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Boundaries of the built environment: defining the significance of the material presence of spatial morphology in social life
Open Research Europe
Abstract
Settled societies inhabit environments shaped by building activity. Geographic data in social scientific and geographical research are generally composed of architectural and social categories derived from commonplace lived experience and societal knowledge, thus carrying socio-culturally specific meaning. The mundane pragmatism of such categories conflate spaces and buildings with their use and may obstruct effective comparison. Here I introduce a formal redescriptive ontology for built environments that operates on the basis of how differentiation and subdivision constitute distinct occupiable spaces through boundaries. The ontology consists of formally redescriptive socio-spatial and material concepts called ‘Boundary Line Types’ (BLT). I present and photographically illustrate the definitions of the BLTs, which are formulated on a critical realist basis and rooted in a multidisciplinary body of theory concerning the development and inhabitation of built space. Considering inhabited built environments through this ontology foregrounds the emergent logic by which spaces are divided and connected, creating configurations of boundaries as material frames that afford everyday social life. Since BLTs offer transferrable empirical principles from which these material frames emerge, they also enable diachronic and cross-cultural comparative social research. My proposition to approach social scientific built environment research through constitutive material boundaries offers a comparative complement to commonplace and socio-culturally specific spatial categories that compose most geographic data, enabling formal thick redescriptions and the potential for quantitative spatial analysis.
... Wen et al. (2022) proposed a multi-scale, high-density convolutional neural network (MHCNN) classification method for spatial cognitive ability assessment. Vis (2023) put forward the social-spatial core relationship as a necessary component in the environmental knowing process for built environments. Guo et al. (2023) categorized 168 park spaces into four size grades and employed the entropy-TOPSIS method with multiple data sources; the research assessed and analyzed the general quality of park green spaces in Shenyang. ...
In the context of urban development, this research paper delves into the intricate relationship between urban space quality perception and the psychological well-being of residents. Urban spaces are dynamic and possess characteristics that significantly influence individuals’ psychological states. This study focuses on the specific niche of understanding the influence of spatial environment quality on residents’ psychological perception from a spatial perspective, challenging conventional assumptions and aligning with evolving trends in urban studies. The study employs a unique approach, combining micro-psychological perception analysis, web-crawled Baidu Maps street data, semantic segmentation using the PSPNet model for street image elements, and a novel “man–machine confrontation-iterative feedback” evaluation methodology. Deep learning techniques are harnessed for processing street images, and human–computer interaction scores are incorporated to gauge urban block space quality perception. The findings shed light on factors influencing spatial quality perception, such as green spaces, urban infrastructure, safety, and aesthetics. Furthermore, the research highlights the practical implications for urban planning and policy development. It introduces a novel “human–machine interaction and feedback” methodology that empowers decision-makers to create more resident-centric, data-driven urban environments. The study underscores the importance of community engagement in the planning process and advocates for inclusive and sustainable urban environments. This research contributes to both theoretical and practical domains, bridging the gap between advanced technology and perceptual evaluation in the urban context. It provides a deeper understanding of human interactions with urban surroundings and offers valuable guidance for building resilient and livable cities that prioritize the well-being and happiness of their inhabitants.
https://www.campus.de/buecher-campus-verlag/wissenschaft/soziologie/gebaute_gesellschaft-3818.html
Architektur gibt der Gesellschaft erst eine sicht- und greifbare Gestalt. Sie schafft also eher die soziale Realität, statt sie nur auszudrücken. Architektur ist zudem auch visionär und richtungsweisend für gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen. Heike Delitz entwickelt erstmals eine systematische soziologische Theorie der Architektur. In Fallstudien untersucht sie europaweit wegweisend gewordene Architekturen wie beispielsweise die des Bauhauses. Sie geht dabei der Frage nach, wie unsere Gesellschaft mit ihrer Architektur zu dem geworden ist, was sie ist.
End users of archaeological maps are restricted in what they know about the data they are using. Mapped information is regularly used for visualisation and spatial analysis in GIS to aid interpretation. Precisely how, then, can digital spatial data best support social interpretation? Boundaries are introduced as a heuristic device to work through a series of critical observations and theoretical concepts that enable an understanding and restructuring of spatial data for social interpretation. Establishing a firm foundation for this restructuring is important to nurture a critical awareness of how archaeology can contribute to the ‘new territory’ of GIS approaches. While this chapter focuses on the example of built environment maps—which helps to formulate pertinent questions and to demonstrate the research process—the arguments remain valid for archaeology as social science broadly conceived.
