Space Syntax: A multi-disciplinary tool to understand city dynamics

Complexity of cities has for centuries been a research question across a wide range of disciplines. Cities are live organisms evolved by interactions of various heterogeneous subsystems. They are not only dynamic but also spatially distributed. Additionally, they involve humans interacting with the physical subsystems (so called cyber-physical systems). Urban planners today face a difficult task of designing new and redesigning the current urban spaces in a way to make them more liveable and walkable (the key objectives of smart cities). Yet those responsible, the city planners or urban designers still only guess about an optimal street design. This paper provides an overview of literature and discussion of potentials of space syntax, technique developed during the last 35 years that proved itself effective in city planning procedures. Space syntax provides a set of theories and methods for analysis of spatial configurations. It allows us to link human societies and space and to describe relations between them. These methods showed immerse potential to a wide range of disciplines and their integration is crucial for the field of smart cities.