This document discusses producing spatial knowledge through advanced spatial analysis. It defines spatial knowledge as a methodology based on geographic contributions and digital techniques to represent the physical, perceived, and symbolic dimensions of space. Producing spatial knowledge involves mapping and interpreting spatial information to show realities, transformations over time, and possible scenarios. Advanced spatial analysis uses data from sources like Sensible City Lab to understand how spaces function and support decision-making, though it faces challenges in selecting phenomena to study, integrating different data sources and scales, and accounting for the variable of time. The overall goal is to develop useful and scalable representations of how socio-economic and technological changes influence contemporary cities and territories.

1. The Issue: dealing with contemporary cities and territories
1. Does space exist?
2. Representing three dimensions of the space?
3. Towards a definition of “Spatial knowledge”
4. Why?
5. How? Advanced Spatial Analysis
6. Open questions and challenges
Eboy (2009) Oscars, Los Angeles Time magazine
Mario Paris, Arch., PhD - E-mail: mario.paris@polimi.it Twitter: @Dr_MarioP
Producir conocimiento espacial: definición de un
campo de trabajo (objetivos y desafíos)
Seminario de formación doctoral “PRODUCIR CONOCIMIENTO ESPACIAL”, Lunes 16 de octubre - Sala de Juntas (ETS de Arquitectura)

2. The Issue
Dealing with contemporary
cities and territories

3. There is no city, only urban ways of life (M. Cacciari, 2004)
Are we prepared for this change?
Are our disciplinary tools still useful to describe current territory?
Milano, strategie del Documento di Piano: Metrogramma, 2008

4. Need of a coherent representations of the contemporary build environment
Understanding the (post-) metropolitan territory
(its dimension, its landscape, its carachters)
C. Price, The city as an egg, 1992
?

5. An heterogeneous catalog of different situations in which we research
we design
we contribute
we operate
Compact urban space (centre and different peripheries)
The role of spatial representation!

6. “He (H. Lefebvre) cautiously called his spatial perspective
transdisciplinary as a strategy to prevent spatial knowledge and
praxis from being fragmented and compartmentalized (again) as a
disciplinary specialty.
Space was too important to be left only to the specialized spatial
disciplines (Geography, Architecture, Urban Studies) or merely
added on as a gap-filler or factual background for historians, social
scientists, or Marxist sociologists. The spatiality of human life, like its
historicality and sociality, infused every discipline and discourse”.
E.W. Soja (1996) Thirdspace. Oxford, Blackwell Publishing p. 47
Space

7. Does SPACE
exist?
1.

8. Ryoji Ikeda, datamatics [ver 2.0]
photo Ryuchi Maruo, courtesy Yamaguchi Centre for Arts and Media (YCAM)
Yes
From classic Greece (Euclid, Descartes):
Abstract concept
Defined by postulates and properties

9. ARC 482 MASTER M.ARCH. II Post-Graduate Program, The Cooper Union, Professor Pablo Lorenzo-Eiroa
Yes
From modern approach:
Geometry as a language
Geometry as a tool

10. No
G.W. Liebniz:
Appearance of reality
Void where relationships between objects take
place
SPACE SYNTAX
Centrality as a process. accounting for attraction inequalities in deformed grids, B. Hillier, 1999

11. No
J. Locke:
Vacuum occupied by solids
Without bodies, space does not exist
Giorgio de Chirico Le rêve transformé, 1913 Saint Louis, Saint Louis Art Museum

12. It depends…
A. Einstein:
Space exists in our perception
It is a part of our subjective experience
Boamistura (2012) Luz na veilas. Rio de Janeiro, Vila Brasilia

13. It depends…
a matter of perspective
Personal and collective values
Practices
Time, rhythms, cyclesBoamistura (2012) Luz na veilas. Rio de Janeiro, Vila Brasilia

14. Space admits and allows relationship and social (?)
interactions
A tension between space and place

15. 2.
Why should we
describe the
space?
How to represent its different dimensions?

