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Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 1
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Equal living environments
Universal design and (un)equal access from a syntactic perspective, Uppsala,
Sweden
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Syntactic analysis focuses analyzing space from a general perspective, where connections of
‘visibility and access’ are analyzed through different geometrical abstractions. In universal
design research, the point of origin is that what is ‘visible’ or ‘accessible’ is different for
different people depending on for example age or disability. This paper addresses challenges in
the way models are made, used and theorized in space syntax research as capturing or describing
relations between people and environment, specifically from the perspective that if people are
different, so are their respective ‘connections of access and visibility’, and potentially their
subsequent patterns of centrality and accessibility. Such difference, as recognized in universal
design research, may appear on both the local (molecular) and the global (molar) scale; i.e., the
effects of accessibility difference can be on a local scale of whether a relative detour is needed or
not, but also on global structures of centrality in a city or municipality as a whole. However,
there is need for structured understanding of the ‘molar’ level, and the interrelation between
scales. Following Gibson’s theory that affordances exist neither in the environment nor in
species, but in the specific relation between them, this paper engages with how such differences
can be empirically, methodologically and theoretically understood based on empirical research in
the city of Uppsala, Sweden. This work utilizes municipal data and input from disability rights
organizations to explore the problem, and presents important considerations for both research and
practice as comes to inclusiveness in spatial analysis and accessibility.
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Universal design, spatial analysis, affordance, spatial cognition, molar accessibility
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 2
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Over the years, syntax research has built a solid understanding of relations between spatial
configuration and a range of different aspects of society, social structures, and human behavior.
Especially solid, one might argue, is the thoroughly investigated relation between movement and
configuration, in particular movement flow rates and the configuration of public space in urban
environments (Hillier, 1996; Hillier et al., 2012). This has been further complemented by an
increasingly thorough discourse on how these patterns link to human cognition. The link to
cognition comes in many forms, from theorizing why and how syntactic models work for
analyzing behavioral patterns (Hillier, 2003; Marcus, 2018; Hillier and Iida, 2005; Kim and Penn,
2004) to comparison of configurational analysis to cognitive maps (Kim and Penn, 2004; Conroy-
Dalton and Bafna, 2003), to cognitive research in a more direct sense—not seldom in controlled
experiments (Dalton, 2005; Emo, 2014; Hölscher et al., 2006). This has also increasingly become
the explanatory model of the theory, with the main argument often building from individual
perception through movement, constructing understanding of our environments as we navigate
and experience them (Marcus, 2018; Peponis, 2012; Marcus et al., 2016). Along these lines of
reasoning, this is often linked to Gibson’s theory of affordance (Gibson, 1977; 1979) as a way of
explaining just why this constructed understanding affects actions while not doing so in a
deterministic manner.
In Universal design research, a similar argument around relations between environment and
people are made, also often based on Gibson’s theories and relying heavily on cognition (Lid,
2014; Law et al., 2018; Iwarsson and Ståhl, 2003). However, while Universal design has
developed a lot of knowledge of how local conditions affect people’s possibilities and actions,
the knowledge is less concrete when it comes to the environment in a larger or more systemic
scales; known in the field as ‘molecular’ (local, individual features) and ‘molar’ (environmental,
overall) aspects of accessibility respectively (Marcheschi et al., 2020; Küller, 1991).
Key in Universal design research, however, is that the environmental conditions affect different
individuals differently (Law et al., 2018; Watchorn et al., 2018), whereas overall, syntactic
research operates with generalized accessibility, sometimes tending towards universality. In this
paper, we will study, on the one hand, the potential of syntactic research to contribute to the
‘molar’ level of accessibility research, and, on the other, implications for syntactic research of
integrating difference in the human-environment relation into the analysis. We will do so through
a study of the city of Uppsala, north of Stockholm, Sweden, where we have worked together with
the municipality and the Disability rights organizations of the municipality and the region to
develop the approach and through which we have also worked with validation of methods and
results. In this we have worked from two ends: together with the municipality to make sure the
questions we address are relevant for them, and that we find relevant, updated geographic
information regarding factors that differentiate accessibility for different individuals. From this
we have proceeded to make ‘system-world’ analysis, that is, based on the municipality’s data,
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 3
how would differentiation affect the accessibility system—such as, what is the systemic effect of
being unable to traverse stairs? On the other hand, we have worked with the Disability rights
organizations to understand the ‘life-world’ of how accessibility is lived and experienced,
including conducting a questionnaire from which we will build a few ‘life-world’ analyses
making use of real, perceived challenges. Both of these pose noticeable challenges which we will
return to in connection to the analyses.
The paper will first briefly go through affordance theory in relation to configurative and universal
design research and the research challenge in principle. We will then introduce the municipality
and show a few analyses that demonstrate the impact including difference in configurative
analysis can have, before concluding with a discussion of implications this might have for spatial
analysis and planning.
