Preliminary results of the town square evaluation method based on digitized plan processing

Although it varies in different cultures, it is assumed that in general, the quality of the urban composition enhances the quality of the living environment. There are certain objective characteristics of an urban layout that can be identified and measured. One of them is the space articulation. A town square is defined by a number of geometrical properties: size, shape, relative configuration and height of the defining elements (usually buildings), the ratio between the enclosures and the openings etc. The combination of these properties are subject to automated town square evaluation. This paper presents the preliminary results of this evaluation method based on an aggregate objective function considering: the compactness, agent flow and normalized maximal value of a heat map of egress of a given town square. The study is based on numerical analysis of nine historical town squares in Warsaw, Poland ranked from the best to the worst.