RELATING URBAN MORPHOLOGIES TO MOVEMENT POTENTIALS OVER TIME A diachronic study with Space Syntax of Liverpool, UK

In this paper we describe our observations of Liverpool’s (UK) syntactical patterning relating to its urban network growth from 1850s to the present day. Liverpool’s rapid growth and transformation provides a compelling case study of network configurations as they relate to movement potentials over time. We argue that syntactical analysis of movement potentials provides a tool for evidencing urban historical socio-spatial patterning. Urban patterning might be shaped variously by historical factors such as socio-economic inequalities, labour divisions, ethnicities or religious denominations. We have attempted to demonstrate how movement potentials have persisted normatively along structural path-dependencies that underpin these patterns. We based our study on samples of three prominent centralities of Princes Avenue, Scotland Road and Canning Place, across four periods: 1850s, 1890s, 1950s and contemporary. We prepared Depthmap data samples using an arrayed visualization format, which allowed us to make comparative observations of movement potentials as they converge and intersect across various urban scales. This has allowed us to generate ‘internal’ perspectives on configurations over time, to suggest some possible effects of city-scale morphologies on local spatial dynamics.