The diversity and complexity of human settlements is reflected in the range of ways we try to understand them. The richness of subject matter presented by cities has given rise to an equal richness in methods of investigation. Even within a single field such as urban morphology, there are different approaches with different terms of reference. The challenge raised by the diversity is not how to select between the different views but how to combine and co-ordinate them. The purpose of this paper is to undertake an initial critical analysis of different approaches to urban morphology in an effort to meet that challenge. The first aim is to identify the range of different phenomena taken as the object of urban morphological enquiry. The second is to identify an aspect that is common to all the approaches and that can be used as a reference key to co-ordinate different views in a rigorous way. The ultimate goal is a composite view in which the different approaches support each other to provide a better understanding of human settlements.
This book tackles a number of challenging questions: How can we conceptualize architectural objects and practices without falling into the divides architecture/society, nature/culture, materiality/meaning? How can we prevent these abstractions from continuing to blind architectural theory? What is the alternative to critical architecture?It places architecture at the intersection of the human and the nonhuman, the particular and the general. It allows its networks to be re-established and to run between local and global, social and technical. Mapping controversies can be extrapolated to a wide range of complex phenomena of hybrid nature.
Archaeology is inherently comparative. Comparison is necessary to understand the material record, for one cannot identify or understand an object never before seen without comparing it to a known object. Comparison is also necessary to understand variation over time and space, for one cannot identify or investigate variation unless one has examples spanning a range of variation, nor can one examine change without examples spanning a range of time. Comparative analysis is the only way to identify regularities in human behavior, and it is also the only way to identify unique features of human societies. Indeed, to Bruce G. Trigger the comparative nature of archaeological data and analysis places archaeology at the heart of the most important issues in the social sciences: The most important issue confronting the social sciences is the extent to which human behavior is shaped by factors that operate cross-culturally as opposed to factors that are unique to particular cultures. (Trigger 2003:3) In this chapter we outline the ways archaeologists have used comparison to understand the material record and to explore variation over time and space. After a brief history of comparative research on ancient societies, we review the variety of approaches used by the authors of this volume using seven dimensions of the comparative method in archaeology.
The study of complex societies, in particular urban spaces such as those of the ancient Maya, can effectively focus on the human interactions and entan-glements that animated such locales. Further, many of the concerns related to crowd dispersal, pedestrian traffic patterns, the constitution of community, and socio-spatial control that underlay spatial analyses of modern urban centres were equally valid in past, non-Western, urban centres. From space syntax to agent simulation and crowd modelling, this paper adopts a methodological 'train of thought' with origins well outside the archaeological mainstream that may be applied in the creation of explanatory/exploratory models for socio-spatial interaction. Within Maya studies (and indeed, other ancient contexts), these models may be profitably invoked to direct research toward a deeper understanding of how the ancient Maya may have actually lived within the monumental built environments that so strongly define them in both popular and professional consciousness. The unit of analysis in all such approaches is the plano-metric representation of architecture and space. In concert with the other papers presented in this volume, particular attention is focused on the analytical consequences (both opportunities and limitations) of such mapping. The Classic Period centre of Copan, Honduras, has been adopted as a case study.
In recent years, the concept of boundaries has been at the center of influential research agendas in anthropology, history, political science, social psychology, and sociology. This article surveys some of these developments while describing the value added provided by the concept, particularly concerning the study of relational processes. It discusses literatures on (a) social and collective identity; (b) class, ethnic/racial, and gender/sex inequality; (c) professions, knowledge, and science; and (d) communities, national identities, and spatial boundaries. It points to similar processes at work across a range of institutions and social locations. It also suggests paths for further developments, focusing on the relationship between social and symbolic boundaries, cultural mechanisms for the production of boundaries, difference and hybridity, and cultural membership and group classifications.
