Abstract
The theory of cities as movement economies constitutes a the¬oretical cornerstone of the space syntax paradigm, and the urban morphology literature offers considerable empirical evidence to support the theory’s key proposition that spatial accessibility correlates with economic land use values. The theory, however, does not only concern the emergence of spatio-economic attractions, but also provides an intriguing explanation of the city as lived or experienced attractions – that is, of the kinds of well-being and excitement often associated with urban life at its best. This phenomenological rather than economic aspect of the theory has received only limited attention in the urban morphological literature. This paper addresses the gap in the literature, and reports the results of a multilevel regression model, which combines individual survey data on urban attraction experiences and morphological data on the movement economy context of these experiences, measured with space syntax tools. After controlling for the effect of individual-level variables, the model suggests that the movement economy has a significant contextual effect on the experienced level of urban attraction.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Journal | The Journal of Space Syntax |
| Volume | 6 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| Pages (from-to) | 49-60 |
| Number of pages | 12 |
| ISSN | 2044-7507 |
| Publication status | Published - 2015 |