Spatial Morphology Group

As a consequence of the ongoing process of urbanisation and densification, more and more highways and railways are running through our cities. As these infrastructural spaces need to be continuous, they often create barriers which separate different parts of the city. This separating effect of infrastructure is termed ‘community severance’ and relates to the reduction of possibilities to travel by foot and bicycle in the city. In turn, community severance has negative consequences for social integration, the transition to more sustainable transportation modes, and for public health.

The Swedish Transport Administration, Trafikverket, spends around 23 billion SEK (2,4 billion Euro) on investments in transport infrastructure projects per year. To ensure that these investments offer maximum benefit for society, decisions concerning infrastructure projects are based on cost-benefit analyses (CBA) which assess how the costs of a project relate to its benefits. In these CBA many effects are included, but community severance receives little attention.

The ambition of the research project is to develop a method for measuring the cost of community severance using various measures developed within space syntax.