Recent philosophical debates in human geography tend to misappropriate critical realism as a method per se. Drawing upon an extensive review of the realist philosophy and method in social science, this article argues that critical realism is a philosophy in search of a method. It first delves into recent debates about critical realism within the wider geographical discourse. It then suggests three useful guidelines in executing realist research in human geography: iterative abstraction, qualified grounded theory method and methodological triangulation. The article ends with a detailed empirical example for the readers to work through of the ways in which realist research can be practised in human geography.
It has become an academic self-evidence that space can only inadequately be conceptualized as a material or earth-bound base for social processes. This could commend a theoretical view of space as the outcome of action, which brings both social production practices and bodily deployment into focus. The action-theoretical perspective allows the constitution of space to be understood as taking place in perception. Not only are things alone perceived but also the relations between objects. This article develops a space-theoretical concept according to which space is constituted through acts as the outcome of synthesis and positioning practices. This opens up a theoretical perspective defining atmospheres as an external effect, instantiated in perception, of social goods and human beings in their situated spatial order/ing. Exclusion and inclusion are accordingly comprehended in terms of perception of the attunement of places. With reference to Anthony Giddens, this article discusses how space can be understood as a duality of structural ordering and action elements.
In recent years, categories have been a topic of substantial research in the social sciences and humanities. Although many problematic categories such as culture, gender and scale have been criticized, moving beyond them has proved to be surprisingly difficult. This paper attributes this difficulty to what is termed the paradox of categories and argues that the key problems with categories emerge from the contradictory ways their boundaries are intellectually and cognitively understood. By integrating poststructural insights into the role categories play in ordering modern society with research from cognitive science on the role categories play as containers in cognitive processes, this paper argues that the boundaries of categories should be understood as always inchoate — only partially formed and incomplete. The paper concludes that research into categories and boundaries is unnecessarily fragmented across a wide range of disciplines and proposes expanding boundary studies in geography to be the field that investigates the bounding processes that result in all types of categories.
This essay seeks to reframe recent debates on sociospatial theory through the introduction of an approach that can grasp the inherently polymorphic, multidimensional character of sociospatial relations. As previous advocates of a scalar turn, we now question the privileging, in any form, of a single dimension of sociospatial processes, scalar or otherwise. We consider several recent sophisticated 'turns' within critical social science; explore their methodological limitations; and highlight several important strands of sociospatial theory that seek to transcend the latter. On this basis, we argue for a more systematic recognition of polymorphy-the organization of sociospatial relations in multiple forms-within sociospatial theory. Specifically, we suggest that territories (T), places (P), scales (S), and networks (N) must be viewed as mutually constitutive and relationally intertwined dimensions of sociospatial relations. We present this proposition as an extension of recent contributions to the spatialization of the strategic-relational approach (SRA), and we explore some of its methodological implications. We conclude by briefly illustrating the applicability of the 'TPSN framework' to several realms of inquiry into sociospatial processes under contemporary capitalism.
Outline of a Theory of Practice is recognized as a major theoretical text on the foundations of anthropology and sociology. Pierre Bourdieu, a distinguished French anthropologist, develops a theory of practice which is simultaneously a critique of the methods and postures of social science and a general account of how human action should be understood. With his central concept of the habitus, the principle which negotiates between objective structures and practices, Bourdieu is able to transcend the dichotomies which have shaped theoretical thinking about the social world. The author draws on his fieldwork in Kabylia (Algeria) to illustrate his theoretical propositions. With detailed study of matrimonial strategies and the role of rite and myth, he analyses the dialectical process of the 'incorporation of structures' and the objectification of habitus, whereby social formations tend to reproduce themselves. A rigorous consistent materialist approach lays the foundations for a theory of symbolic capital and, through analysis of the different modes of domination, a theory of symbolic power.
Deleuze and Guattari discuss the rhizome as being "absolutely different from roots and radicles" 6. The rhizome is explained via principles. 1 and 2: connection and heterogeneity.: "any point of a rhizome can be connected to anything other, and must be". Principle 3: "Principle of multiplicity" "There are no points or positions in a rhizome, such as those found in a structure, tree, or root. There are only lines". Principle 4: "Principle of asignifying rupture" "There is a rupture in the rhizome whenever segmentary lines explode into a line of flight, but the line of flight is part of the rhizome." Principles 5 and 6: Principle of cartography and decalcomania: Where traditional thought is 'tracing', a rhizome is a map. Tracing involves laying onto reality the pattern of structure, itself a construct. "The map does not reproduce an unconscious closed in upon itself; it constructs the unconscious". They take the term plateau from Gregory Bateson, it refers to a sustained intensity. "We call a 'plateau' any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome".
