Measuring the homogeneity of urban fabric using 2D geometry data

Abstract

To preserve the urban fabric or characteristics in specific quarters, there is often a need to either strengthen or lessen the homogeneity of the urban fabric when inserting new buildings. Evaluating the form of urban fabric is fundamentally important for urban design practice and relevant policy making. However, the quantitative methods and attempts are rare due to the lack of available methods. To address this deficiency, this article presents a GIS-based method to measure the homogeneity of urban fabric by extracting attributes directly from the geometry of 2D building footprints, including the angles between buildings, areas of building footprints, and distances between buildings. These attributes are calculated for separate overlaid grids in the open space between buildings, where each grid holds the measured values for one attribute. We test the method on a prototype, which we applied on four real sites using OpenStreetMap data. The results show how to categorize different kinds of urban fabric based on the new measure of homogeneity. The method can be used to interactively inform urban planners how new design proposals would affect the homogeneity of a neighborhood. Furthermore, the measure can be used to synthesize new design variants with a defined homogeneity.

Settlement relationships and their morphological homogeneity across time and scale

“… After having measured the differences between for the various metrics, we assessed their distribution within the settlements do determine the homogeneity of the metric. As it cannot be assumed that the values of all metrics are normally distributed in every settlement, we employed the robust metrics median and interquartile range (IQR), which have been shown to be suitable for calculating homogeneity within settlements 40 . We furthermore incorporated the median absolute difference (MAD), which tends to be an even more robust measure compared to the IQR 97 .…”

Comparing Multi-Modal Traffic Assignments in Large-Scale Simulations using the Macroscopic Fundamental Diagram: Mode Shift from Cars to Powered Two Wheelers

“…By definition and usage, most of the administrative boundaries present internal consistency. Administrative boundaries are used in urban planning, and although the various administrations may use different strategies, the resulting infrastructure tends to be internally homogeneous [23].…”

Landscapes with locality in urban or rural areas

“…Related studies include: (1) the analysis of the homogeneity of some of the characteristics and the homogeneity evolution of the law in urban or rural landscapes. For example, the biological diversity in natural systems in the context of the urban–rural gradient, 12 the growing similarity of physical spaces constructed in human systems 13 and the coalescing of urban cultural memories, 14 etc. (2) The exploration of the impact of homogenization factors and mechanisms of homogeneity in urban or rural landscapes.…”