Papers
Do the suburbs exist? Discovering complexity and specificity in suburban built form
Co-authored with S. Griffiths, M. Haklay and C. Jones. Forthcoming in Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers
In human geography cities are routinely acknowledged as complex and dynamic built environments. This description is rarely extended to the suburbs, which are generally regarded as epiphenomena of the urbs and therefore of little intrinsic theoretical interest in themselves. This article presents a detailed critique of this widely held assumption by showing how the idea of 'the suburban' as an essentially non-problematic domain has been perpetuated from a range of contrasting disciplinary perspectives, including those which directly address suburban subject matter. The result has been that attempts to articulate the complex social possibilities of suburban space are easily caught between theories of urbanisation that are insensitive to suburban specificity and competing representations of the suburb that rarely move beyond the culturally specific to consider their generic significance. This article proposes that the development of a distinctively suburban theory would help to undermine one-dimensional approaches to the built environment, by focusing on the relationship between social organisation and the dynamics of emergent built form.
LikeUrban form and deprivation: a contemporary proxy for Charles Booth's analysis of poverty.
Forthcoming in Radical Statistics. Co-authored with Ilaria Geddes.
This article explores the relationship between physical segregation and economic marginalisation in the city, contrasting 19th century and contemporary London. It describes the use of space syntax analysis to represent and analyse urban street systems as a spatial network. One of the main challenges with spatial analysis of contemporary deprivation data is the lack of sufficiently detailed data and summaries that can easily be related to specific elements of the built environment. Either constraints of privacy preclude the release of household-level data, or nationally collected statistics are unsuitable for detailed spatial analysis due to their being summarised for relatively large areas which do not correspond to the specific configuration of the street layout and its morphology. This article highlights how such detail and summaries can provide a powerful tool for policy makers and regeneration projects to address deprivation at the urban and building design scale. A variety of proxies for the Charles Booth map of poverty were considered in order to compare the same area 100 years apart, focusing on places that remained deprived over this period. Housing benefit and council tax benefit data at the household level were provided by two London local authorities. They were transformed into an equivalent to the Booth poverty scales. The first half of this article describes these methods and results and the second half reports on a study in North London using a different measure of spatial integration. Whilst there is some evidence from both the Booth and contemporary data of a connection between poverty and lack of spatial integration the relationship is not simple.
The spatial form of poverty in Charles Booth's London
Published in Progress in Planning
This paper reviews recent research into poverty and spatial form and describes how the application of space syntax methods to this research area, coupled with the use of primary data from the Charles Booth maps of Poverty in 19th century London, has enabled analysis of the socio-economic and spatial structure of areas frequently perceived as 'ghettos'. Through a comparison of two distinctive areas of London - Soho in the West End and the famously poor area of London's East End, the analysis shows a consistent correspondence between poverty and spatial segregation. Booth's economically based 'line of poverty', used to distinguish between those 'in poverty' and those living 'in comfort' is supplemented in this paper by a proposed spatially defined line of poverty, distinguishing between poor, spatially segregated streets and more prosperous, spatially integrated streets. Furthermore, through the application of the latest segment angular techniques, space syntax analysis reveals a new finding relating to the formation of poverty areas, which combine low integration with large numbers of small street blocks, suggesting that this combination of spatial factors helps explain the persistence of poverty and poor quality housing, detrimental to the living standards of the poverty classes. This finding also helps explain how such areas can create a sense of entering 'another world', with the emergence of sub-cultures and new communities. The paper concludes with the proposition that when such areas are located close to economically active, well integrated streets, such spatial patterning can serve as a necessary mechanism for the social integration of minorities and is frequently part of a natural process of acculturation and integration in the urban environment.
The spatial foundations of community construction: the future of pluralism in Britain’s ‘multi-cultural’ society
Published in Global Built Environment Review
Research by this author and others has found that the process of the formation of clusters of immigrant settlement on the edge of cities enables immigrant groups to make social adjustments to their host society and allows urban environments to accommodate difference. Research has also shown that some groups elect to continue to cluster in the second generation of settlement and beyond, in order to sustain communal ties. Such groups follow a pattern of acculturation rather than assimilation. This paper reviews current knowledge on immigrant and ethnic minority settlement patterns and shows that common perceptions of immigrant and ethnic clusters being characterised by segregation fails to deal with the complexity of these phenomena. Taking lessons from studies of the physical, social and economic form of Jewish immigrant quarters in 19th century Britain, the paper shows that immigrant and ethnic clusters that are frequently negatively perceived as ‘ghettos’, can in fact act as springboards towards economic integration. This paper presents evidence to show that physical clustering enables intensification of communal activity, socialisation, networking and self-support, and suggests that settlement in locations which enable economic activity is a necessary step in the immigrant process. A discussion of the concepts of segregation and community shows that in complex societies it is incorrect to assume a correspondence between space and society. Individuals can be members of several communities simultaneously and the urban environment can be structured to enable encounters between a diverse set of social groups. The discussion demonstrates the need for precise, evidence based analysis to understand the complexity of the contemporary built environment. The paper goes on to highlight findings from recent censuses that demonstrate that patterns of Muslim settlement in the UK are not following a model of US style ghettoisation. Instead, it is suggested that rather than the Chicago School’s model of the melting pot, the likely future of the urban environment in Britain is one of pluralism. The paper concludes that immigrant clusters are a multi-dimensional, complex feature of cities, which cannot be written off as ‘ghettoisation’.
