CSIS Discussion Paper No.44
Introducing Third Dimension on Space Syntax: Application on the Historical Istanbul
Yasushi Asami*, Ayse Sema Kubat**, Kensuke Kitagawa *** and Shin-ichi Iida****February, 2002

* Center for Spatial Informa tion Science, University of Tokyo** Department of City and Regional Planning, Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul Technical
University*** Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo**** Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London

Center for Spatial Information Science
University of Tokyo
7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan1

INTRODUCING THIRD DIMENSION ON SPACE SYNTAX:APPLICATION ON THE HISTORICAL ISTANBUL 1
Yasushi ASAMI2 , Ayse Sema KUBAT 3 , Kensuke KITAGAWA 4 and Shin- ichi IIDA 5
ABSTRACTThe historically developed area of Istanbul will be analyzed with conventional space syntax
approach and its extended version. The topography of the study area is rich in heightvariation. To analyze urban forms on a three-dimensional surface, space syntactic idea is
extended in two aspects. The notion of axial lines is extended to incorporate the heightchange by introducing “extended axial lines”. Moreover, a weighting function is introduced
to represent the overlapping nature of inter-visible areas between two neighboring axial lines.
Space syntactic indices related to local centeredness are calculated and compared to indicesrepresenting actual urban activities. The results indicate that space syntactic indicesextended to three-dimensional space capture well the concept of the amount of buildings andcommercial activities along roads, whilst they fail to capture the concept of experts’ indicationof local centers. The space syntax approach emphasizes the mutual visibility, which may not
be the principal factor in forming traditional cities, such as Islamic cities. This result,
therefore, suggests that another principal factor should be sought in building of a powerful
analyzing tool for such traditional cities. Compared to the extension to three-dimensional
space, the introduction of the weighting function for intersecting angles of extended axial
lines does not contribute significantly to the improvement of this analysis.
Keywords: space syntax, three-dimensional surface, extended axial line, angle of intersections,
Istanbul

1

The authors would like to thank Naoko Fukami, Hidenobu Jinnai, Tomoko Kuroiwa, Atsuyuki Okabe,
Yukio Sadahiro and Akinobu Terasaka for their valuable comments, and M. Simsek Deniz of theMetropolitan Municipality of Istanbul and members of the City and Regional Planning Department of the
Istanbul Technical University for helping us in data collection. The research was supported by the Islamic
Area Studies Project of the Research Grant-In-Aid by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Scienceand Technology, Japan.
2
Professor Ph.D., Center for Spatial Information Science, University of Tokyo, 7-3-1, Hongo, Bunkyo-ku
Tokyo 113-8656, Japan (asami@csis.u-tokyo.ac.jp).
3
Professor Ph.D., Istanbul Technical University, Faculty of Architecture, Department of City and Regional
Planning, Taskisla, Taksim, Istanbul, Turkey (kubat@itu.edu.tr).
4
Graduate Student, Department of Urban Engineering, University of Tokyo.
5
Graduate Student, Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, University College London.
2

1. INTRODUCTIONSpace syntax originated by Hillier has been a powerful tool to analyze urban forms, as anumber of empirical works have already established 6 . A typical approach in space syntax is
to construct an axial map for public space based on the city map by drawing a set of axial
lines, which represent minimum number of visible lines that cover all the space in question.
Since the axial lines are drawn based on a two-dimensional map, axial lines fail to express
three-dimensional changes in the space, namely height. In the conventional application of
space-syntax, a single axial line can express a straight road, whilst a curved road may needmore axial lines to represent it. Space syntax thus captures the curvature of roads. Maybea road is curved because it is naturally generated in this way, or because the topography does
not allow a straight road due to the drastic change in height. This aspect is very important todistinguish, in particular, when we want to apply space syntax to vernacular cities, such as
traditional Islamic cities. Here there is an urgent need for developing a new method that cancapture the curvature of surface, i.e., the change in height.
To develop such a method, we propose extended version of axial lines, called “extended
axial curves” in this paper. To develop this idea, imagine the space to be analyzed is a road
network in a city; by standing up on the road, the surface of the road is visible up to certain
point, beyond which some portion is invisible because the road curves enough to conceal
some portion of the road by buildings along the road, or because the road changes its surface
height from the sea level enough to conceal some further portion. By approximating thissituation, an extended axial curve is defined as a representation of the space in question, suchthat all the points are visible by standing on any location on the extended axial curve.
Moreover, incorporating the change in the direction of extended axial curves makes anotherextension of this concept. If two consecutive extended axial curves have similar directions,then two spaces represented by these extended axial lines tend to have a large amount ofmutually visible areas. Two spaces are then judged not so discernible than the case that two
extended axial curves have drastic change in direction. This factor will be taken into
account by introducing weights determined by the intersecting angles of two line segments
connecting the end points of extended axial curves.
To proceed these extensions, the usage of GIS (Geographic Information System) is
indispensable. GIS can easily handle elevation data to derive extended axial curves. The
method is detailed in Section 2.
The concepts developed above are applied to the analysis of road network in the historicalpart of Istanbul. The results show that extended version of space syntactic indices well
capture the local centeredness in Istanbul, when it comes to the modern nature of local centers,

6

See Asami, Kubat and Istek (2001), Brown (1999), Hanson (1989), Hillier (1999), Hillier, et al. (1993),
Kubat (1997, 1999, 2001), Penn, Hillier, Bannister and Xu (1998), Peponis, et al. (1989), Peponis, Rossand Rashid (1997), and Read (1999), for example.
3

such as amount of buildings and commercial activities along the road. Another feature of
local centeredness that seems well rooted from the historical and cultural background is not,however, well captured by the method. This result is suggested by the low correlation
coefficients between experts’ indication of local centers and space syntactic indices. In
Islamic cities, the straightness of roads is not a fundamental factor in forming cities.
Nonetheless, the symbolic buildings, such as mosques, stand out in traditional Islamic cities
by constructing such facilities taking the topographic factors into account. This may imply
that a notion of visibility other than that along public space should be developed to analyze
such feature in the urban form. The results also show that the introduction of weighting
function for angles of directions of neighboring extended axial lines does not contributesignificantly in improving the analysis, while the extension to three-dimensional space does.