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James J. Gibson’s theory of affordance (Gibson, 1977; 1979) has proven fertile ground for
understanding the link between people, cognition and the environment as investigated in
syntactic research. In short, the theory describes how one needs to understand such a link
between species and environment not as residing in conditions of the environments or in faculties
and abilities of the species, but specifically in the interaction between these. Perception is seen as
embodied and dynamic experience. Affordances thus neither exists in the environment or in the
species but in how they interact, in relation to what the species in question seeks from the
environment. This means that opportunities and constraints in the environment are relative to the
characteristics of the organism perceiving them. As Greeno (1994) explains, “affordance” as an
integrated, interactive phenomenon does not only narrowly denote “possibility,” but refers to
modes of orientation, exploration, and a range of other factors: the capacity to see or otherwise
perceive a distant possibility of rest or danger might affect affordance just as much as the
possibility to traverse the distance, depending on the species-environment interaction in question.
From this reasoning, the syntactic models are understood not as essential geometry but to capture
specifically aspects important for how humans can move in and make use of their environment.
As John Peponis (2018, p.37) describes it: the models and analytic methods are based on “a
descriptive theory of the perceptual, relational and functional affordances of inhabited space that
are relevant to its cognitive and social intelligibility”.
Gibson’s theory is also important within Universal design research, where the Person-
Environment-Occupation model (PEO) is prominent (Law et al., 2018; Watchorn et al., 2018).
However, the PEO model, more so than many uses of the affordance concept, and especially the
affordance concept in syntax research, puts emphasis on the individual’s particular relation to
their environment and their (potential) occupation thereof. While entirely within Gibson’s
concept, and he did reason around individual beings, his focus was rather on faculties, abilities
and so on as different between species rather than within. In our research, we bring in the PEO-
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 4
thinking of differentiating affordances on an individual level, since a model following the basic
syntactic modelling principles of “where one can see and go” would look different depending on
one’s visual and mobility capacities.
Important to learn from these theories, and central in syntactic research, is that the common
approach in planning and design to consider planning for or from the perspective of different
groups or categories can be problematic (see further e.g., Bricout and Gray, 2006). From the
perspective of spatial analysis, the key question is finding relevant “PEO-bundles”, that is,
relevant relations between people and their environment. If one is to use groups, the groups must
be reasonably much defined along such lines. That is, many groups often discussed in planning
(e.g. children, elderly, men, women, et cetera) are not differentiated or categorized following
different individual-environment relations, but based on other principles, which risks leading to
mistakes when preparing and interpreting analysis. Ceccato, for instance, demonstrate how a
category of “women” relate to sense of safety in the environment in at least four, partially
contradictory ways depending on individual and context (Ceccato, 2017; Vanier and d’Arbois de
Jubainville, 2017). Thereby, rather than using regular terms that group people following various
principles, we will primarily make use of specific person-environment relations in the coming,
linking to other categorizations only occasionally to show societal relevance. As an example,
while many older individuals may have difficulty traversing stairs, we would not analyze the
environment for “older people” or “people in wheelchairs”, but “individuals unable to traverse
stairs”. This also operates intersectionally (Crenshaw, 1989) so that challenges shared between
some individuals in different groups can be analyzed without ascribing the challenges to whole
groups, or exclude affected individuals in other groups. In extension, in line with
intersectionality, it would is also possible to investigate if and how combinations of difference
generate further, unique results.
Further important for our research, however, is to understand how the environment may look
different on a systemic level, or, how the configuration of space might be different for
individuals with different faculties. As a result, we are not looking to understand particular
objects or situations and how they differentiate between people (a “molecular” approach), but
how they—regardless of their individual size or extension—affect accessibility in a larger scale
(a “molar” approach). As an example, we can use a principle figure (Figure 1), which shows the
configurational centrality in two systems where the only difference is what in the left figure is
marked in grey. Such a difference could, for instance, be caused by a set of stairs in a street
system, where the left and right figure would show the centrality configuration for people who
can and who cannot traverse stairs—and additionally, how accessibility to two amenities (A and
B) would be different.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 5
Figure 1: Two principle systems with only minor differences in their ‘streets’, and their closeness centrality
represented through thickness of lines. The small differences make a large difference in the centrality
pattern, as well as how centrally located location A and B are.
This way of investigating different models have been done before in syntactic research, but
except a small study by Heitor et al (2013), the different models tend to be between for instance
visibility and accessibility (Zhu, 2012; Koch, 2012; Hanson, 1998; Dalton and Dalton, 2009;
Hanson, 1996; Psarra, 2018), between ‘scales’ of space (Koch, 2005; de Holanda, 2021) or
between before and after a change such as for instance disasters (Esposito and Di Pinto, 2015;
Cutini et al., 2020; Abshirini and Koch, 2017; Koch and Miranda, 2013) or re-designs (Conroy-
Dalton and Kirsan, 2005; Peponis et al., 2015). When working in urban environments and
understanding how accessibility might differ between people, the general differentiation made is
rather between measures, either different centrality measures, different radii, or different distance
concepts such as angular and geometric distance or primary and dual graphs (Hillier and Iida,
2005; Marshall et al., 2018; Hillier and Hanson, 1984; Feng and Zhang, 2019). There is also
other research related to the overall question of Universal design and spatial configuration
(Grzeschik et al., 2021; Bafna et al., 2021), which is of importance for our work, but which tends
to focus on understanding what kinds of configurations are more easy or difficult to navigate for
different people, not directly comparing differences in spatial models for different individuals
within the same environment. In some methodological perspectives, our research builds upon and
develops these kinds of approaches, but in other respects our approach is quite different as we
consider the models to be different for different individuals. All our analyses are performed using
the open-source application PST (Berghauser Pont et al., 2019).