16. From accurate to narrative representations
Precision (detail, functioning schemes, different layers)
Perception
Interest on the objects
Physical dimension (1)

17. From accurate to narrative representations
How the space looks/should look like
Kizo & Arcom Studio (2014) Cas Quinta by Macio Kogan. www.harscom.hr
Perceived dimension (2)

18. From static to dynamic representations
Introducing time in spatial representations (as cubism)

19. From subjective to the multiplicity
Multiples/moving points of view
G. Cullen, Townscape, 1971 – p. 8

20. From subjective to the multiplicity
Multiples eyes (overlapping information)
Kevin Lynch (1960) The image of the city. Cambridge (Mass.), MIT University Press

21. Provincia di Leòn (E), area sud: Google Earth, 2014
Circumstances matter!
Two key words:
Context and constraints
(the role of the close geography: topography, climatology, etc.)

22. We represent spaces where people act as inhabitants
Public space as an interactive area: different uses for Casa da Musica Square (2012) – Oporto, publicspaces.org
Simbolic dimension (3)

23. Taking in account relationships
Understand diversity and complexity
Work with alternatives
Avoid assumptions and prejudices
Eboy (2013) Exhibition in Marseille.

24. Taking in account
Social, Economic and Technologic changes

25. Representing is the way to understand and
explain the space
- Not an univocal result
- Interaction between different representations (scales, tools, approaches)
- It depends on specific and oriented strategies
Through the representation we focus on
circumstances and specificities
Arenas Basabe Palacios (2012) Wildgarten

26. “Behind every description, there is a project”(G. Dematteis, 2002)
“Progetto implicito”
(implicit project)
Esquema de ordenación del parque de la desembocadura del río Imera, al Este de Palermo. Fuente: Elaboración original de Vittoria Calzolari.

27. 3.
How we
comprehend these
dimensions?
An operative definition of
spatial knowledge

28. “A methodology based on geographic contributions, processual
approaches (Kitchin et al., 2012; Kitchin et al., 2009), digital
techniques and performative readings (Perkins, 2009)”.
A stock of alternative maps, diagrams and schemes, in which the
space is represented re-combining sectoral-thematic information,
statistical models and geographic data (De las Rivas et al., 2014).
This different approach depends on a double process of mapping
and interpreting spatial information, in which – through a
‘transductive process’ (Lefebvre, 1973: 11) – images show together
“realities and transformations, different times (past, present and
scenarios), what exists and what is possible”.
Producing spatial knowledge

29. 4.
Why?

30. Information often are out of date
(useless) for our aim
Involving data and maps to explain current realities, based on recent transformations/changes

31. Information often are insufficient
Exploring non-administrative scales, in order to discover new dynamics

32. Information simply doesn't exist
Understandig the prevasivness of current phenomena, when institutional map-producers are not
able to represent them

33. Understanding how a space works
Involving data and maps to explain current realities, based on recent transformations/changes

34. Supporting decisional processes

35. Dealing with politics and practitioners

36. 5.
How?
Advanced Spatial Analysis

37. Sensible city lab (MIT)
Spring Spree
Spending patterns in Spain during Easter 2011
Source: Sensible city lab (2011) ; Data: BBVA banking Network (4 mlns of transactions)

38. Accurat (IT/US)
Global Report on Urban Health
Deconstructing the complex challenges of health and health inequity in cities everywhere in
a forward-looking print and interactive report for the World Health Organization and UN
Habitat (2016)
Source: Accurat (2016) https://www.accurat.it/works/urban-health/; Data: UN Habitat

39. Sensible city lab (MIT)
Cityways
Unveiling Recreational Movement in Urban Areas (2017)
Source: Sensible city lab (2017)

40. But…

41. 5.b
How?
Advanced Spatial Analysis
without
founds, data, tools/technology and a team

42. Creating figures

43. Institutional data/open data
A transversal and official base
Scaling and replicability

44. Thematic data
Insights about specific topics
Looking for opportunities and needs

45. Alternative data
Surveys and field works
Volunteer Geographic Information and collaborative map projects

46. BIG data
Data mining and data collection
Discovering alternative sources (Google places,…)

47. A process based on 3 steps
Pointing out phenomena
and their spatial impacts
Representing geographies
and
spatial distributions through data
Understanding how spaces
react to
Specific phenomena

48. 6.
Open questions
and challenges

49. About targets
- Which phenomena?
- How socio-economic and technologic transformations
influence contemporary cities?
About methodologies
- Which data? Institutional and non institutional sources
- Which scale?
- How can we involve the variable “time”?
About outputs
- What is an useful map?
- How we can scale this process? (towards a protocol?)
Dealing with a difficult process