2. EXTENDED AXIAL CURVES AND EXTENDED AXIAL LINES
An axial line in the conventional space syntax is a representation of the space in question tosignify a unit of space in which any two points in the space are mutually “visible”. The
definition of “axial line” is a little ambiguous, however, due to the ambiguity of “visibility”.
Judged from common practice of axial lines, two points on a road in the space is defined
visible, if two points projected to the axial line are mutually visible.
Roads seldom lie on a completely flat land. The land surface has ups and downs, and sohave roads. Usual axial lines are drawn based on a two-dimensional map, not taking into
account the height change of roads. But as described in the introduction, the distinction
between the road curves due to topography and the road curves on flat land is a critical factor
in analyzing vernacular cities, such as traditional Islamic cities. To remedy this situation, thenotion of axial line is extended here.
A natural extension of space syntax to the three-dimensional surface is to utilize thevisibility idea again. But if the visibility of a point on a surface from another point on asurface is analyzed, we can easily get into a difficult situation that a road consists of(continuum) infinite number of axial “lines” which are virtually all points, for example, when
the road forms a hill- shape with negative second derivative of height with respect to thehorizontal distance. To avoid such a case, a practical extension is to introduce an eye-levelview. That is, we will judge a point on a surface visible, if we can see from an eye-level
above the surface. In our study, the eye- level is set to be 1.5m high above the road surface.
An extended version of axial line is then defined by a portion of the surface of the road, theprojection of which onto the flat plane (a sea level surface, for practical example) is a line
segment, so that any point on the portion is visible from an eye- level of any point on the
portion. Since this extended version of axial line is typically a curve along the road surface,
it will be called “extended axial curve” hereafter. As the conventional axial line is the case,a point on a road is regarded visible if the representative point on the extended axial curve, at
4which the line segment between the point in question and the representative point isperpendicular to the extended axial curve and visible from all the points at eye- level on theextended axial curve.
Since it is very difficult to derive extended axial curves by precisely minimizing thenumber of extended axial curves so that they cover the entire road network, a heuristic
approach is taken here. To do so, first a usual axial lines are drawn based on thetwo-dimensional map, and then a projection of each axial line onto the road surface ischecked with respect to visibility on the three-dimensional surface. This is partitioned into
several extended axial curves so that visibility condition in the sense above is met. This
procedure does not necessarily yield the exactly minimum number of extended axial curves,
but the resulting extended axial curves can be thought of as an approximation to it. The
heuristic “extended axial curves” derived by this procedure are called simply “extended axial
curves”, and the extended axial curves in the strict sense will be called “strict extended axial
curves” hereafter.
For each extended axial curve, a line segment is defined by that connecting straightly
between two end points of the extended axial curve. Since this line segment is straight bydefinition, it is termed “extended axial lines” hereafter. This will ease the definition ofweighting function for angles in directional change in the following.

3. WEIGHTED EXTENDED AXIAL LINES
It is worth noting that neighboring extended axial lines meets at a point so that the angle
formed by two consecutive extended axial lines can be easily measured. This angle can be
regarded as the change in direction from one extended axial curve to the other extended axial
curve. If the change in direction is small, then two extended axial curves are similar in thesense that most of the curves can be mutually visible even though not entirely. If not on theother hand, then two spaces represented by the curves are hardly connected visually. Fromthe visibility point of view, if the angle formed by two extended axial lines is larger (i.e., close
to 180 degrees), then two lines should have more common visibility.
In the usual space syntax, no distinction is made for axial lines intersecting with different
angles. If the two consecutive axial lines have more common views, then it is natural toweight a small number in measuring the “(graph-theoretical) distance” between the end points.
Similarly, in our extended framework, it is natural to weight a small number in measuring the“(graph-theoretical) distance” between the end points of consecutive extended axial lines.
To put this casual idea into a rigorous framework, it is necessary to consider the appropriate
weighting factor for each angle. To do so, consider L-shaped road represented by two axial
lines (Figure 1). Let θ be the angle of change in direction of two axial lines in the unit ofradian.
Dalton (2001) is the first to introduce the idea to assign weights for differently intersecting
5

axial lines. He used w(min{θ, π−θ}) for the weighting function and applied it to usual
two-dimensional axial lines. As is described in Section 4, however, this function cannot
distinguish the acute angles and obtuse angles. If the angle is acute (i.e., θ is greater thanπ/2), then common visible area between the neighboring extended axial lines is large, whereas
if the angle is obtuse (i.e., θ is less than π/2), then common visible area between theneighboring extended axial lines is small. From the visibility point of view, this distinction
is essential. For this reason, other weighting methods are introduced. A simple method toweight according to the angle is to utilize directly this angle, θ. Let w(θ) be the weighting
function, then is can be defined by:w(θ) = 2θ/πThis weight is 1 when θ is a right angle, and this value can be thought of the number of turns
in the unit of right angle. This weighting function is designated as “simple ” weighting
function hereafter.
Another method to weight is to utilize the vector difference. Make directed vectors fortwo consecutive axial lines, and change each vector in scale such that the length of thedirected vectors is one. The vector difference of two directed vectors can be defined as in
Figure 2. A new notion of weighting function can be defined by:w(θ) = the length of this vector difference= (2-2cosθ)1/2
This weight is 0 when θ is 0; 1 when θ is π/3; and 2 when θ is π. This function is moresensitive to smaller values of θ. This weighting function is designated as “vector” weighting
function hereafter.

