Analysis and Comparison of Feature-Based Patterns in Urban Street Networks

Abstract

Analysis of street networks is a challenging task, needed in urban planning applications such as urban design or transportation network analysis. Typically, different network features of interest are used for within- and between comparisons across street networks. We introduce StreetExplorer, a visual-interactive system for analysis and comparison of global and local patterns in urban street networks. The system uses appropriate similarity functions to search for patterns, taking into account topological and geometric features of a street network. We enhance the visual comparison of street network patterns by a suitable color-mapping and boosting scheme to visualize the similarity between street network portions and the distribution of network features. Together with experts from the urban morphology domain, we apply our approach to analyze and compare two urban street networks, identifying patterns of historic development and modern planning approaches, demonstrating the usefulness of StreetExplorer.