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Uppsala, the fourth largest city in Sweden, is an old city that has been the ecclesiastical center of
Sweden since 1164 and with Uppsala University founded in 1477 being the oldest center of
higher education in Scandinavia. The city traditionally has a ‘town and gown’ divide with clergy,
royalty, and academia historically residing on the western side of the river, including the
cathedral, castle and university buildings, whereas eastern Uppsala historically contain more
A BA B
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 6
‘worker’ districts. Today, retail activity is geographically mostly focused on a small number of
blocks and pedestrianized streets on the eastern side of the river, with the narrowest definition of
the ‘center’ to be found between the river and the railway station just a few blocks east of it. Like
most cities in Sweden, it also has a small set of suburbs built during the ‘Million programme era’
of the mid-20th century. This long history poses some particular challenges for research into
Universal design, since it has many historical layers that are important from a cultural heritage
point of view which may conflict with ideals of equal access for everyone (e.g., Cutini, 2007).
The municipality itself works consciously with accessibility challenges (Uppsala kommun,
2016), including such questions in their comprehensive plan as well as forming special working
groups around the challenge and establishing a council where the municipality interacts with
citizens and interest groups around the questions. This research project thus comes partially as
integrated into this ongoing process, but also challenges and develops some of the aspects of how
it is done. Since 2016, the municipality is participating in the WHO network, Age friendly cities
and communities. A policy program aiming to transform Uppsala to become elderly friendly
(Uppsala kommun, 2020) addresses goals related to public health, well-being and strategies
specifically for elderly but is including needs also from other groups, for example disabled and
children. Among many things, there is an emphasis on possibilities for physical activities and
maintain social networks and support participate in social activities. In this study, we focus upon
aspects related to the physical environment important for those with mobility impairments and
low functional mobility, limiting basic physical activities.
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Translating the theoretical reasoning above into concrete analyses poses a range of challenges.
Environmental data, in GIS systems or other forms such as drawings, are generally not gathered
and structured from a universal design perspective either in content or form, and complex and
gradual differences when translated into models need to be simplified and categorized. Any and
all analyses must therefore be understood as indicative, to identify potential challenges and
effects. While arguably this is true for all models and all syntactic analysis, it becomes even more
important in our case. It also means that which analyses we can do is affected by what data is
available with dependable detail and completeness. In the current work, we have gotten quite far
with some particular analyses, which have also been validated by municipality and Disability
rights organizations as relevant and informative. This makes us confident of the approach and
relevance of the research, but the particular analyses presented remain test-cases to be further
investigated, validated, and tested in the coming.
The choice of analyses we present here has been worked out with the municipality and the
disability rights organizations and has emerged from an explorative process. In this discussion it
has become clear that there is no “silver bullet” analysis to be done, but rather a wide range of
different situations which can be analyzed. However, when working with the municipality and
geodata, it becomes clear that from our perspective, the data is problematic. The issue is not that
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 7
Uppsala has little data, but a combination of what is gathered, how it is digitized, and practical
restrictions on digitalization. For instance, we can see how much of the data is correct from a
data point of view—that is, it is registered correctly following the standards and formats
expected, and so on. However, the data can still be challenging to use: the dataset does contain
most stairs in public space, but it does not tell whether the stair is actually ‘blocking’ a pathway
or not, why every stair would need to be checked individually for if they affect the configuration
or not. Second, some data is correct and of high quality when it is entered, but is incomplete:
Uppsala is an old city with many different kinds of street surfaces, and while it is certain that a
street registered as ‘cobbles’ actually is a cobbled street, there are many streets that are cobbled
that have not yet been entered into the system (Figure 2). In addition, different kinds of ‘cobbles’
be barriers or not for different individuals. The ‘system world’ analysis therefore needs to
balance quality and completeness of data with what can be learnt from analysis, together with, of
course, quality checking and completions of datasets when possible. For overall analysis of the
whole city, however, this has not been possible within the project so we have had to lean more on
which datasets have enough completeness to give an overall valid picture.
Figure 2. Streets registered as being ‘cobbled’ in orange, and a photograph of one of the streets next to
Uppsala Cathedral, demonstrating the incompleteness of the street surface data.
