Road Networks as Bio-Determined Lines of Desire
Although Edmonton — my current abode — subscribes to the striated-space solution when it comes to its road network design, recent research by French and US physicists has revealed that more often than not road networks in urban spaces resemble the veins of your common leaf (PDF).
The production of these “lines of desire” are reflections of paths of least resistance, attempts to achieve maximum transport-efficiency, affordances, dispositions, etc. This revelation was revealed thanks to “a simple mathematical model that can recreate the characteristic leaf-like patterns that develop, growing a road network from scratch as it would in reality.”
Marc Barthélemy of the French Atomic Energy Commission in Bruyères-le-Châtel tells the story’s author:
Beyond the economic, demographic and geographic “forces” that shape a town, there are a myriad of small “accidents” that contribute. Although these are unpredictable, they can be understood in terms of statistics and simple modelling.
It seems, then, that the neorological mind-mapping aluded to in my last post might not be so farfetched since all that’s required is the right equation.
- Matthew