities world-wide from a broad range of fields. At the same time, it is increasingly recognised that w...

For numerous reasons related to energy demand, emissions, public health as well as liveable and attractive cities, a frequently stated aim in contemporary discussions on urban development is to increase amount and modal share of bicycling. In recent years, space syntax based methods have shown to be useful for providing informed premises for these...

Interest in urban green areas has rapidly increased in recent years as the world becomes increasingly urbanized (see e.g., McDonald, 2008, UN-habitat, 2016). This brings new demands for a deeper understanding of the morphology of green areas in cities that provide us with a range of important ecosystem services (ESS) such as evaporative cooling, wa...

Inom stadsbyggnadspraktiken har vi de senaste åren sett många försök att svara på de miljöproblem vi ser ständigt nya bevis på. Ett tecken på detta är hur gröna områden i städer börjar spela en allt annan roll inom stadsbyggandet, bortom frågor om fritid och rekreation som de traditionellt tilldelats. Dessutom handlar det mindre om att integrera mi...

In light of the urgent threats presented by climate change and rapid urbanisation, interest in ‘smart city systems’ is mounting. In contrast to scholarship that poses ‘smartness’ as something that needs to be added to cities, recent developments in spatial morphology research pursue a view of the built fabric of cities as an extension of the cognit...

Jämlika livsvillkor och stadsbyggande - inspel till pågående översiktsplanearbete. Del av Stockholms stads arbete med Kommissionen för ett socialt hållbart Stockholm. Januari 2016.

Post-industrial societies impose new ecological challenges on urbanism. However, it is argued here that most approaches to sustainable urbanism still share the conception of the humans-environment relations that characterized modernism. The paper finds support in recent knowledge developments in social-ecological sustainability, spatial analysis an...

In recent years there has been an increasing interest in the green areas of cites. The reasons are several but generally relate to the urgent need to redirect our cities into more sustainable trajectories. Of special importance here is the shift towards greater emphasis on biodiversity and urban ecosystems rather than climate change and technologic...

There are two fundamental links necessary to establish for a robust theoretical foundation of space syntax methodology. The first concerns the relation between humans and the environment, where space syntax has contributed to the development of what may be called a cognitive geometry for the analysis of spatial form. The second is the relation betw...

There are two fundamental theoretical links necessary to make for a robust foundation of space syntax methodology. The first concerns the link between humans and their environment, where space syntax has contributed to the development of what can be called a cognitive geometry for the analysis of spatial form. The second is the link between humans...

This paper aims to contribute to a better understanding of the relation between space syntax and the adjacent field of urban morphology. We believe that this can benefit both fields in their further development and more specifically, this paper will show how typical approaches in urban morphology can be helpful in explaining variations in correlati...

We take the first step in the development of a new field of research with the aim of merging spatial morphology and resilience science. This involves a revisiting and reunderstanding of the meaning of sustainable urban form. We briefly describe the fields of resilience science and spatial morphology. Drawing on a selected set of propositions in bot...

Do nature-deficit routines undermine affinity with the biosphere? We assessed social-ecological features in Stockholm that afford nature experiences and analyzed the accessibility of these natural areas to preschools. We then selected preschools with contrasting accessibilities. The nature routines resulting from differing outdoor possibilities in...

For sustainable urban development the idea of ecosystem services (ESS) is crucial, since it pinpoints how cities are dependent on local ecosystems and the wide range of services they provide for their welfare and survival. Pollination is an essential ESS for the majority of food production in the world and therefore also represents a tremendous mon...

Academia has a long tradition of structuring itself around academic subjects, often epitomized through architectural manifestations such as individual buildings and whole campi. These materializations serve as sites of research and education, but also serve to describe the university as whole as well as its institutional parts, their definitions an...

This project concerns the most centrally located and spatially complex area in central Stockholm. It is located directly to the west of the internationally well-known Stockholm City area developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Presently significant reconstruction of the central station and its track areas is under way which will also open up a large new...

This paper argues that a strong focus on residential segregation limits the understanding of the role of the built environment. The city is used as more than just a place of residence; urban life is far from restricted to where we live. The potential for interplay that develops as people share public space is argued to be just as important for inte...

This op-ed piece in a leading Swedish daily newspaper, argues for pushing for more environmentally sensitive urban planning, in particular around the then new development at Stockholm University. The op-ed was based on a concrete proposal on how to build and the development of a set of "social-ecological design principles" by the collective of auth...

Although space syntax is often presented as a configurational theory of architecture, this tends to hide the more fundamental claim that it is also an analytical theory, a theory based on analytical science rather than on the normative or ideological claims normally found in architectural theory. This article proposes an extension of such an analyt...

Universitet och högskolor förknippas liksom många andra institutioner och verksamheter i vårt samhälle i så hög grad med sina byggnader att verksamheter och byggnader kan vara svåra att skilja från varandra. Det vi kan ana är att människor alltid använt byggandet för att etablera och upprätthålla både samhälleliga funktioner och mer vardagliga sede...

This report analyses a real-world urban design proposal at Albano, part of Stockholm University Campus in Sweden, from a social-ecological systems perspective drawing on non-equilibrium resilience theory. The report merges landscape ecology with urban design to analyse a range of ecosystem services in conjunction with urban services to understand h...

One of the most potent concepts recently to have emerged within the repertoire of space syntax is that of generic function. While urban space clearly derives its intelligibility and functionality in part from characteristics that are local and specific, the key properties that shape the urban complex are primarily generic: patterns of occupation an...

Vår idéskiss söker skapa ett konstruk-tivt möte mellan innerstaden och Na-tionalstadsparken och tydliggöra Al-bano som en mötesplats mellan Stock-holms tre största universitet och en rad mindre högskolor. Samtidigt vill vi väva en social-ekologisk väv för att generera stads-och ekosystemtjänster. Genom tre stråk och flera element väver PATCH WORK r...

Space syntax is often presented as a configurational theory of architecture. This tends to hide more fundamental claim that it also is an analytical theory, that is, it is not an ideologically founded or normative theory, as so much of architectural theory, but a scientifically founded theory. Proposed in this paper is an outline of exactly such an...

Abstract, short paper, 5 t International Space Syntax Symposium Keywords: diversity, plot-structure, urban space, urban morphology, description, axial map.

The Place Syntax Tool (PST) is a plugin application for the desktop software MapInfo written in MapBasic and C/C++. The plugin was developed since conventional accessibility research and space syntax research face an almost symmetrical problem when it comes to analysing and pre- dicting urban pedestrian movement. In this paper we explore the possib...

One of the biggest challenges for future urban design is to cope with suburbia and sprawl. This paper investigates how sprawl can be compacted in terms of spatial morphology. New 'user-related' location density measures, like spaciousness and compactness, are introduced that integrate floor area, axiality of pedestrian network, and public open spac...

When this is written, the world holds its breath, waiting for the US to decide on a plan to save the countrys (and the worlds in prolongation) financial market. What and who will dictate growth and prosperity internationally in the future are at stake. This is also a moment for developing deeper understanding of underlying spatial prerequisites for...

The discussion on sustainable urban development is ubiquitous these days. Concerning the more specific field of urban design and urban morphology we can identify a movement from a first generation of research and practice, primarily addressing climate change, and a second generation, broadening the field to also encompass biodiversity. The two have...