The individual analyses pose different, but highly informative, challenges, one of which can
perhaps best be described by how one respondent to our questionnaire states regarding a street
that “it has been difficult to move around in an electric wheelchair, but I discovered today that
the surface was even and good”. This respondent has avoided these streets for a long time, and
the improved surfaces (depending on exact street segments) may have been done quite a while
ago. Another challenge is how bundles of factors can come to characterize whole areas, even if
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 8
the particular factors act rather locally or small-scale. Reported problematic locations are thus
subject to when and how experience and behavior stems from, and may reflect issues that are no
longer there in the material environment, while individuals still avoid going there because they
believe they are problematic. This means we have at least three disparate situations, which we,
drawing on Habermas (1987), can term the ‘system-world’ dataset, the ‘life-world’ experience-
based situation, and the ‘material-world’ current environment. Not only does this create
challenges in analyzing the environment, however, it causes further challenges for validation. In
our analysis, we lean on the idea of cognitive maps (here meant as the ‘map’ operating in an
individual’s spatial and navigational understanding of their environment) as major link between
the material environment and affordance, but consider them to have what one could call an
‘information lag’ in that they are constructed over time and are to various degrees thereby
reflecting a patchwork of different historical states of the environment. We further draw upon
Jean Francois Augoyard’s work on how perception guides how one relates to the environments
including how cognitive ‘maps’ are constructed, such as what is included or excluded (Augoyard,
2007). On this basis, we consider the perceived accessibility to be what affects behavior, which
of course may change over time.
Finally, while the project deals with Universal design and disabilities in a wider sense,
we will here, based on affordance theory, study accessibility and the possibilities to move around
in the city having various disabilities. What barriers may be found in the outdoor environment
and how do we model the conditions in a way that may be relevant from an architectural
perspective? For those with impaired mobility the design of walkways is decisive but for many
people the possibility to rest and sit down every now and then along a walk is equally important,
which has been acknowledged by the municipality in various policy documents. This limitation
to movement impairment is for the sake of narrative consistency, showing how different kinds of
analysis can relate to aspects of potentially interlinked environmental challenges. They are also
chosen because we can demonstrate not only system-world and life-world analyses, but because
we can demonstrate how what we will term ‘enablers’ and ‘barriers’ operate in relation to spatial
analysis, and because the data is clear and communicative. In this paper, we will analyze
‘enablers’ as a ‘system-world’ analysis, utilizing municipal data, and ‘barriers’ as ‘life-world’
analysis, using user-reported challenges in navigating the environment.
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The notion of ‘enablers’ in our analysis builds on how Julienne Hanson (2004) demonstrates how
public toilets can work to restrict or enable accessibility in urban environments. She argues that
while for many, moving in the city is dependent on closeness to a toilet, the limitation is systemic
rather than particular: it is not accessibility to any particular toilet, or that one has to stop every
so often to go to the toilet, but the possibility to do so that is limiting. As long as the possibility
exist to reach one easily, one might be quite mobile. That is, the ‘system of accessible public
toilets’ is a limiting but also enabling factor; by adding public toilets, accessibility is expanded.
In such systems, the deciding factor is dependency and continuity of closeness to toilets, and
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 9
chains of public toilets close enough to one another can create a possibility to navigate large
portions of the city. Such chains can of course be vulnerable, where individual breaks might fully
disconnect parts of the city for those who would not move between them. They thereby also
operate to make other amenities accessible: with possibilities of visiting a public toilet between
one’s home and the drug or grocery store, one might be able to solve everyday errands on one’s
own, moving in and sharing public space with others, and thereby, as Zukin (1995) notes,
becoming part of society—and, furthermore, ensuring that people with different abilities are seen
and encountered. Cities where certain groups are excluded from using public space will not foster
social inclusion or the acceptance of ‘the other’, and it risks having negative effects for
participation and engagement (Legeby, 2013). This is the approach we take when studying the
distribution of benches in Uppsala.
Benches
In a report from 2017 (Linder et al., 2017) has proved large differences within the municipality
regarding conditions important for elderly people. Important aspects identified are for example
outdoor environment, access to service, and public transportation. One of the conditions raised in
the report and highlighted in this paper, is the design of the pedestrian network. While the survey
shows that separation of bicycle lanes from pedestrians and poor maintenance of pedestrian paths
are important constraints, as much as 80% perceive that there are not enough benches (or other
adequate place to sit) where it is possible to sit down and rest during a walk. Just the fact to know
that there is a possibility to rest at frequent occasions implies for many people that a certain route
is providing needed conditions. In line with Gibson’s way to describe environments, it is possible
to argue that paths or routes that lack benches are not walkable for certain, specific groups since
they are not restable
1
. Or, as the municipality describes it; to walk one have to be able to sit
(Lennartsson and Blomberg, 2019, building on Gustafsson, 2013). It means that local
circumstances may have considerable global effects, if strategic paths lack a frequent interval of
benches this implies that such routes are not part of the pedestrian network for those with
mobility impairments.
In the municipal guidelines for benches (Lennartsson and Blomberg, 2019) conclude that benches
need to be places with a distance of 100-200 meters, in proximity of important goal points. In
neighborhoods with high density of elderly and disabled people, the distance should be reduced
to 50 meters. The maximum distance between benches in recreation areas (green areas and parks)
is suggested to be 250 meters. In this study with elaborations of the syntactic model exploring the
effects of its modifications, the aim is to identify all routes that fulfil these goals. First, we
analyze the spatial system and what street segments or paths are provided with benches; routes
that are not only walkable for pedestrians but also restable. We identify what locations are found
to have an impact on the global system and where the conditions have narrow effects on the local
level. Second, we highlight areas where there is higher accessible density to elderly in the
1
Gibson invented new concepts and words by adding ’able’ as a suffix to a verb/phrase (Gibson, 1979).