4. EXTENDED SPACE-SYNTACTIC INDICES
Many of the axial indices frequently used are derived from looking at the relations of aspace with its adjacent spaces either in the global or local context. Global indices are givenby taking into account all the spaces that are in the area concerned, while local indices are
given by limiting the scope to the finite number of “steps” (in the conventional axial analysis,
this means the number of changes of direction). The actual calculation is done by treating
the axial map as a graph representation in such a way that each axial line is represented by avertex and the intersection point of two axial lines becomes an edge connecting two vertices(Figure 3).
For the conventional axial lines, the following indices have been computed: connectivity,
control, mean depth, integration, maximum depth, local mean depth, local spaces (K), andclustering coefficient (G1, G2).
(1) Connectivity is the number of immediate neighbors of the axial line. This is equivalent ofwhat is called the degree of vertex in graph theory.
(2) Control can be thought of as a measure of relative strength of the axial line in “pulling”
6the potential from its immediate neighbors. When an axial line lx has n neighbors and theconnectivity of each neighbor, li (i = 1, 2, ..., n) is represented by C(li ), the control value ofthe axial line lx is given by:
n1
Control = ∑i =1 C(li )(3) Mean depth (designated as MD) is the mean distance of all the axial lines from an axial
line. Integration is derived from mean depth, and it was invented in an attempt to compare
values between systems with different number of axial lines. Suppose that an axial line hasmean depth MD in a system with k lines. The mean depth can be transformed so that it
takes a value between 0 and 1 as:
2 (MD - 1)
RA =
k - 2
This value (RA) is then relativized by dividing with the RA of the “diamond-shaped” graphwith the same number of vertices (axial lines) in which the vertices are ordered so that
there are m (>1) ve rtices whose distance from the root space is the mean depth of thesystem, m/2 vertices at the distance minus 1, and so on (Figure 4). Integration is areciprocal of this value, which is given by the formula:
Dk
Integration =
RA
where
 
 k + 2   2 k log 2  − 1 + 1
 3   
Dk =(k - 1)(k - 2)
Discussions on this method of relativization can be found in Hillier and Hanson (1984),
and Krüger (1989).
(4) Maximum depth (designated as MaxD) is the maximum distance of the axial line found in
the system.
(5) Local mean depth (designated as MDi) is the mean distance of axial lines within thenumber of steps i (in this paper, i = 3, 4, ..., 10) from the root space, and local spaces(designated as Ki) is the number of axial lines included in such a local system. A local
system within step 1 consists of only the root space itself, and a local system within steps 2
includes the root space and the axial lines that are adjacent to the root space.
(6) Clustering coefficient (designated as Gi, with i=1,2) is based on the definition by Watts
and Strogatz (1998), and it measures the “cliquishness” (Watts, 1999) of the neighborhoodof the root space. It takes the ratio of the actual number of connections (edges) to thenumber of connections of the complete graph with the same number of axial lines(vertices). G1 includes the local system within steps 2 (i.e., the root space plus all theaxial lines one step away), and G2 includes the local system within steps 3 (Turner, et al.,7

2001).
The computation of extended axial curves is similar to that of conventional axial lines. The
same set of indices is used. The computation of (weighted) extended axial lines is more
complicated, since it takes the angle of incident formed by two axial lines into account. The
idea that the angle of incident is used for the weighting factor in calculating mean depth has
been first suggested and implemented by Dalton (2001). This implementation assumes thatthe angle of incident between two lines is always equal to or smaller than p/2. When twolines share a single point but do not meet at a right angle, the smaller value of two possible
representations of the angle is always chosen. In other words, let w(θ) be the weighting
function, and the distance of two adjacent axial lines d(l1 , l2 ) can be defined by:π w(θ )
0 ≤θ ≤ 2d(l1, l 2 ) = πw(π - θ )  2 ≤ θ ≤ π It is possible to argue that this choice of implementation can reduce the computational
comple xity of the model because the distance of two adjacent extended axial lines can be
uniquely determined without any additional information under this model. The resulting
axial model is essentially the same as the conventional axial model, with fractional distances
between axial lines instead of applying a constant unit throughout the system.
However, if the purpose of introducing weighting factor is to better represent the degree ofchange in direction and thus the degree of visibility, such properties are treated inconsistently
in this model. Consider the four-element conventional axial map in Figure 5 (a). Supposethat the distances to two parallel axial lines, in each of which either point a, or point b isincluded, are to be calculated when the axia l line which includes point S is a root space. A
graph representation of the axial map is shown in Figure 5 (b). Since the model makes no
distinction between the angle θ and π−θ, the distance to the line with point a and the distanceto the line with point b must be the same. However, Figure 5 (a) clearly shows that, if thetrip starts at the point S and takes either route 1 → 2 or 1 → 3 to reach the point a or b,
respectively, the route 1 → 3 naturally should have a greater visibility since the change ofdirection is smaller at the junction point than it is when the route 1 → 2 is taken. Overall,
the trip from point S to b should be visually more “connected”, and therefore shallower than
the trip from point S to a. This means that the assumption made by Dalton’s model should
be discarded.
This consequence means that the two sides of the junction point in the same axial line may
not carry the same property any more. For example, the axial line with point a will beshallower if the distance is measured from the opposite end of the axial line than from the side
where point S exists. A similar distinction can be made to the destination, as the area
opposite to the side of point a, for example, would be more visually connected from the root8

