The idea of utilizing the power of computation to analyze urban spaces has always intrigued me to dive deeper into the field of spatial data science. With the developments of nanosats, and utilizing the power of computations to understand urban spaces, the ceiling for scopes is limitless.

Here's a Space Syntax analysis of Central Kolkata City (see video after the article), developed with Python, Open Street Map, AutoCAD, and DepthmapX. Let's understand the concepts of Space Syntax in Depth.
(Source: Introduction to Space Syntax in Urban Studies, Book by Akkelies van Nes and Claudia Yamu)

What is Space Syntax?
Space syntax by Bill Hillier is a theory and method for analyzing spatial relationships. Space syntax measures how every public space or street segment in a built environment relates to all other public spaces. Space syntax measures the to-movement potential, or closeness, of each street segment with respect to all others. Space syntax measures the through-movement potential, or betweenness, of each street segment with respect to all others.

What are the limitations of Space Syntax?
The limitation of space syntax is that it cannot measure place identity, place character, or spatial order. Space syntax does not analyze spatial patterns, but rather spatial structures. Likewise, space syntax does not analyze building forms, but instead looks at the spatial configuration of the spaces shaped by buildings and other urban artefacts.


How can we compare cities?
For analytical comparison of cities, the normative and descriptive approaches. 
Normative approach- The city is understood through the lens of a universal subject and established standards. This rational or blueprint planning approach offers descriptions on how successful cities should be planned and designed, but lacks evidence for how cities will function according to implemented norms and standards. 

Descriptive approach- It focuses on how the city functions. Normative statements about how cities and selected urban areas should be planned and designed rely on a careful descriptive understanding and explanation of how they currently function.


What are the approaches to establishing a physical form of cities?
There are currently three established traditions for the physical form of cities: urban morphology, place phenomenology, and the urban network approaches.
Urban Morphology- The city can be understood and analyzed by its physical form.
Place Phenomenology- The place phenomenology approach describes the sphere of a place based on Martin Heidegger’s work Bauen Wohnen Denken. Phenomenology describes impressions of reality as it immediately appears to us.

Urban Network Approaches- The urban network tradition addresses mobility, accessibility, visibility, and orientability. The urban network tradition addresses how the street network functions as a spatial armature for the socio-economic life of cities. The focus here is thus on space instead of form.


What are the properties of a space?
Space is an essential aspect of the built environment, but space is an abstract word. It cannot be touched, only perceived. Space and time are constructions that help people to arrange the world into fitting schemata.
As per Hillier, properties of space can be of two types extrinsic (invisible structural relationships) and intrinsic (visible properties of space such as shape, size, volume, pattern, and texture of the physical objects or built mass).

Urban space has a place character. A place is a space with meaning. 
The space can be further divided into phenotype (how a built environment immediately appears to us) and genotype (the hidden structure of the built form).


How analysis of spatial relationships is done?
There are 4 ways in which the analysis of spatial relationships is done.
Connectivity: It means how well a space is connected to other spaces in the city. Here is what each step of analysis represents are given, One-Step Analysis- Degree of Connectivity, Two-Step Analysis- Degree of Accessibility, and  Three-Step Analysis & Point-Depth Analysis- Degree of Ease.

Global Axial Integration Analysis: Global integration analysis estimates the degree of accessibility a street has to all other streets in the urban system taking into consideration the total number of direction changes of the urban entity.

Local Integration Analysis: Local integration allows one to measure the spatial impact of an entire city before and after urban interventions. The pedestrian flow rates through cities correlate with local integration values. It also indicates the local shopping areas in a city.

Angular Segment Analysis: Angular Segment Analysis occurs where each street segment is weighted by the angle of its connection to other street segments. It provides the relationship between background and foreground networks, the density of networks and the structure of networks. 
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Further Read at:
https://openddl.com/post/111/en/