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 10
municipality, people of the age over 70 years. Third, we study the effects of the distribution of
benches in relation to on the one hand residential addresses and on the other hand, how health
care centers are located in relation to the walkable-restable-network of Uppsala.
In the analyses with the aim to identify the walkable-restable network a method is applied where
the distance between benches is analyzed. Each bench having another bench within a distance of
50, 100, 150, and 200 meters, measured as walking distance through the street network, is
assigned. These paths equipped with benches build up the network for people with special needs,
while routes that lack benches of such distance is argued to be inaccessible, or at least
unattractive, for people with impaired mobility. The results reveal that only a third of the benches
in the city of Uppsala has another bench within 50 meters. If increasing the radius to 100 meters,
we find that 83% of all benches are connected with at least one other bench (Figure 3). As the
distance increases a slightly larger share of the benches add up to the system and measuring 250
meters as much as 92% of the benches are connected.
Figure 3. Benches with a distance of maximum 100 meters (green points).
Looking at the pattern that emerges it is possible to see that continuous lines are located in a
north-south direction in proximity of the river Fyris as well as along streets characterized by high
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 11
centrality in a direction to the northeast from the city core. However, the analysis also reveals
that benches are not equally distributed throughout the city, large areas lack benches completely
and may be seen as a kind of ‘bench deserts’. As an illustration, we have highlighted the
segments that are in proximity of benches of 100-meter-distance and what emerges is a scattered
urban structure, covering a relatively large share of the central parts, however, at the same time
large areas extinguish, in total as much as 42% (Figure 4). When highlighting where there is a
concentration of elderly in the city of Uppsala we find two islands, both located in the city core
or at the edge of the core. These two areas are rather well equipped with paths that allows resting
along the route, indicating that at least these areas afford rather favorable conditions.
Figure 4. Street segments provided with benches placed within 100 meters of a neighboring bench
highlighted in black, superimposed on a background of buildings, areas that may be described as ‘bench
deserts’.
Studying the relation between residential addresses and the walkable-restable-network we find
that a considerable share, 43%, of the residential address points lack access to benches in the
200-metric system. The pedestrian routes are important for access to various amenities.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 12
The lack of benches along a path may imply that services and goal points in their proximity
becomes inaccessible for people with special needs. To demonstrate we have chosen a public
service, namely health clinics, and studying whether they are in proximity of benches placed with
a 300-meter distance. The result shows that twenty out of twenty-five health clinics (80%) are
located with contact to paths having benches within 300 meters (which is far from what the
municipality argues is a satisfying standard). Since health clinics constitute a key service
function, it is of significant importance that the environment in their proximity is designed in a
way that takes into account special needs, especially impaired movement but also hearing
impairment or visual impairment. Therefore, we also study the location of the health clinics in
relation to the system where benches are placed within 100 meters from each other. The result
reveals that only six out of twenty-five of the health clinics (24%) are connected to paths where
benches are placed within 100 meters from another bench.
Figure 5. In the city of Uppsala, six health care clinics out of twenty-five connect to paths that have
benches with a maximum of 100-metres distance.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 13
The example with the benches illustrates one aspect of what constitute accessible environments
and demonstrated in the Uppsala example as this is prioritized by the municipality and has been
highlighted by the two Disability Rights Organizations, on the municipal level as well as on the
county level. In the municipal rhetoric, the policy focuses strongly on elderly, but we see that the
possibility to rest and stay in public space has relevance for other age groups as well. Apart from
enabling a person to rest, it also offers opportunities to experience a specific environment, for
example a park or a street with urban life, it may be used to observe, or, for sharing the bench
with others and for social purposes. Hence, it expands the reach where one may reach amenities
and it enables opportunities for participation in urban life.
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Barriers—that, is where some people are hindered by the environment—may be the more
conventional understanding of Universal design challenges. For analysis, this can follow a rather
simple procedure similar to the one by Heitor et al (2013): we simply remove the lines or
portions of lines which are reported as inaccessible or avoided. This allows to analyze whether
ostensibly small or large differences have small or large effects from a systemic perspective. That
the amount and character of change is difficult to predict has been shown in for instance research
regarding resilience (Abshirini and Koch, 2017), but while difficult to predict, changes definitely
follow patterns based on both morphological context and character of change (Peponis et al.,
2015).
We will base the analyses of barriers on a questionnaire conducted together with the disability
rights organization of Uppsala municipality (Funktionsrätt Uppsala kommun), with 44
respondents in total from a range of different disability rights member organizations. The
questionnaire asked basic information of how the respondents would describe their disability, use
of particular types of services (including public transport), particular streets and other locations,
and more open questions regarding types of locations (hospitals, malls, public buildings, streets,
squares). While the data is limited so individuals cannot be identified, it is important for integrity
reasons to be careful with it. Therefore, when we present maps of ‘individuals’, they never
represent all reported challenges from an individual. By and large, this is achieved by limiting
the analytic area to central parts of the municipality, leaving it unknown whether the respondent
provides answers on other areas. Since all respondents comment on the inner city, while how
much and where they report in other parts of Uppsala varies greatly, the data in the inner city can
then be considered anonymous. For the same reason, we will limit the analysis to the city. Lastly,
one should be careful to assume that the questionnaire provides all locations any respondent finds
difficult, why as we analyze the configuration for different respondents, the analyses are of the
affordance for ‘fictive’ individuals rather than real.