"Write with slogans: Make rhizomes, not roots, never plant!"
Since The social logic of space was published in 1984, Bill Hillier and his colleagues at University College London have been conducting research on how space features in the form and functioning of buildings and cities. A key outcome is the concept of ‘spatial configuration’ — meaning relations which take account of other relations in a complex. New techniques have been developed and applied to a wide range of architectural and urban problems. The aim of this book is to assemble some of this work and show how it leads the way to a new type of theory of architecture: an ‘analytic’ theory in which understanding and design advance together. The success of configurational ideas in bringing to light the spatial logic of buildings and cities suggests that it might be possible to extend these ideas to other areas of the human sciences where problems of configuration and pattern are critical.
It is readily acknowledged that the configuration of a built environment is shaped by the outer lines of the features it consists of. Yet, these boundary lines are not typically utilised in our theorisation of the built environment to further our social understanding of it. Studies of the built environment often originate in the study of cities: their most elaborate form. Rather than starting from conflated characterisations derived from urbanism, this paper presents a theory for studying built environment configurations by asking how they occur and how society is accommodated by them. This leads to two series of concepts (human being in the spatial world, and human being in the social world), which establish that boundary concepts are essential to the social study of built environment configurations, while they also retain the generality needed to enable comparative research.
This chapter introduces Boundary Line Type (BLT) mapping, a vector GIS based cross-culturally and diachronically comparative method, used for mapping the socio-spatial significance of urban built environments. This new research method is related to other methods currently used to study contemporary as well as historical urban built environments such as urban morphology, space syntax, and GIS based approaches. BLT mapping uses GIS technology in order to apply an ontology of formal boundary conceptualisations expressing the constitutive differences among the materially constructed subdivisions which shape built environments and are inhabited by urban society. This ontology resulted from a firm socio-spatial theoretical grounding (Vis in Sp Flows: Int J Urb ExtraUrb Stud 2(4): 15–29, 2013a; Vis 2013b; Vis in J Borderland Stud, forthcoming) and is here operationalised on the basis of contemporary, historical, historically reconstructed, and archaeological ground-level city plans of the historic city of Winchester (UK) and Chunchucmil (Classic Maya, Mexico). The research processes of data preparation and the analytical mapping of BLTs by identifying them in empirical data contexts are presented. This alerts the prospective user to the challenges and practical measures involved in using spatial datasets of different origin. The interpretive opportunities of the resultant formal redescription of the urban landscape and the potential of the BLT data structure for both advanced spatial analysis and visualisation is explained. Facilitating this interpretive and analytical mapping practice is expected to stimulate future research to systematically explore society-space relations as manifest and developing in cities over time and in socio-culturally contrasting urban traditions. Devising and conducting this methodology advances the qualitative GIS research agenda for the spatial humanities and social sciences by marrying theoretically informed ideational concepts to quantifiable empirical units of information.
The need for human geography to turn inward with respect to the definition of research problems and the use of conceptual structures is pointed to, and it is suggested that Hagerstrand's time-geography is especially appropriate for this purpose. The contents and intents of Hagerstrand's time-geography are briefly presented. The planning applications of time-geography are sketched, and the possible applications of the framework to traditional themes in human geography are discussed. Other possible uses for the time-geography framework are also considered. Finally, the challenge posed by Hagerstrand's time-geography is summarized.
A powerful and innovative argument that explores the complexity of the human relationship with material things, demonstrating how humans and societies are entrapped into the maintenance and sustaining of material worlds • Argues that the interrelationship of humans and things is a defining characteristic of human history and culture • Offers a nuanced argument that values the physical processes of things without succumbing to materialism • Discusses historical and modern examples, using evolutionary theory to show how long-standing entanglements are irreversible and increase in scale and complexity over time • Integrates aspects of a diverse array of contemporary theories in archaeology and related natural and biological sciences • Provides a critical review of many of the key contemporary perspectives from materiality, material culture studies and phenomenology to evolutionary theory, behavioral archaeology, cognitive archaeology, human behavioral ecology, Actor Network Theory and complexity theory.
