Tag: physics

Categories
Data

Street Network Analysis in a Docker Container

Containerization is the way of the future present. I’ve heard feedback from some folks over the past few months who would like to play around with OSMnx for street network analysis, transport modeling, and urban design—but can’t because they can’t install Python and its data science stack on their computers. Furthermore, it would be nice to have a consistent reference environment to deploy on AWS or elsewhere in the cloud.

So, I’ve created a docker image containing OSMnx, Jupyter, and the rest of the Python geospatial data science stack, available on docker hub alongside additional usage instructions. If you’re starting from scratch, you can get started in four simple steps:

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Categories
Planning

New Article: Planar Models of Street Networks

My article, “Planarity and Street Network Representation in Urban Form Analysis,” was recently published in Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. Models of street networks underlie research in urban travel behavior, accessibility, design patterns, and morphology. These models are commonly defined as planar, meaning they can be represented in two dimensions without any underpasses or overpasses. However, real-world urban street networks exist in three-dimensional space and frequently feature grade separation such as bridges and tunnels: planar simplifications can be useful but they also impact the results of real-world street network analysis. This study measures the nonplanarity of drivable and walkable street networks in the centers of 50 cities worldwide, then examines the variation of nonplanarity across a single city. While some street networks are approximately planar, I empirically quantify how planar models can inconsistently but drastically misrepresent intersection density, street lengths, routing, and connectivity.

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Categories
Urban

New Article: Complexity in Urban Form and Design

My article, Measuring the Complexity of Urban Form and Design, is now in-press for publication at Urban Design International (download free PDF). Cities are complex systems composed of many human agents interacting in physical urban space. This paper develops a typology of measures and indicators for assessing the physical complexity of the built environment at the scale of urban design. It extends quantitative measures from city planning, network science, ecosystems studies, fractal geometry, statistical physics, and information theory to the analysis of urban form and qualitative human experience.

The Mandelbrot set, a mathematical fractal. Venice's fractal urban form and fabric. The Eiffel Tower's fractal architecture in Paris.

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