Individual perception 1
The first respondent is quite specific, both in responses to questions of particular locations, and
in the way the more open questions are answered, almost always pointing to specific streets or
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 14
intersections, and providing clear details when questions have a more general character. This may
be a character of the respondent, but allows for analyzing the effects of removing these specific
spaces from the analysis. We interpret a response that a public square is inaccessible as that it
also is a barrier to pass through, and that if a street (or portion of a street) is inaccessible, that it
is also a barrier to cross. This may exaggerate some of the effects, but as we are here working to
demonstrate potential, we believe the risk of some exaggeration is a smaller problem than the
minimizing of problems that could come from the opposite assumptions. In this case, it is a few
specific streets and squares, and one bridge.
Individual perception 2
The other respondent, in addition to a few specific locations, rather says they avoid the area
“from the cathedral to Svandammen”, an area of roughly 500*200m, because “many of the
sidewalks are narrow and difficult to use”. While it may be functionally possible to traverse the
area (in both directions), and navigate in or through it along select streets, the whole area is
avoided due to ‘enough’ presence of problematic elements. In addition, they mention a number of
concrete squares, streets, and other locations such as the Botanical Garden. By combining ‘areas’
with some specific locations, the respondent provides a composite map where a portion of the
city is ‘blanket avoided’, while specific street segments are also added to the mix.
Analytic results
The initial question is then whether these reported challenges are local, or have system effects.
There are many different aspects of such a question, but we will look on a larger scale on global
(here analyzed as radius 45) and local (here analyzed as radius 3) integration in an axial map
(Figures 6 through 9). For the global measures, we can see that both the first and second
respondent, there are noticeable changes to the pattern of centrality on a wider scale, also outside
of the areas directly affected. However, some of the larger changes seem to not affect some parts
of the very core of Uppsala that much, which is in line with the findings of Abshirini and Koch
(2017), showing how two conditions seem to mitigate disruptive effects: in general, distributed
systems, or distributed parts of systems, are more resilient to differences, if the difference are in
the distributed part of the system.
We also note that there are two types of changes; absolute integration values, and relative
integration values. In general, changes are more notable on absolute values, and, predictably, in
absolute numbers integration turns lower. These changes spread far out in the city, meaning that
the differences that are mostly in the very center of Uppsala ‘pulls the whole municipality apart’,
making the more peripheral streets even more peripheral. However, as it comes to relative values,
the changes are somewhat less predictable, and relative integration is more often redistributed.
Uppsala is a more segregated city for the ‘individuals’ we have mapped, but not only that, which
streets and areas are most central is partially different.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 15
Figure 6: Global integration difference between the regular axial map (top) and the two ‘individual’ axial
maps in a larger scale of Uppsala (in numbered order middle and bottom). Global scale as radius 45. The
color scale is adjusted to be more sensitive at higher integration values, since the periphery of Uppsala (not
in the figure) is noticeably more segregated than the studied area. The value ranges show the relative
integration of each individual map.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 16
Figure 7: Global integration difference between the regular axial map and ’individual’ axial maps in a
larger scale of Uppsala. Global scale as radius 45. The color scale is adjusted to be more sensitive at higher
integration values, since the periphery of Uppsala (not in the figure) is noticeably more segregated than the
studied area. The value ranges are the same for all maps.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 17
For instance, a south-eastern part next to the central core of Uppsala, which is an area where no
changes to the map have been made, becomes relatively less central for the first individual, but
relatively more central for the second (e.g., the ‘continuous bend’ of red lines in the latter),
whereas in absolute integration it is less integrated in both cases. For both, the effect is largest in
the east and south, while the northwest is largely unaffected.
On a local level, the change is also clearly visible in both cases, partially because it more
obviously affects the very central core of Uppsala. Again, the difference between the ‘standard’
map and the individual maps is not uniform, and the changes also affect parts that are not directly
related to the lines that are different. While one might intuitively understand the difference in
relative integration for global integration—a location can be relatively more central in the system
as a whole when another is made less central—just how to interpret the relative distribution of
local integration is not quite as easy, although it would suggest that different places would be
experienced as well-connected for different ‘individuals’. What we can see is, further, that in
absolute figures, the center of Uppsala is more heavily affected than in relative figures, and more
affected in local than in global integration.
In both global and local integration, we can further see how, on an overall level, the southern part
of Uppsala city and the network reaching out towards the southern suburbs—west of the river and
south of the center—is more sensitive than other directions even whether directly affected or not.
This seems to be linked to how the network connects across the river in this direction, with
increasingly few and complex links to and from bridges. Thus, addressing some of the discovered
patterns may also include efforts outside of the location of the reported problems: the network
effects of the challenges to mobility would be smaller if a pair of simpler and more straight-
forward connections were established across the river to the south.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 18
Figure 8: Local integration difference between the regular axial map and ‘individual’ axial maps. Local
scale as radius 3. The value ranges show the relative integration of each individual map.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 19
Figure 9: Local integration difference between the regular axial map and ’individual’ axial maps. Local
scale as radius 45. The value ranges are the same for all maps.
