A major problem for users of modern information systems is the retrieval of new and previously viewed information from the system. Systems like the Word-Wide Web are heavily interlinked but do not communicate structure that helps users to navigate the information it contains. The use of appropriate navigation metaphors can help to make the structure of modern information systems easier to understand, and therefore, easier to use. We propose a conceptual user interface metaphor based on the structure of a city. Cities are very complex spatial environments and yet, people are used to navigating within cities. They know how to get information, how to reach particular destinations, and how to make use of the infrastructure. Furthermore, cities possess a unique set of navigational tools that lend themselves to creating sub-metaphors. A city metaphor makes this existing knowledge about a structured environment available to the user of a computerized information system. In this paper, we fi...

6 Acknowledgements 7 1. Introduction 8 1.1. Spatialization of user interfaces........................................................... .... 8 1.2. Researching navigation in a textual virtual environment..................................10 1.3. Ontology of environmental terms............................................................11 1.4. Structure of this thesis............................................................... .........12 2. Spatial cognition of humans 14 2.1. What is "space"?................................................... ............................14 2.1.1. Philosophical and physical concepts of space.............................14 2.1.2. The mathematical view of space.............................................15 2.1.2.1. Metric spaces ........................................................16 2.1.2.2. Topological space...................................................17 2.1.2.3. Graph theory...........................................................

WayMaker" is a tool enabling non-professionals to create digital layouts for large-scale graphical virtual environments. The design tool is based on "elements of the city image" as described by the urban planner, Kevin Lynch (1960). Ultimately, WayMaker should be situated within a virtual environment so that output from the tool is transformed as extensions to the virtual world. Here we describe an initial prototype that simulates a virtual domain through a series of composited frames. Our work with users informs continued development of the tool. We also plan usage studies conducted from a cognitive science perspective, examining issues of constructive learning and spatial cognition. This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole or in part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or in part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, of Cambridge, Massachusetts; an acknowledgment of the authors and individual contributions to the work; and all applicable portions of the copyright notice. Copying, reproduction, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a license with payment of fee to MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory. All rights reserved. Copyright MERL - A Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory, 1998 201 Broadway, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139 2 Long ago the urban theorist Kevin Lynch pointed out the fundamental relationship between human cognition and urban form --- the importance of the learned mental maps that knowledgeable locals carry about inside their skulls. These mental maps, together with the landmarks and ed...

Abstract: In the past few decades, Transit-Oriented Development (TOD) has emerged as a popular and in�uential planning concept in the United States. Physical design is an important aspect of making TOD projects work as it is a crucial means of coordinating relatively intensive land uses and multiple transportation modes. �is paper analyzes seven American TOD projects in terms of urban design and concludes with a discussion of “good practices” for future TOD projects focusing on development processes, place-making, and facilities. �is research supplements prior scholarship on TOD that has tended to focus on policy issues such as regulation and �nancing. Keywords: Transit-Oriented Development; Urban Design.

This report demonstrates the practical and social meaning of meta-architectures for supporting the enterprise of IT-management in general and the management of enterprise-wide integration in particular. In this sense this study refers to metaarchitectures for support of the design as well as the development process. Irrespective of which, uncertainty, defined in terms of unbalance between emotionality and rationality, is the common denominator. The management of enterprise-wide integration has been empirically explored in order to document and understand the underlying models, techniques, tools or meta-architectures employed by Swedish companies for absorbing some degree of the faced uncertainties. Three critical lessons can be derived from this study. First of all, a common, strong cry for methodological knowledge is expressed in all empirical cases. Then, there is a demand for a battery of substantive and procedural methods, models, techniques, tools etc., rather than a ready-made, c...

Kommunikationstechnologien (IKT) auf städtische Strukturen in Europa ist

number: 5/2004 series: research and training network urban europe Research and Training Network Urban EuropeThe Research and Training Network on Urban Europe UrbEUROPE is a research and training network funded by the European Union (2002-2006) aimed at linking the outputs of recent and/or ongoing research in different disciplines involving the urban dimension of Europe. The flourishing of research projects and networks carrying out empirical fieldwork on European cities signals the recognition of the crucial character of this dimension, even though, little effort has been devoted in building a solid interdis ciplinary knowledge basis integrated with a highly structured training programme. Filling this gap is our main objective. The network provides at the premises of the partners (see below) 368 person/months fellowships (pre and post doc for candidates under 35 years old) for research in the following areas: 1. The analysis of how global changes and local impacts are conceptualised in theories and through which methods they are investigated; 2. The analysis of how changes impacted on the built environment (gentrification, suburbanization

Abstract — This paper aims to provide a urban morphological analysis of the transformation of Saudi Arabian cities from the late 18 th century onwards through a cartographical urban inventory as its basis. The paper focuses on the cartographical information about the major cities in the Saudi Arabian Peninsula associated with the period between late 18 th and early 20 th centuries. This study was mainly conducted as a survey through the archives that have hitherto been kept closed for research purposes in Turkey. Therefore, a considerable part of sound and concrete information and evidence on Saudi Arabian town planning and urban design, particularly during the Ottoman era, was missing. This paper intends not only to make an inventory of the available maps and plans produced during the period between late 18 th and early 20 th centuries available in the Ottoman Archives of Turkey, but also to analyze this cartographical information through methods of the discipline of urban morphology and derive basic principles of transformation for Saudi Arabian cities between the late 18 th century and early 20 th century. I.

the City (1960), city design and development practitioners still grapple with ways to measure and nurture "good city form. " [1] Lynch's early work emphasized the perceptual characteristics of the urban environment, stressing the ways that individuals mentally organize their own sensory experience of cities. Increasingly, however, city imaging is supplemented and constructed by exposure to visual media, rather than by direct sense experience of urban realms. In the "hyper-visual"[2] contemporary city, the whole question of city image and city imaging warrants renewed scrutiny. Lynch's famous study deliberately de-emphasized the meanings that places hold for their inhabitants, yet this aspect remains central.[3] City images are not static, but subject to constant revision and manipulation by a variety of media-savvy individuals and institutions. In recent years, urban designers (and others) have used the idea of city image proactively-- seeking innovative ways to alter perceptions of urban, suburban, and regional areas. The word image can mean many things. An image can be a physical likeness, and it can be a mental representation, or even a symbolic and metaphorical embodiment. The term imaging as it is understood here involves actors and actions concerned with transforming

Abstract: Metropolitan Adelaide in Australia is dominated by low-density suburbs with an extensive and large road supply, which brings with it car-dependent lifestyles that are ultimately unsustainable in the longer term. Changes are needed to make a city such as Adelaide less car-dependent towards a city that relies on more sustainable transport modes for its day to day urban travel needs. This paper presents the results from a study of travel patterns among residents of four suburban residential areas in metropolitan Adelaide. The central focus of this research is to develop a computer based research methodology that can help policy makers to create urban environments that are transit oriented and which have a greater reliance on environmentally sustainable modes of transport such as walking and cycling. Intuitively, it would seem that centrally located residences could be expected to contribute to shorter average travelling distances and a lower proportion of trips travelled by car, but this research will help determine whether this is in fact the case. Using exist datasets together with inventory data of road network and urban environment characteristics from original fieldwork, this paper