Why use Space Syntax on America's Biggest Gated Community?

Hot Springs Village in Arkansas, with 26,000 acre of land (encompassing 9 golf courses and 12 lakes), is the largest gated community in the US. David Twiggs, the current Chief Operating Officer of Hot Springs Village, is a talent in community making, who has over 20-yrs of planning practicing experience and great intuition about land (the physical land and nature, as well as the feel of space). I am fortunate enough to work with the combination of the two: a community that is significant and needs to be saved, and a dedicated and experienced placemaker. Me? I am a newbie in this area. Twiggs always refer me as the "academic one" - I think maybe that is the best that I can offer at this point - 20 years in school and with a fresh PhD. Sometimes I feel uncomfortable letting people know I have a PhD, because I don't feel I know enough to deserve such a "PhD", which people tend to expect the person to be an expert in something. Anyways, this is an issue I have to work through on my own and make peace with it.

As much as I kind of want to hide my PhD, I had a thought today that was indeed inspired by an experience that I had when I was a PhD student: the research of Space Syntax. Twiggs, a practitioner as he is, who also has an inquiring mind and hope to develop a body of theory of community values and development, asked me a few times when we were talking about our new terminology value gravity "whether there is a way to quantify value gravity, community value and ultra local value (the terminologies that we are developing)?" Space Syntax may help us find a solution.

Space Syntax is a theory, studying the spatial configuration of a built environment, i.e. the layout of a space (global level) and the connectivity of the units of the space (local and global level). It is currently most applied in the interior space (floor plan) of architecture and the street connection (even with the consideration of 3d topo) in an urban environment. It, subsequently, analyzes and predicts human behavior pattern in the spatial configuration in a quantified manner. Examples are as such, 1). quantifying and describing how easily navigable any space is, useful for the design of museums, airports, hospitals, and other settings where wayfinding is a significant issue; 2). predicting the correlation between spatial layouts and social effects such as crime, traffic flow, and real estate sales per unit area. During my years as a PhD student at Texas Tech University, I took research class in this area and published a peer reviewed paper with Dr. Saif Haq, called Space Syntax in Healthcare Facilities Research: A Review (2012).

Space Syntax used in urban street environment
(Source: online)

Space Syntax used in architecture layout
(Source: online)

Space Syntax utilizes several key variables to measure the properties of the configuration of a space, and the most important ones are: connectivity, step depth, depth distance and integration. These terminologies, although sounds very technical, can be understood by people who have dealt with space but without Space Syntax background, through a couple of hours explanation and with the help of illustration. Ultimately, Space Syntax is a great tool to bridge the three aspects in architecture and urban planning:

DESIGN (architects and urban planners) - a lot of times, architects or urban planners are (self-)considered "artists". With the first-hand experience, I understand the awkwardness of this position: you feel the general public don't have the artistic taste to understand your design work, but at the same time, you are afraid people to find out you know how things work in real life (human behavior, engineering, market value, etc). Designer is a flashy mask in many cases.

PRACTICE (developer, builder, placemakers) - real world is exciting: you see things happening and you talk about big dollars. But practitioners, even the most experienced ones, sometimes have to admit that their weakness on the design side and also their lack of proof to support their intuition about a project. Market study is readily available, if a community is willing to pay high dollars. What about social study, i.e. how will people use the space when it's built? The practitioners hardly have the time to wait around for 10 or 20 years to see if a project works out as great as they hope to. 

RESEARCH - research without real play ground, as serving the real world project, is lifeless. Ultimately and ideally, academic and lab research should be aiming towards improving the quality of life of the mankind. As much as practitioners feel weak in obtaining solid number support, researchers have weaknesses too: the lack of time to observe how real life works (oftentimes think in a laboratory setting) and have a hard time locating funding. There seems to be a mutual intimation between the practitioners and academic researchers.

The software, Depthmap,  made this bridging process possible. It is the analytically software using the theory of Space Syntax. For example, the following diagram is a classic case. The top image is a google map of the city of London, and the bottom image is an image produced by Depthmap based on the street layout. In this image, the red and yellow lines indicate that the streets that are the easiest to access from the rest of the city. Historically, these areas and along the River Thames are the most civic places, where most public and tourism activities take place. The blue areas indicate the spatially less accessible streets, i.e. more private and remote from the heart of the city. These areas tend to be residential. This can also be advanced to indicate the real estate value of different area of the city, location selection of an infrastructure and crime distribution analysis.

Google map of London

Space Syntax analysis of London with Depthmap
(Source: online)

Space Syntax and Depthmap should be of great value to the land-development related projects in Hot Springs Village for a few reasons:

1. The spatial layout of Hot Springs Village is complicated: covers a vast area of land and all streets are wandering and dynamic. So far, it is not known if any other software can conduct analysis of global configuration as Depthmap does.

2. Hot Springs Village, as a gated community, has clear boundary, therefore has a clear target area for analysis. Within HSV, there are also several development regions, each with their own boundary. Depthmap requires identified boundary when performing. 

3. Hot Springs Village is experiencing a transitional period, in terms of development and adding more amenities. Space Syntax can help the remasterplanning of the community during this period.

The spatial layout and existing development of Hot Springs Village
(Source: HSV Placemaking Team)

Space Syntax and Depthmap can be used to find solutions for HSV's masterplan and future development in such areas,

1. Analyzing the logic main arteries in HSV, such as DeSoto Blvd, Ponce De Leon, Balboa Rd., Bacelona Rd., Bealeric Rd. 

2. Find stratigic spots for HSV placemaking and development projects, i.e. where to add new amenities so people will be likely to use them the most.

3. Find out the corelation between the street layout and real estate values in HSV, and how this aspect complement other aspects in deciding the property values.

4. Help to define community development terminologies, such as, community value, ultra-local value and value gravity, at a local and global value.

5. Help to explore a universal usage of Space Syntax in other communities like HSV. 

In the end, I think research (academic or nonacademic) and practice can work together and should work together. It is encouraging and hopeful to see how my research background could complement the team and provide proof for Twiggs on his keen intuition generated from community building experience. Mixing Space Syntax and Hot Springs Village is worthwhile exploring.

The work environment of Depthmap software
(Souce: online)