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 20
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In many ways the reasoning of the research and of our analysis is in line with established ideas of
differences in how people understand ‘centrality’, such as the difference between inhabitant and
visitor perspectives in buildings (Hanson, 1998; Hillier and Hanson, 1984); that is, depending on
for whom and in what context the analysis is performed, what spaces are included in the analysis
is differentiated (e.g. including an exterior or not). However, while arguably implied in the works
of Hillier and Hanson, the principles for ‘included spaces’ in our analyses is quite different. But
what do these analyses show, and what do they in extension imply?
The analyses of ‘system-world’ factors demonstrate how the entire municipality can be radically
different for different individuals, and that while some of this may be ‘latent’ since not all parts
are experienced by everyone, the system level effects may be significant. They point to how, in
addition to Universal design challenges being important for individual’s rights and conditions,
they may create layers of social segregation and inequality on the collective scale that go beyond
reaching individual locations. The city may, quite literally, be more segregating for some than
others—and may appear as archipelagos of disconnected islands where it for others works as
continuity, with further effects on behavior and perception driving inequality and segregation not
only in access but in who-meets-whom and who can experience what (kind of) environments. In
extension, it may affect our understanding of ‘who’ is part of society.
The ‘system-world’ analysis also becomes important for urban planning and design work, since it
helps understand which challenges are related to physical planning in particular, and what may
relate to other factors, including the degrees to which it relates to different aspects of municipal
work. It can further help to understand whether an effort is likely to, in short or long term, have
larger scale benefits or if it operates more locally. Both types of efforts are valid and can be
important, but precision in which is which, where, is also important—not only for the municipal
planning ‘in itself’, but for dialogue and communication with citizens. An effort communicated
as addressing ‘system’ challenges may even backfire if it does not, and a challenge treated as
either on system or local scale may be addressed wrongly if understood in the wrong way. We
argue that a better understanding of whether there are local or global effects as a result of
different barriers supports the municipal decision-making process and in prioritization of when
and where to work with addressing problems in the built environment.
The two ‘life-world’ analyses of individual affordances must be understood in the light of the
previously mentioned respondent’s comment: while there are environmental conditions that have
generated their environmental perception and what locations they avoid, this is not a
continuously updated understanding. Rather, they make use of their knowledge and choose to
avoid locations they consider problematic, not returning to ‘update’ themselves particularly
often. What locations and environments they avoid is therefore based on what one could term
‘projection’, or at least expectation—although built on real-life experience (Koch, 2017; Netto,
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 21
2008). However, as the second individual analysis demonstrates, it also builds on metonymic
understanding: individual or collections of perceptions can come to characterize whole areas,
whether ‘correct’ or not and whether individually experienced or not (Augoyard, 2007). This
supports the approach of the research in that it confirms that there are ‘system effects’ of
individual challenges, but creates additional layers to the analytic challenge in that in addition to
system effects that emerge from bundles of factors (e.g., several stairs), the bundles may serve to
create new challenges by generating perceptions of entire streets or areas.
This, of course, relates to the very character of ‘avoidance’ as extending beyond direct reactions
to local conditions. The place is avoided before even being thought of going to, and/or at the
point of being thought of going to, rather than upon being discovered. Navigation choses other
paths and directions well before being challenged by the particular locational properties (Koch,
2016). This poses challenges for research as well as for caring for these problems in practice:
effects of improvements are slow and difficult to communicate, and the data of avoided locations
gathered from informants are likely to be a patchwork of information with various age and
thereby various degrees of current material validity. Using informants’ statements to directly
judge which locations are difficult is therefore problematic, and needs to be complemented or
confirmed by on-site visits and for instance ‘walking interviews’, although ‘walking’ might seem
to be particularly strange term to use in this context. However, the reverse is also true: using
current information on the material environment may be ‘true’, but cannot be directly translated
to the affordances of individuals here and now.
This is also of general importance: while discovered relations between material world, cognition,
and behavior may be strong over time, there can be significant ‘lag’ between changes of the
environment and effects on behavior. While this may sound obvious, it suggests that validation of
analyses through observed behavior—when not in controlled experiments of currently newly
experienced environments—will always contain a patchwork of spatial cognition, where people
act in part on the ‘current’ configuration, and in part on previous experience—and in part on
projection and expectation. This patchwork of information may further distort gathering of spatial
information, or spatial learning (Montello, 2007; Marcus, 2018), where arguably, the less
frequented spaces are, the slower the information will be updated. While the analyses of, for
instance, benches are likely to provide an important and informative result concerning
affordances, the step in-between environmental conditions and individual affordances needs to be
taken into account. The analyses can thereby help the municipality understand where there are
significant challenges with the environment, but must be complemented by understanding
perceived challenges, as well as with dialogue and information efforts on what is done so that
efforts to improve also land with those the improvements are meant to help.