space.
In order to address the issues described above, the extended axial lines have been further
broken up into smaller segments (called extended axial segments, hereafter), as shown in
Figure 6 (a). Here, the computation is based on line segments whose end points are definedby either junction points or the end points of the axial lines to which they originally belong.
By definition, no extended line segments share points with other extended line segments
except end points, which could make a significant difference from conventional axial lines in
the local spatial characteristics.
A graph representation of this model is shown in Figure 6 (b). The weighted distance isproperly assigned to each edge. Notice that there are many edges whose weight is zero. This
indicates that the vertices (representing extended axial segments) that are connected by suchan edge are in the same extended axial line.
The following indices have been computed using three different weights (simple, vector,
and constant - which assigns a constant value of 1 to each edge except for the ones thatconnect vertices in the same axial line): mean depth (MD), maximum depth (MaxD), local
mean depth (MDi), and local spaces (Ki).
For the purpose of comparison to other models, the indices of the axial segments have beensummarized by extended axial line, and mean, minimum and maximum values of each index
for axial segments have been calculated, along with local values specific to the axial lines
such as: connectivity, control, G1, and G2.

5. LOCAL CENTERS IN ISTANBUL
Local centers are generally represented by local integration values in space syntax literature(Asami, Kubat and Istek, 2001; and Kubat, 1997, 2001). The effectiveness of the methods
developed above can be tested by comparing the resulting space syntactic indices for usual
axial lines and those for extend axial lines to actual data derived from the study area ofIstanbul. For example, local integration is supposed to represent the extent of local
centeredness. Correlation coefficients between the values of local integration and actual
amount of traffic on the road may reveal which approach can produce more appropriate
notion of local centeredness.
To find the actual local centers in historical part of Istanbul, three approaches are taken
here: (a) local centers identified based on the amount of taxi bays; (b) local centers identified
based on the average number of stories of buildings along the extended axial lines; and (c)local centers identified based on the city planners’ view points.
5.1. Amount of taxi bays
There are several taxi bays in the historical part of Istanb ul. Since the city is not fully
equipped with railway facilities, taxis and sharing taxis are common traffic mode. Taxi bays9

are regarded as center of such traffic mode, and therefore we can expect that their locations
may indicate local centers in the city to some extent. There are 53 taxi bays that are
currently used in 1999, and there are 55 taxi bays that are currently planned to equip by the
Municipality of Metropolitan Istanbul in 1999 (Municipality of Metropolitan Istanbul,
General Director of Transportation, Transportation Planning Department, 1999). A dummy
variable, taxi, is constructed based on this information. The variable, taxi, takes one if theextended axial line includes an existing taxi bay or a planned taxi bay, and zero otherwise.
Since the number of existing taxi bays is small, the existing taxi bays and planned taxi bays
are both counted together.
5.2. Average number of stories of buildings
Limited number of survey points for taxi bays may prevent us from inferring any decisive
conclusion on the effectiveness of several methods. To overcome this shortcoming, wesought for a proxy variable to indicate the local centeredness. Fortunately, there is a spatial
data for GIS (Geographic Information System) for the study area. The number of stories ofbuildings along each extended axial lines can be computed.
To compute the average building stories, we first created buffering zone for each extended
axial line 7 . Then, all the buildings are scanned included in the buffering zone, and then the
average number of stories of the buildings is calculated. This value will be designated as“building height ”.
Figure 7 shows the building height along extended axial lines. Areas with higher stories
are marked in black. Eminonu, Aksaray, Beya zit, Fatih, etc. are shown to be local centers inthe sense that there are higher-story buildings along the roads.
5.3. Experts’ notion of local centers in Istanbul
Indices based on some physical phenomena are useful, for it is objective, but they tend to
be defective because they can only indicate a very limited aspect of local centeredness. In
fact, the notion of local center is very difficult to describe by a single physical index. To
complement our analysis, it is also useful to identify the local centers by experts from theirexperience as city planners in Istanbul. This identification, of course, is subjective, but it
can represent a more comprehensive notion of local centers.
Twenty academicians (or urban planners) majoring city planning or architecture in the
Faculty of Architecture, Istanbul Technical University were asked to indicate on a map ofIstanbul what they think are local centers in the historical part of Istanbul. To do so, no
definition of local centers was provided, for we did not want to confine the scope of “local

7

The buffering is made with 41.5 meters. This value is given by the area of total study region divided by
the total length of roads, and hence this value can be regarded as the average maximum distance from theroad to points in the blocks.
10

centers” in this process 8 . With this information, the whole area is classified into four zones:
namely 0- zone, 1- zone, 2-zone and 3-zone. 0- zone is the zone where no one indicated thatthe area is local center. 1- zone and 2-zone are the zone where one and two urban planners(or academicians) indicated that the area is local center, respectively. 3-zone is the zone
where three or more urban planners (or academicians) indicated that the area is local center.
The three dummy variables and one discrete variable are constructed based on thisinformation. The variable, expertj, is defined as a dummy variable taking 1 if the extended
axial line is included in a area where j or more professors indicate as local center, and 0
otherwise, for j=1,2,3. The variable, expert, takes k, if the extended axial line is included in
k-zone. See Figure 8 for these results.
5.4. Commercial areas in Istanbul
Local centers often consist of aggregation of commercial facilities. With this reason, adummy variable, designated as “commercial”, signifying whether an extended axial line
included in commercial areas or not, can express the degree of local center to some extent.
To do so, the land use map (Yildiz Technical University, City & Regional Planning
Department, 1996) is scanned and the commercial areas are digitized. A dummy variable,commercial, is defined to be 1 if the extended axial line is included in the commercial area,and 0 otherwise. See Figure 9, in which commercial area is marked in gray.