Illustrations Foreword by Edward T. Hall Preface Introduction The Multidimensional Nature of Boundaries: Social Classifications, Human Ecology and Domesticity by Roderick J. Lawrence Boundaries in France by Susan Carlisle Tearing Down the Fences: Public Gardens and Municipal Power in Nineteenth Century Vienna, Austria by Robert Rotenberg Tourism and the Emergence of Design Self-Consciousness in a Rural Portuguese Town by Denise Lawrence Boundaries of Home in Toronto Housing Cooperatives by Margaret Rodman and Matthew Cooper Intimate Boundaries: A Chinese Puzzle by Deborah Pellow The Spatial Layout of Hierarchy: Residential Style of the Modern Japanese Nobility by Takie Sugiyama Lebra Constructing Differences: Spatial Boundaries and Social Change in Two Costa Rican Plazas by Setha M. Low Negotiating Boundaries: A Perspective From Nigeria by Renee Pittin Boundaries Real and Imagined by Graeme J. Hardie Concluding Thoughts by Deborah Pellow Index
PART ONE: INTRODUCING CRITICAL REALISM Introduction Key Features of Critical Realism in Practice A Brief Introduction PART TWO: POSTMODERN-REALIST ENCOUNTERS Introduction Realism for Sceptics Postmodernism and the Three 'PoMo' Flips Essentialism, Social Constructionism and Beyond PART THREE: Social Science and Space Introduction Space and Social Theory Geohistorical Explanation and Problems of Narrative PART FOUR: CRITICAL REALISM: FROM CRITIQUE TO NORMATIVE THEORY Introduction Critical Realism and the Limits to Critical Social Science Ethics Unbound For a Normative Turn in Social Theory
The author highlights the increased debate about such questions as epistemology and ontology in geography. Whereas realism can be differentiated from positivism on ontological grounds, post-modernism can be differentiated from realism and positivism on epistemological grounds. The author considers the rejection of crude structuralist-materialist analyses that give rise to economic reductionism. It might be argued that realism is also implicated in such a critique; as such, realism is not well positioned to deal adequately with problems associated with culture and the attendant focus on language that is currently the vogue in geography. This article concedes that there is some validity to the criticisms of the realist position indicated above: however, it is argued that these problems could be dealt with within a reformulated version of critical realism. The second part of this article highlights how the working through of critical realism in economic geography should lead to a reconsideration of received research methodologies. However, necessarily, the practice and form of critical realist research will also change in the process. It is only through such a dialogue between practice and conceptualization that critical realism can be applied. -from Author
Spatial boundaries are imposed conceptually and/or physically on otherwise continuous space. The degree to which partitioning occurs varies from culture to culture. Reasons for cross-cultural diversity are explored, and culture, in the form of sociopolitical complexity, is postulated as most influential for the cross-cultural variation reported in the literature.
This paper develops a post-humanist account of urban public space. It breaks with a long tradition that has located the culture and politics of public spaces such as streets and parks or libraries and town halls in the quality of inter-personal relations in such spaces. Instead, it argues that human dynamics in public space are centrally influenced by the entanglement and circulation of human and non-human bodies and matter in general, productive of a material culture that forms a kind of pre-cognitive template for civic and political behaviour. The paper explores the idea of 'situated surplus', manifest in varying dimensions of compliance, as the force that produces a distinctive sense of urban collective culture and civic affirmation in urban life.
Concepts derived from general man-environment system (MES) models are applied to the specific problem of nomadic sedentarization. The analysis focuses on the manner in which residential mobility may function as a central element in nomadic cultures. Restrictions on mobility are linked to changes in such diverse variables as personal identity, cultural viability, experienced stress, and interaction control mechanisms.
The book presents a new theory of space: how and why it is a vital component of how societies work. The theory is developed on the basis of a new way of describing and analysing the kinds of spatial patterns produced by buildings and towns. The methods are explained so that anyone interested in how towns or buildings are structured and how they work can make use of them. The book also presents a new theory of societies and spatial systems, and what it is about different types of society that leads them to adopt fundamentally different spatial forms. From this general theory, the outline of a 'pathology of modern urbanism' in today's social context is developed.