There are remaining questions of how to work with such analyses as we do in a productive way,
which are embedded in the very core of the research project. Some regular explanations or
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 22
interpretations of how and why correlations occur in syntactic research become more complex:
the importance of memory and projection as parts of spatial cognition and navigating our
environments becomes clear (Koch, 2017; Augoyard, 2007), as does the ‘allocentric’ aspects of
cognition (Hillier, 2003; Piaget and Inhelder, 1956; Portugali, 2011). But it also asks to what
extent spatial cognition revolves around the individual or the shared, collective understanding
and use of a city. That is, whether a ‘cognitive map’ is built on the direct environmental
experiences of the individual, or on a collective shared understanding of the environment. The
questionnaire suggests that it is a combination, suggesting that explaining effects of syntax
through cognition should more clearly include communication of spatial knowledge between
people. Arguably connected to this, but also through the analyses of the ‘individual’ maps, the
research suggests that rather than a plethora of individual affordances, certain ranges of
understanding would be likely to converge whereas others might diverge. The regular axial map
based on mobile walking individuals is likely to be one such converging cognitive map, but the
implications reposition it in two ways: as a particular map of relevance for many, but not
universally ‘human’, and while built on a spatial analysis that captures cognitive aspects of
material arrangements of space, as fundamentally social.
There are of course many challenges remaining. Further in-depth work around specific
environments where ‘system-world’, ‘life-world’ and ‘material-world’ can be scrutinized and
brought to align with one another is central. In such work, a challenge is to understand when
specific challenges, or collections of specific challenges, translate into perception of whole areas,
such as how respondents say they do not go to the inner city because of difficulties to navigate a
number of streets and blocks—while might be possible for them to navigate fair portions of the
area. This is important both in terms of how to work with analysis, and how to work with data
gathering and digitalization, which affects how municipalities need to build their geographic
information to allow these kinds of analyses with precision and relevance. But with this said, the
approach can help to understand whether an effort to address universal design challenges is likely
to, in short or long term, have larger scale benefits or if it operates more locally. While ideally
such understanding is supported by accurate and systematically gathered information, the
experiments made in this project suggests a lot can be learned also through targeted efforts.
I
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While the implications and questions raised through the research and analyses are important, we
will conclude by refocusing on the more concrete results of the research and their implications
for spatial analysis, municipal planning, and digitalized geographic information, as well as some
concrete challenges. While Uppsala municipality have well-developed policies and programs
with the aim to increase accessibility and foster participation, especially addressing people with
special needs and disabilities, it has been illustrated how different ‘molecular’ challenges, local
barriers and constraints, in some cases may aggregate and affect accessibility in a larger ‘molar’
scale. The paper describes three different situations may be captured and what such analyses may
Proceedings of the 13th Space Syntax Symposium
Equal living environments 23
contribute with but also the complexity in terms of data gathering, data quality, constructing an
adequate model on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the difficulty to capture how different
users perceive environments, either in their minds or as a result of embodied experience.
The analyses clearly demonstrate how small, local, differences in accessibility can have large-
scale effects. They show how small ‘objects’ such as public benches can manipulate systemic
accessibility and make or break urban continuities, and how for instance street surface can
redistribute accessibility and centrality between individuals. They further demonstrate how the
city may look quite different, both in terms of what is, in particular, accessible or not, far away or
close by, but also in patterns of navigational centrality. Both through or analyses and through our
work together with the municipality and the disability rights organizations, the validity of the
approach is confirmed, while the extent of their direct representativity needs further development
and empirical corroboration. However, through the process of performing the analyses, an
understanding of Uppsala grows forth in terms of what parts are generally—or more often—
affected and which parts remain more stable. While doing analyses for every difference is
impossible, we can further see how a few analyses lead to a better understanding of where the
structure of Uppsala is sensitive even if they are ‘particular’ for select individuals. It also
suggests that while there may be large differences to be found if one looks at the conditions for
people with different disabilities, systemic patterns are likely to emerge, converging towards a
smaller set of overall patterns. We also note that a more distributed system is more resilient to
difference (i.e., the effect of removing links generally is smaller), but that this must be
complemented by that the questionnaire suggests that differences are more often reported (and
thereby possibly more often perceived) in central parts of the system.
Perhaps most importantly, the capacity for the analysis to bring universal design questions from
the local, ‘molecular’, to the system scale, ‘molar’, also enables it to more easily be integrated in
comprehensive planning and strategic urban design and development discussions—as well as in
formulating strategies for accessibility work ‘in itself’. Especially when it helps bringing ‘life-
world’ problems into ‘system-world’ ways of operating, in a form that allows it to be understood
on a structural urban scale. When building an understanding of what affects accessibility and
affordance on a larger scale, efforts can be made on that scale, in addition to addressing the local
situation—and some challenges can be mitigated by addressing problems by investments made
ostensibly ‘elsewhere’, to make the structure less sensitive to individual differences if and when
they occur.
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Akkelies van Nes & Remco E. de Koning (editors)
Department of Civil Engineering
Western Norway University of Applied sciences
Inndalsveien 28, 5070 Bergen, Norway
Proceedings 13th international space syntax symposium,
20-24 June 2022
ISBN 978-82-93677-67-3
Online proceedings found on:
https://www.hvl.no/en/research/conference/13sss/
