Cities Made of Boundaries : : Mapping Social Life in Urban Form / / Benjamin N. Vis.

• VerfasserIn: Vis, Benjamin N.,
• Place / Publishing House: London : : UCL Press,, 2018.
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (402 pages) :; illustrations

"Cities Made of Boundaries presents the theoretical foundation and concepts for a new social scientific urban morphological mapping method, Boundary Line Type (BLT) Mapping. Its vantage is a plea to establish a frame of reference for radically comparative urban studies positioned between geography and archaeology. Based in multidisciplinary social and spatial theory, a critical realist understanding of the boundaries that compose built space is operationalised by a mapping practice utilising Geographical Information Systems (GIS). Benjamin N. Vis gives a precise account of how BLT Mapping can be applied to detailed historical, reconstructed, contemporary, and archaeological urban plans, exemplified by sixteenth to twenty-first century Winchester (UK) and Classic Maya Chunchucmil (Mexico). This account demonstrates how the functional and experiential difference between compact western and tropical dispersed cities can be explored. The methodological development of Cities Made of Boundaries will appeal to readers interested in the comparative social analysis of built environments, and those seeking to expand the evidence-base of design options to structure urban life and development."

Table of Contents

Towards radical comparative urban studies Adapting a critical realist research process Constituting built environments, establishing boundaries Theorising material boundaries, understanding spatial data An ontology of boundary line types A constructive evaluation of methods on urban form The empirical process of mapping BLTs : two contrasting cases Identifying spatial analytical easures that exploit BLT data Exploring socio-spatial significance with BLT mapping : two test cases Contemplating the future of BLT mapping. Machine generated contents note: The rationale The questions The content The book 1. Towards radical comparative urban studies Introduction Urban studies Urban origins Categorical cities Comparative urbanism Social practice based definition of cities What to study comparatively Representation and meaning Environmental determinism Low-level meaning (avoiding conflation) Research practice 2. Adapting a critical realist research process Introduction Philosophical position Geography and archaeology Materiality The material The material inhabited built environment Embedding the research process Spatial (in)dependence The social Iterative abstraction 3. Constituting built environments, establishing boundaries Introduction Reasoning towards a theoretical framework The condition of being human Human being in the spatial world Human being in the social world Boundaries Note continued: 4. Theorising material boundaries, understanding spatial data Introduction Theorising boundaries Thinking beyond categories Consolidation and classification Studying boundaries Boundaries in the inhabited built environment Boundary compositions in built environment configurations Fiat and bona fide boundaries Conceptual series towards spatial data 5. An ontology of boundary line types Introduction Requirements for the ontology Formulating a BLT ontology BIT definitions Negative definitions Levels of socio-spatial significance of BLTs Towards practice 6.A constructive evaluation of methods on urban form Introduction Considering methods for studying urban built form Urban historical GIS Urban morphology Space syntax 7. The empirical process of mapping BLTs: Two contrasting cases Introduction Legacy data as a starting point Selecting test cases Note continued: Preparing the datasets of Winchester and Chunchucmil (1) Making outline base plans and resolving data gaps (2, 3) Topology checks for outline base plan and BLT identifications (3, 4) Identifying BLTs (4) Virtual boundaries Mapping practice and the research process Rules of thumb Taking BLT mapping forward 8. Identifying spatial analytical measures that exploit BLT data Introduction Understanding the BLT data structure Visualising BLT data Diachronic data structure and omparisons Understanding proposed analytical measures Analytical information in the ontology intrinsic to the city Proposing analytical measures: dimensional context Proposing analytical measures: locational context Proposing analytical measures: aggregative context Final remarks on BLT analyses 9. Exploring socio-spatial significance with BLT mapping: Two test cases Introduction Note continued: Geocomputational statistics on the ontology intrinsic to the city Exploring Chunchucmil's BLT data Exploring Winchester through time Taking a radical comparative perspective Contemplating the future of BLT mapping Current results Future research References Supplement - Abridged BLT Definitions Index.