Linking space syntax and cluster analysis to design and plan temporary housing neighborhoods: A taxonomy of sites in Norcia

Camilla Pezzica; Valerio Cutini

doi:10.47818/DRArch.2021.v2si037

Linking space syntax and cluster analysis to design and plan temporary housing neighborhoods: A taxonomy of sites in Norcia

Authors

Camilla Pezzica Short Bio Cardiff University

Camilla Pezzica is Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Digital Methods in Architecture and Urbanism at the Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University. She is an urban analyst and environmental designer interested in interdisciplinary research with a focus on Sustainable Development and Disaster Risk Reduction. Her main research areas are urban morphology and transformations, temporary housing, human-space interaction, and public space. Her background is in multi-scale and multidimensional digital modelling, simulation, and analysis for informing design and planning decision-making. Dr. Pezzica is Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and contributed to two AHRC funded projects (AH/T007036/1 and AH/P002587/1), studying specific neighbourhood-level public facilities as a nation-wide system.
Valerio Cutini Short Bio University of Pisa

Valerio Cutini is professor of Urban Planning at the University of Pisa. His main interests are in the area of the analysis of urban settlements and urban development processes, and his contributions mainly concern methods and operational models for spatial analysis, urban morphology, knowledge tools applied to urban modelling. He has published 51 articles on peer-reviewed scientific journals, 7 scientific books, 64 chapters in scientific books or proceedings of international conferences, here listed: https://people.unipi.it/valerio_cutini/pubblicazioni/. He has lectured at several universities, in Italy and abroad, and since 1996 he teaches Urban Planning and Urban Modelling at the School of Engineering of the University of Pisa.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.47818/DRArch.2021.v2si037

Keywords:

temporary housing, space syntax, cluster anlysis, neighbourhood design, disaster recovery

Abstract

Building Back Better in disaster recovery and reconstruction requires the adoption of integrated and context-sensitive approaches to the design and planning of Temporary Housing (TH) sites. However, there is a lack of methods for enabling successful outcomes in housing assistance provision, e.g. via a quantitative evaluation of the social-spatial qualities of the sites, and supporting the negotiation of urban design changes and the development of a coherent end-of-life plan. The paper aims to uncover formal analogies between different TH sites’ layouts by linking Space Syntax and Clustering analysis within an unsupervised machine-learning pipeline, which can consider a virtually unlimited number of configurational qualities and how they vary across different scales. The potential benefits of the proposal are illustrated through its application to the study of 20 TH sites built in Norcia after the 2016-2017 Central Italy earthquakes. The results indicate the proposal enables distinguishing different types of spatial arrangements according to local strategic priorities and suggest the opportunity to extend the study in the future to set up rules of thumb for the design of site layout options. The paper ultimately aims to equip local administrations and contracted professionals with a much-needed tool to develop and rapidly audit proposals for temporary neighbourhoods oriented at enhancing the resilience of disaster-affected towns both in the medium and in the long term.

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2021-12-31

How to Cite

Pezzica, C., & Cutini, V. (2021). Linking space syntax and cluster analysis to design and plan temporary housing neighborhoods: A taxonomy of sites in Norcia. Journal of Design for Resilience in Architecture and Planning, 2((Special Issue), 89–114. https://doi.org/10.47818/DRArch.2021.v2si037