6.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN THE SPACE-SYNTACTIC INDICIES AND
INDICES REPRESENTING ACTIVITIES OF LOCAL CENTERS
The space syntactic indices are calculated for the historical part of Istanbul (Figure 9).
There are 1,546 (conventional) axial lines. Taking into account the three-dimensional land
surface change, they are partitioned into 7,785 extended axial lines. Moreover, by following
the method explained in Section 4, they are further partitioned into 14,694 extended axial
segments. To make meaningful comparison, extended space syntactic indices that can becalculated for all the extended axial segments are assigned to extended axial lines byassigning maximum, mean or minimum value of extended axial segments to extended axial
lines. To distinguish the assignment methods, “max”, “mean” or “min” are attached in thelast part of variable names. Basically results are not considerably different among theseassignment methods.
The correlation coefficients between the space-syntactic indices (introduced in Section 4)
8

The authors are grateful to M. Aysan, F. Bolen, V. Dökmeci, N. Ergun, G. Erkut, E. Eyuboglu, C.
Giritlioglu, E. Kerimoglu, T. Kilincaslan, K. Koramaz, M. Ocakci, O. Özcevik, A. Tezer, S. Turk, H.
Turkoglu, H. Unutmaz, R. Yigiter, F. Yirmibesoglu, M.A. Yüzer, who are members of the City andRegional Planning Department of the Istanbul Technical University, and M. Topaloglu, an urban planner,for providing their valuable information on the local centers.
11and indices representing activities of local centers (introduced in Section 5) are calculated.
Table 1 reports the results for conventional space syntactic analysis, which does not takethree-dimensional surface change into account. Clustering coefficient, G2, within steps 3
has high negative correlation coefficient with building height and commercial. Clustering
coefficients have low value for networks close to complete dual graph. In other words, thecoefficients are small for networks with many intersections among axial lines. Local centersoften are located at the core of city, where many roads are gathering, which is more similar to
the tree graph. Thus it is natural to have negative correlation coefficients with indicesrepresenting urban activities for local centers. High value (in absolute value) of correlation
coefficient may indicate that the index, G2, based on conventional space syntax approach cancapture the feature of local centeredness rendered by building height and commercial.
Moreover, the correlation coefficient with G2 under the conventional space syntax approach isfound to be the highest in absolute value, partly because the axial lines under the conventional
space syntax approach tend to be longer than extended axial lines under the extended
approach. The network, therefore, extends the largest area under the conventional approach,and each axial line has more intersections with other axial lines, and therefore the tree- graphlike feature is most emphasized under the conventional approach. The conventional
approach can be concluded to perform fairly well to indicate feature of local centers
represented by by building height and commercial.
Ki (i=3,…,10) is the number of axial lines accessible within i steps. Local centers shouldbe accessible from many local spaces, and therefore these indices are expected to havepositively correlated with indices of urban activities. The maximum correlation is attained
for building height with K5, for taxi, experti’s, expert with K3, and for commercial with K4.
This may suggest that local centers are influential within three to five steps from the center.
Local mean depth, MDi, indicates relative closeness to the center within the area in i steps.
This index has positive correlation coefficients for low steps and negative coefficients forhigh steps with all the activity-based indices. This means that the local center is very
accessible for neighbors but not for farther areas.
Tables 2,3,4 and 5 report correlation coefficients for extended axial lines, and hence taking
into account the three-dimensional change in height. Table 2 reports the results for extended
axial lines with unitary weight for extended axial lines. Table 3 reports the results forextended axial lines with unitary weight for extended axial segments. G2 still exhibits thehigh negative correlation coefficients with building height and commercial, but lower values
than those under the conventional space syntactic analysis. The conventional method
performs relatively well, even though it fails to take three-dimensional aspects into account.
It is remarkable that correlation coefficient between K10 and building height is very high(0.539 in Table 2) under the method of unitary weight for extended axial lines. Actually thisvalue is the highest correlation coefficient in absolute value among all the correlation
coefficients calculated in the paper. Moreover, the value is still increasing with respect to12