Making connections: the case of Borehamwood
Published in Built Environment
This paper focuses on the suburban town of Borehamwood to the North of London. Space syntax analysis of the spatial structure of the area suggests that the way in which Borehamwood has been structured morphologically coupled with its distinctive social and economic history, has allowed it to grow whilst maintaining its original spatial pattern as a village and subsequently as a suburban town. The spatial form of the town centre accommodates the various populations of the town - people living and working locally; people living there and commuting to work elsewhere and people coming into the area to work. This mix has provided a greater economic stability than in other suburbs, particularly as in recent years many companies have opened offices in the area. However, small-area statistical analysis shows there is a polarisation of properity and deprivation.
Jewish immigrant settlement patterns in Manchester and Leeds 1881
Published in Urban Studies
This paper examines the 19th century Jewish immigrant quarters of Manchester and Leeds. It uses original census data to look at the entire population of the two areas of initial settlement. Analysis of family and kin structure, occupations of head of household, country of origin and length of time in the country as well as analysis of the settlement patterns at the street-level are combined to examine the phenomenon of immigrant clustering. We conclude that the complex social and economic processes involved in the establishment of a new migrant community in its host society result in spatial clustering and that the spatial clustering in close proximity to sources of income is critical in enabling future integration of the immigrant community.
Space and exclusion: does urban morphology play a part in social deprivation?
Published in Area. Co-authored with Haklay, Sahbaz and Clark
There is currently a growing interest in the spatial causes of poverty, particularly its persistance. This paper presents methodological innovations that have been developed for investigating the relationship between physical segregation and economic marginalisation in the urban environment. Using GIS to layer historial poverty data, contemporary deprivation indexes and space syntax measures of spatial segregation, a multivariate system has been created to enable the understanding of the spatial process involved in the creation and stagnation of poverty areas as well as to analyse the street segment scale of configuration.
The relationship between physical segregation and social marginalisation in the urban environment
Published in World Architecture
This paper posits a relationship between the urban location of immigrant quarters and the likelihood that the inhabitants of such areas will improve themselves economically. The application of space syntax methods to this research, coupled with the use of primary census data, the Charles Booth maps of Poverty in 19th century London and historial maps of London, Manchester and Leeds, has enabled analysis of street scale data, to study the socio-economic and spatial structure of areas frequently perceived as 'ghettos'. This paper suggests that some urban areas are especially prone to settlement by impoverished immigrants, due to characteristics that make such areas first, tend to be economically unsuccessful due to their spatial segregation and second, less attractive to those who have the means to move elsewhere. It concludes that such areas are not so much defined by their immigrant constituents, but by their long-standing inhabitants that cannot move elsewhere. Analysis of the relationship between poverty and spatial segregation in such areas, suggests a strong relationship between the physical separation of poverty areas from the economic life of the city, and the lack of potential for the economically marginalized to ultimately integrate into society.
The city as one thing
Published in Progress in Planning. Co-authored with Bill Hillier.
This paper summarises the latest theories in the field of space syntax. It opens with a discussion of the relationship between the form of urban grids and the process of how cities are formed by human activity; this is done by a comprehensive review of space syntax theory from its starting point in the 1970s. The paper goes on to present research into how cities balance the micro-economic factors which shape the spatial structure of cities with the cultural factors that shape the underlying form of residential areas. It goes on to discuss the relationship between activity and space and how this relationship is formed by the way different activities make different demands on movement and co-presence. The paper ends with a discussion regarding the manner in which patterns of spatial integration influence the location of different classes and social groups in the city and contribute to the pathology of housing estates. The paper concludes that spatial form needs to be understood as a contributing factor in forming the patterns of integration and segregation in cities.
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