Geography Seminar: Alessandro Araldi

Fabrics from the Pedestrian Point of View

Alessandro Araldi, Université Côte-Azur, CNRS, ESPACE, Nice, France

Metropolitan regions are very complex spaces for geographical analysis, above all due to their strong heterogeneity at the intra-urban level. Quantitative urban geography, thanks to ever-growing data availability and powerful geoprocessing tools is well positioned for the study of urban patterns especially on a large scale approach.

Two new bottom-up data-based methodologies have been conceived, specifically for describing urban patterns from the pedestrian perspective.

Multiple Fabric Assessment (MFA) is an innovative methodology able to identify and describe urban fabrics: spatial units are first defined around each street (Proximity Bands) and specific indicators are calculated at this level. Then, patterns amongst space are identified and clustered through Bayesian Classification techniques. The recent application of MFA method to new case studies (Brussels, Marseille, and Osaka) has brought to light several peculiarities related to data availability, intrinsic urban space characteristics and aim of application. Experiences gathered from these new case studies will be presented to the seminar.

Retail Fabric Assessment (RFA) analyzes retail distribution starting from a store point pattern representation on a street network. Theory-based indicators are implemented with geoprocessing approaches, allowing the recognition of morpho-functional patterns. Here again, Bayesian Classification methods are then applied to these spatial patterns. Retail fabrics and their spatial organization are identified and described. A first application to the French Riviera case study will be presented.

Similarities between MFA and RFA will be discussed. The application of data mining techniques within these methodologies is not a mere application of algorithms: an attentive study and selection of indicators and parameters is required.

The separate assessments of urban fabrics and retail fabrics might allow in a later phase of analysis, the study of the interrelations between these two aspects revealing the organization of the global form of a complex city as a whole.