step, local spaces (Ki) in limited steps are potentially the most powerful descriptor of local
centeredness represented by building height. Similarly, the highest correlation coefficientwith commercial is attained by K10 under the method of unitary weight for extended axial
lines. With these results, we may conclude that local spaces (Ki) with appropriate number ofstep well explains the feature of local centers represented by building height and commercial.
When the extended axial lines are introduced, the correlation coefficient between buildingheight and Ki is high. Since the average length of extended axial lines is smaller than that ofconventional axial lines, the topological distance based on extended axial lines tend toresemble metric distance. This observation suggests that introduction of metric distancewithin the analytical framework may improve the prediction power of local centers.
Introduction of weighting function for angles of neighboring extended axial lines does not
improve the results, for the correlation coefficients in Tables 4 and 5 are not higher than thosein Table 2. Compared to the extension to three-dimensional space, introduction of weighting
function for intersecting angles of extended axial lines does not contribute significantly to theimprovement of the analysis. Again, if the metric distance is introduced, the introduction ofweighting functions may contribute more.
Taxi bay index fails to exhibit large correlation coefficients with space syntactic indices.
This is partly because taxi bay is no t located necessarily at the highest central areas due to thelack of space and competitive character with other more intensive land use. Since thenumber of taxi bays is very small, this may also cause low values.
Experts’ notion of local centers (expert1, expert2, expert3 and expert) does not have verylarge correlation coefficients with space-syntactic indices. It is of interest to observe thatbuilding heights and existence of commercial activities are well captured by space syntactic
indices, while experts’ notion is not. Since space-syntactic indices are based on the visibility
relations, which is rather a modern city planning tends to emphasize. In other words, theconcept itself is suited to the analysis of modern cities. Istanbul is a very traditional citywith much influence of non-European cultures (Kubat, 1999). In fact, the local centerssuggested by experts are in many cases local centers developed from old ages. These local
centers are not based on the modern notion of city planning. This may suggest that adifferent aspect than the visibility should be the fundamental factor characterizing such local
centers. In other words, conventional space syntax approach is not an effective device toanalyze traditional city forms inheriting other than Byzantium, Roman or modern cityformation.

7. CONCLUSION
The present paper extends the conventional space syntactic approach in two ways:
extension of the notion of axial lines into three-dimensional space, and introduction of theweighting function by the intersecting angles of extended axial lines. Such extension
13

necessitates improvement in the calculation of indices, and this is described in Section 4.
For comparison purposes, several indices are measured to represent actual urban activities in
Istanbul. It is found that average building height and commercial dummy variable have highcorrelation coefficients with space-syntactic indices. This suggests that building height andexistence of commercial activities are well captured by space-syntactic method. In particular,
clustering coefficient, G2, within 3 steps under the conventional space syntactic method
explains well the feature of local centers represented by building height and commercial.
The best descriptor of local centers appears to be the local spaces (Ki) with an appropriate
number of steps under the method of unitary weight for extended axial lines. In thisconnection, the extension of space syntactic idea to three-dimensional surface improves the
explanatory power well. Moreover, the results may suggest that introduction of metricdistance within the analytical framework may improve more.
Space syntactic indices under any methods, however, fail to capture experts’ notion of local
centers. This may be because the conventional space syntax heavily depends on thevisibility aspect, which is not an overwhelming factor in formation of traditional Islamic cities.
A principle other than visibility appears necessary as a principal device of spatial analysis forsuch cities. Such an extension will complement space syntax approach and open up a new
field of urban morphology, potentially with a help of GIS technique.

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Turkish urban form” Environment and Planning B, forthcoming
Brown M G, 1999, "Design and value: Spatial form and the economic failure of a mall"
Journal of Real Estate Research, 17, 189-225
Dalton N, 2001, “Fractional configurational analysis” in Proceedings of 3rd Space Syntax
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Hanson J, 1989, “Order and structure in urban design: the plans for the rebuilding of London
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Hillier B, 1999, "The hidden geometry of deformed grids: or, why space syntax works when it
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Hillier B, Hanson J, 1984, Social Logic of Space, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
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Istanbul Buyuk Sehir Belediye Baskanligi, Ulasim Daire Baskanligi, Ulasim Planlama
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Mudurlugu, Agustos 1999]
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for the European Conference on the Representation and Management of Urban Change,
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England, Birmingham
Kubat A S, 2001, “Istanbul: A configurational model for a metropolis” Third International
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Peponis J, C Ross, M Rashid, 1997, "The structure of urban space, movement andco-presence: The case of Atlanta" Geoforum, 28, 341-358
Read S, 1999, "Space syntax and the Dutch city" Environment and Planning B, 26, 251-264
Turner A, et al, 2001, “From isovists to visibility graphs: A methodology for the analysis ofarchitectural space” Environment and Planning B, 28, 103-121
Watts D J, 1999, Small worlds: The dynamics of networks between order and randomness,
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Yildiz Technical University, City & Regional Planning Department, 1996, Planning forsustainable heterogeneity of the historical Peninsula of Istanbul, published by
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15

Table 1. Correlation coefficients for axial lines (conventional method).
building
2D

commer-heighttaxi

expert1

expert2expert3expertcial

Connectivity

0.216

0.239

0.147

0.154

0.155

0.173

0.262

Control

0.043

0.185

0.107

0.112

0.117

0.127

0.123

G1

-0.227-0.147-0.112-0.116-0.127-0.134-0.281G2-0.504-0.087-0.086-0.070-0.065-0.085-0.360Integration

0.382

0.198

0.063

0.113

0.113

0.107

0.329

K3

0.354

0.291

0.145

0.169

0.161

0.179

0.353

K4

0.396

0.281

0.122

0.154

0.142

0.158

0.351

K5

0.412

0.250

0.103

0.138

0.129

0.139

0.332

K6

0.408

0.222

0.077

0.121

0.116

0.118

0.316

K7

0.389

0.198

0.053

0.106

0.105

0.098

0.308

K8

0.365

0.178

0.029

0.091

0.095

0.078

0.308

K9

0.348

0.159

0.018

0.080

0.091

0.068

0.310

K10

0.339

0.144

0.014

0.073

0.087

0.063

0.311

MD

-0.366-0.156-0.023-0.079-0.087-0.069-0.324

MD3

0.339

0.104

0.017

0.071

0.041

0.048

0.272

MD4

0.340

0.085

-0.020

0.017

0.001

-0.002

0.191

MD5

0.245

0.017

-0.064-0.021-0.006-0.037

0.074

MD6

0.099

-0.040-0.112-0.052-0.020-0.074-0.024

MD7-0.110-0.114-0.124-0.088-0.054-0.104-0.116

MD8-0.302-0.175-0.113-0.111-0.083-0.118-0.197MD9-0.386-0.207-0.072-0.109-0.094-0.103-0.252MD10-0.405-0.214-0.047-0.103-0.100-0.092-0.291MaxD-0.339-0.1440.031-0.030-0.041-0.012-0.29016

