Working with the City of Melbourne, Space Syntax has created a modelling tool that measures the impact on land values of key urban design factors including spatial connectivity, land use attraction and transport infrastructure. The “Urban Value Model” demonstrates the benefits of a fine-grained street network, diversity of land uses and proximity of public transport stops.  

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The Space Syntax team worked with city planning and design officers, taking pre-existing datasets and supplementing these with a purpose-built “Spatial Accessibility Model” of Melbourne. As well as calculating key spatial parameters such as local/global accessibility, urban block size and street network density, the Spatial Accessibility Model provides a “data framework” that allows other datasets to be combined and simultaneously analysed.  

“Urban Value Models bring a new level of rigour to the urban masterplanning process, connecting design to real estate economics and allowing the effects of design decisions to be measured quantitatively. This takes us beyond the hopes of professional guesswork that otherwise characterise our industry.” 

Nora Karastergiou 
Project director for the Melbourne Urban Value Model