Configurational properties and the internal geography of local-regional urban spaces: findings of a multiscale-based analysis of the Tuscany’s road-circulation networks

In the past decade, Space Syntax has made considerable strides towards understanding the spatial relations among local and regional continua, as numerous studies proved to address configurational properties within regional networks. Those became possible after the introduction and development of Angular Analysis, that, alongside the adoption of Road-Centre Line graphs, allowed researchers to stitch together different scales and model them into cohesive territorial representations. Despite that, configurational analysis of large networks still poses important challenges regarding models’ morphological accurateness, which hinders observation of certain network properties like fractalities, which are obscured due to the insufficient detail on regional models’ representation. With those points in consideration, we discuss the procedures to create a high-detail multiscale configurational analysis while maintaining morphological accurateness across scales and address the findings of this experiment. The objective is to compare the configurational properties of regional, provincial and municipality scales for the Tuscany region, describing the internal geography of urban contexts within the regional road-infrastructure to emphasize how disparities in connectivity and network density may concentrate movement or lead to spatial segregation. Beyond this, we discuss how the construction of several comparable configurational models can enable the investigation of certain network properties – fractality and homothetic behaviour. Then, we impart on how those recursive regularities in-between the urban- regional spatial structure, evidenced by Space Syntax’ centrality measures of NAIN and NACH can be used and extrapolated to indicators suitable for exploratory studies in urban analysis.