Table 2. Correlation coefficients for extended axial lines(unitary weight for line).
building

commer-line_tradheighttaxi

expert1

expert2expert3expertcial

Connectivity

0.158

0.044

0.054

0.060

0.050

0.064

0.164

Control

0.020

0.024

0.021

0.019

0.012

0.021

0.063

G1

-0.124-0.048-0.044-0.049-0.034-0.050-0.125G2-0.351-0.035-0.075-0.084-0.067-0.087-0.218Integration

0.473

0.056

0.177

0.225

0.182

0.224

0.285

K3

0.265

0.052

0.071

0.082

0.071

0.086

0.227

K4

0.347

0.049

0.088

0.096

0.083

0.103

0.271

K5

0.405

0.054

0.095

0.110

0.092

0.114

0.301

K6

0.449

0.057

0.094

0.123

0.100

0.122

0.325

K7

0.483

0.061

0.097

0.137

0.108

0.131

0.343

K8

0.507

0.062

0.097

0.149

0.115

0.137

0.355

K9

0.525

0.065

0.097

0.158

0.123

0.143

0.362

K10

0.539

0.066

0.097

0.165

0.129

0.148

0.368

MD

-0.491-0.052-0.180-0.210-0.172-0.217-0.296

MD3

0.276

0.013

0.048

0.066

0.058

0.065

0.157

MD4

0.359

0.003

0.057

0.083

0.067

0.079

0.194

MD5

0.399

0.018

0.058

0.099

0.076

0.088

0.212

MD6

0.411

0.025

0.049

0.108

0.078

0.088

0.215

MD7

0.403

0.026

0.049

0.114

0.079

0.091

0.205

MD8

0.381

0.023

0.046

0.112

0.078

0.088

0.189

MD9

0.356

0.024

0.044

0.108

0.080

0.086

0.170

MD10

0.332

0.023

0.044

0.100

0.078

0.083

0.150

MaxD

-0.446-0.045-0.288-0.280-0.225-0.310-0.28517

Table 3. Correlation coefficients for extended axial lines(unitary weight for segment).
building

commer-line_const

heighttaxi

expert1

expert2expert3expertcial

Connectivity

0.158

0.044

0.054

0.060

0.050

0.064

0.164

Control

0.020

0.024

0.021

0.019

0.012

0.021

0.063

G1

-0.124-0.048-0.044-0.049-0.034-0.050-0.125G2-0.351-0.035-0.075-0.084-0.067-0.087-0.218K3mean

0.190

0.041

0.054

0.060

0.051

0.064

0.181

K4mean

0.304

0.043

0.079

0.087

0.073

0.092

0.253

K5mean

0.379

0.051

0.091

0.102

0.084

0.107

0.289

K6mean

0.431

0.054

0.092

0.118

0.096

0.117

0.317

K7mean

0.470

0.059

0.095

0.133

0.104

0.127

0.337

K8mean

0.497

0.059

0.097

0.145

0.111

0.134

0.350

K9mean

0.517

0.062

0.097

0.154

0.118

0.140

0.359

K10mean

0.532

0.064

0.096

0.161

0.125

0.144

0.365

MD3mean-0.028-0.008-0.019-0.026-0.029-0.028-0.062MD4mean

0.139-0.006

0.019

0.024

0.012

0.022

0.054

MD5mean

0.230

0.014

0.034

0.056

0.041

0.050

0.107

MD6mean

0.271

0.013

0.033

0.070

0.045

0.056

0.132

MD7mean

0.273

0.019

0.035

0.074

0.042

0.058

0.130

MD8mean

0.255

0.013

0.030

0.071

0.039

0.053

0.119

MD9mean

0.230

0.014

0.027

0.065

0.041

0.050

0.102

MD10mean

0.205

0.014

0.025

0.057

0.039

0.045

0.081

MDmax

-0.498-0.053-0.186-0.220-0.180-0.226-0.306

MDmean-0.498-0.053-0.186-0.220-0.180-0.226-0.306

MDmin-0.498-0.053-0.186-0.220-0.180-0.226-0.306MaxD-0.446-0.045-0.288-0.280-0.225-0.310-0.285RAmax-0.498-0.053-0.186-0.220-0.180-0.226-0.306

RAmean-0.498-0.053-0.186-0.220-0.180-0.226-0.306

RAmin-0.498-0.053-0.186-0.220-0.180-0.226-0.30618

Table 4. Correlation coefficients for extended axial lines(simple weight for segment).
building
line_simple

commer-heighttaxi

expert1

expert2expert3expertcial

Connectivity

0.158

0.044

0.054

0.060

0.050

0.064

0.164

Control

0.020

0.024

0.021

0.019

0.012

0.021

0.063

G1

-0.124-0.048-0.044-0.049-0.034-0.050-0.125G2-0.351-0.035-0.075-0.084-0.067-0.087-0.218K3mean

