Different Ways of Thinking about Street Networks and Spatial Analysis

TL;DR

This paper discusses various perspectives and methods for analyzing street networks, emphasizing their importance in urban planning, transportation, and disaster management, and aims to promote diverse approaches to understanding their structure and dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces different conceptual and analytical approaches to studying street networks, highlighting the need for diverse perspectives in spatial analysis.

Findings

Multiple analytical frameworks for street networks are discussed.

Understanding street network dynamics can improve urban planning.

Promoting diverse thinking enhances spatial analysis methods.

Abstract

Street networks, as one of the oldest infrastructures of transport in the world, play a significant role in modernization, sustainable development, and human daily activities in both ancient and modern times. Although street networks have been well studied in a variety of engineering and scientific disciplines, including for instance transport, geography, urban planning, economics, and even physics, our understanding of street networks in terms of their structure and dynamics remains limited, especially when dealing with such real-world problems as traffic jams, pollution, and human evacuations for disaster management. One goal of this special issue is to promote different ways of thinking about understanding street networks, and of conducting spatial analysis.