L’impact de la structure spatiale urbaine sur les places urbaines : usage et imagibilité, une analyse syntaxique

Abstract

Pedestrian movement and their travel patterns in a city are largely influenced by the configuration of its spatial structure. The latter also influences individuals' choice and preference for certain spaces, including public squares. Squares are involved in framing the city and organizing its urban space. They're also regarded as the ultimate social spaces with considerable impact on the function of a city. Therefore, this research intends to investigate the relationship between the use and attractiveness of public squares and the configuration of the urban spatial structure in which they're embedded. To address this objective, a comparative study of four public squares in Bejaïa city (Algeria) was performed, adopting a hybrid methodology overlapping two different approaches: qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative approach is based, on the one hand, on an in-site observation of the designated public squares, using both « gate counts » and « static snapshots » methods; and on the other hand, on semi-directive interviews. While for the quantitative one, it relies on syntactic and isovist analyses, both axial and convex, including different measures (namely choice and integration). These analyses are performed employing Depthmap software at different scales, from the macro scale of the whole city to the micro scale of each public square. This dissertation firstly introduces the different theoretical concepts involved in this study and provides some evaluation and quantification methods of public space. Afterward, the case studies, the investigation process and the results are also presented. These findings demonstrate that the use and attractiveness of public squares in Bejaïa city depend strongly on the syntactic properties of the urban spatial structure that each square is integrated into, and this at both global and local scale, which impacts their accessibility and perception from the urban network; besides the geometric and functional properties of these squares