At this seminar you will hear from Daniel Arribas-Bel who is a Professor in Geographic Data Science at the University of Liverpool, and Deputy Programme Director for Urban Analytics at the Alan Turing Institute. Daniel will be presenting on "Making it easy for regional scientists to consider (urban) form & function".

1. Urban Grammar
Making it easy to consider (Urban) Form & Function
Economic Data Science seminars - ONS
@darribas @martinfleis
Dani Arribas-Bel Martin Fleischmann

2. Today
Urban Form & Function
Urban Grammar
A peek into the future

3. (Urban) Form & Function

4. How we arrange “stuff” in cities matters…
Source: A map of every building in America ( )
New York Times

5. Form & Function
Form
What does it look like?
“Physical structure and appearance of cities”
Function
What is it used for?
“Activities that take place within an environment”

6. Why Form & Function?
Encodes the past Frames the future
Geography
History
Technology
…
Productivity
Sustainability
Quality of Life
…

7. F&F in Economic(s/) policy

8. F&F in Economics
Critical to understand: But often:
Agglomeration
economies
Environmental/fiscal
sustainability
Urban/rural
…
Coarse
Aggregate
Ad-hoc
…

9. Detail matters…
Source: Six 15-minute walks capture the diversity, history of Houston neighborhoods ( )
Urban Edge

11. Urban Grammar

13. Characterisations of space based on form and function
designed to understand urban environments

14. Characterisations of space based on form and function
designed to understand urban environments

15. Characterisations of space based on form and function
designed to understand urban environments

16. Characterisations of space based on form and function
designed to understand urban environments

17. British Signatures

24. Sub-classifications

25. Building Spatial Signatures
[STAGE] Delimiters Enclosure Anchors Encl. Tess. Characters Clusters Signatures
Enclosed
Tessellation
Embedding
form & function
Spatial
Signatures
+

26. Meaningful spatial units
Enclosed tessellation

27. “Open by default”
Data, data, data
Methods, code
Infrastructure
Dissemination
Open Data Products
Journaling/reporting
https://urbangrammarai.xyz

28. Lessons

29. Encoding
Geography History Technology

30. Hierarchy
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Countryside agriculture
Wild countryside
Urban buffer
Open sprawl
Warehouse/ Park land
Accessible suburbia
Dense residential neighbourhoods
Disconnected suburbia
Dense urban neighbourhoods
Connected residential neighbourhoods
Gridded residential quarters
Local urbanity
Regional urbanity
Metropolitan urbanity
Concentrated urbanity
Hyper concentrated urbanity
33 66 1
99 1
38 38 12 10 1
28 19 25 6 18 2 1
1 18 38 8 13 12 2 8
13 44 7 9 11 12 4
17 18 13 8 17 22 6
2 47 16 17 8 7 1
6 49 1 14 6 23
8 13 22 29 9 6 12
11 1 18 21 5 8 33 2
1 76 6 16
72 28
2 1 1 1 88 8
71 29
100

31. Framing?

32. A peek into the future

33. + +

35. Two examples on Form & Function…

38. Source: Sentinel-2 cloudless

39. Wild countryside (320x320m)

40. Urbanity (320x320m)

41. Predicted class (320x320m)

42. The Future
Are we there yet? Certainly not
Can we even get there? Maybe
Worth trying? Absolutely!

43. Wrap up
(Urban) form & function…
underpin many economic processes
are becoming easier to measure better
You should use them more in your work!

44. Urban Grammar
Making it easy to consider (Urban) Form & Function
Economic Data Science seminars - ONS
@darribas @martinfleis
Dani Arribas-Bel Martin Fleischmann