Applying space syntax in large polycentric city

Although the long axial line based representation of space syntax has been well applied in many urban studies. There are still disadvantages exposed when it is applied in the large and polycentric city. Without the consideration of the actual distance of the natural road, many axial lines are too long to be assigned to one unique syntax property, which is against the representation of the spatial differences in reality. In large and polycentric urban areas, such as many Chinese cities, the inter district express lines which directly connect the different parts of the city may have the best global integration value but not the cognitive city center. To some extent, such results become subjective predicable and don´t contribute much to the urban spatial studies. Based on the space syntax theory, this research focuses on the topological accessibility of the urban transportation network of Wuhan with the following supporting innovations and improvements: the trail to break the traditional long axial line network of space syntax and apply this partitioned network in the topological analysis; the trail to analyze the bus route network; by taking both the syntax accessibility of road and bus network into consideration, gives the scopes of urban syntax centers of city level, local level and sub-local level respectively. By comparing the locations of the space syntax center of the city and the existing urban retail clusters, it shows that the partitioned axial map and taking account the bus route in space syntax analysis are useful for producing more precise representations of the urban syntax accessibility pattern and more accordance to the cognizable human scale. The principle for deriving the partitioned axial line is introduced and a case study of applying the space syntax to a large and polycentric city is presented in this paper.