Identifying "crisis-proof" places. An assessment of public space accessibility using Space Syntax and GIS in the Municipality of Kalamaria, Greece.

Περίληψη

The provision of easily accessible high quality open spaces in cities is essential in times of socioeconomic crisis. The study presents methods and spatial analysis tools that can be used to locate and assess easily accessible open spaces within the urban fabric. The local authorities can then focus their planning and landscaping efforts on the designated areas in times of increased fiscal insecurity. To locate and assess such spaces the study implements a Space Syntax approach, which unlike traditional fixed radius or shortest path analyses, models the natural human movement which is influenced by the configuration of the urban network. Space Syntax results are post-processed in a GIS environment in order to relate the syntactic measures to the open spaces and cartographically visualise the outcome. The produced maps can inform the actions of the local authorities towards creating crisis-proof public open spaces. The proposed method is applied to Kalamaria, which is an important municipality within Thessaloniki's conurbation.