Abstracts

This study aims at understanding the spatial dynamics of the street system in residential sectors of Montral. Different periods of development have produced street networks displaying a diversity of characteristics and configurations. Yet all these different pieces are spatially interconnected implying that they are part of a functional whole. In the course of the historical evolution of the city the new pieces of the network are connected to pre-existing rural roads from which they often stem. However, while responding to a set of internal functional rules and technical requirements, the street system does not deploy in autarchy. Rather, it is integrated within a broader spatial framework comprised of natural and human-made features such as the hydrographic system, the topography, the agricultural allotment system and in more recent times, of components of technical systems such as canals, railroads and high-capacity transportation infrastructure. By delving into the differing street networks geometries as well as into the barriers and boundaries that spatial discontinuities, the project sets about identifying the parts in order to understand their inner characteristics as well as the modalities of their articulation to the whole. We hence define neighbourhoods as areas predominantly residential which exhibit some degree of internal homogeneity in regards to block geometry, street network configuration and refer to these areas as morphological neighbourhood areas, or simply, MNAs. A variety of quantitativea and qualitative methods are mobilized with the purpose of delimiting MNAs in the Island of Montral. Subsequently, with MNAs as our unit of reference, a classification of urban neighbourhoods is proposed based on quantifiable spatial properties of the urban tissue, which include attributes pertaining local street network geometries, and part-to-whole topological relationships.