0.188

0.042

0.052

0.058

0.049

0.062

0.179

K4mean

0.300

0.047

0.073

0.083

0.071

0.087

0.254

K5mean

0.371

0.052

0.087

0.098

0.082

0.103

0.290

K6mean

0.420

0.055

0.091

0.114

0.092

0.114

0.313

K7mean

0.458

0.058

0.097

0.129

0.100

0.125

0.332

K8mean

0.484

0.060

0.099

0.140

0.106

0.133

0.345

K9mean

0.503

0.063

0.100

0.149

0.112

0.138

0.354

K10mean

0.516

0.064

0.100

0.157

0.118

0.143

0.360

MD3mean

0.296

0.009

0.070

0.102

0.089

0.099

0.208

MD4mean

0.343

0.002

0.073

0.108

0.092

0.104

0.225

MD5mean

0.370

0.005

0.079

0.117

0.099

0.112

0.221

MD6mean

0.376

0.003

0.081

0.124

0.104

0.117

0.209

MD7mean

0.367-0.001

0.085

0.126

0.104

0.120

0.190

MD8mean

0.349-0.005

0.089

0.126

0.103

0.121

0.170

MD9mean

0.325-0.010

0.093

0.124

0.103

0.122

0.151

MD10mean

0.301-0.016

0.094

0.119

0.100

0.120

0.132

Mdmax

-0.289-0.0640.010-0.079-0.077-0.049-0.217

MDmean-0.292-0.0650.009-0.080-0.080-0.051-0.224Mdmin-0.293-0.0660.009-0.082-0.081-0.052-0.228MaxDmax-0.290-0.063-0.006-0.110-0.101-0.075-0.259MaxDmean-0.293-0.063-0.007-0.111-0.103-0.077-0.266

MaxDmin-0.295-0.064-0.007-0.113-0.105-0.078-0.271Ramax-0.289-0.0640.010-0.079-0.077-0.049-0.217

Ramean-0.292-0.0650.009-0.080-0.080-0.051-0.224Ramin-0.293-0.0660.009-0.082-0.081-0.052-0.22819

Table 5. Correlation coefficients for extended axial lines(vector weight for segment).
building
line_vector

commer-heighttaxi

expert1

expert2expert3expertcial

Connectivity

0.158

0.044

0.054

0.060

0.050

0.064

0.164

Control

0.020

0.024

0.021

0.019

0.012

0.021

0.063

G1

-0.124-0.048-0.044-0.049-0.034-0.050-0.125G2-0.351-0.035-0.075-0.084-0.067-0.087-0.218K3mean

0.189

0.042

0.053

0.058

0.049

0.062

0.179

K4mean

0.300

0.046

0.073

0.084

0.071

0.088

0.255

K5mean

0.372

0.052

0.087

0.099

0.082

0.104

0.291

K6mean

0.421

0.056

0.091

0.116

0.093

0.115

0.317

K7mean

0.460

0.059

0.096

0.130

0.100

0.125

0.336

K8mean

0.486

0.060

0.098

0.140

0.105

0.132

0.351

K9mean

0.505

0.064

0.099

0.149

0.111

0.137

0.360

K10mean

0.518

0.065

0.099

0.157

0.117

0.142

0.366

MD3mean

0.303

0.007

0.071

0.103

0.088

0.099

0.210

MD4mean

0.349

0.000

0.075

0.108

0.090

0.104

0.227

MD5mean

0.375

0.004

0.080

0.118

0.098

0.113

0.224

MD6mean

0.383

0.003

0.084

0.125

0.103

0.118

0.215

MD7mean

0.375

0.000

0.088

0.126

0.103

0.121

0.198

MD8mean

0.358-0.004

0.092

0.126

0.102

0.122

0.179

MD9mean

0.336-0.009

0.096

0.124

0.102

0.123

0.160

MD10mean

0.311-0.015

0.098

0.120

0.099

0.122

0.141

MDmax

-0.297-0.0640.009-0.081-0.080-0.051-0.222MDmean-0.299-0.0650.008-0.083-0.081-0.053-0.226

MDmin-0.300-0.0650.008-0.084-0.083-0.053-0.230

MaxDmax-0.293-0.0620.010-0.097-0.091-0.060-0.253

MaxDmean-0.296-0.0620.010-0.098-0.093-0.061-0.258MaxDmin-0.297-0.0630.009-0.099-0.094-0.062-0.262RAmax-0.297-0.0640.009-0.081-0.080-0.051-0.222

RAmean-0.299-0.0650.008-0.083-0.081-0.053-0.226

RAmin-0.300-0.0650.008-0.084-0.083-0.053-0.23020θθFigure 1. L-shaped roads and the angles of change in direction.

θθ

Figure 2. The vectors indicating the differences of vectors in direction for two cases in
Figure 1.

Figure 3. Axial map (a) and its graph representation (b).

21

Figure 4. Diamond-shaped graph.

Figure 5. Four-element conventional axial map (a) and its graph representation (b).

Figure 6. Extended axial segments (a) and its graph repre sentation (b).

22

Figure 7. Average stories of buildings along extended axial lines.
(Average stories are marked by gray tone.)

Figure 8. Experts’ notion of local centers in Istanbul.
(k-zone is indicated by light gray for k=1, gray for k=2, and deep gray for k>3.
0-zone is other areas than gray toned.)23

Figure 9. Land use map of Istanbul.
(Commercial areas in gray)24