Ankh Morpork – Analysis

Figure Ground Shows built development/spaces to which to public have no physical or visual access including Palace gardens. The grain of the city is surprisingly constant with the older, busier, central parts of the city having the same level of permeablility as those against the city walls. The Shades is the only area with a different grain and this is a pattern of smaller blocks and therefore more frequent roads. It is probable that this area, associated with the (possibly) earliest docks in the city has never been redeveloped, with parcels of land remaining unamalgamated.

graphic design, Density, public/private, urban design, architecture, architect, terry pratchett
graphic design, Density, public/private, urban design, architecture, architect, terry pratchett

Reverse Figure Ground Shows spaces to which to public have physical access. River shown as non-accessible. One might expect the routes through gates and across bridges to explode in fan-shapes of pathways as soon as they escape the bottleneck, also once through the gate there ought to be a milling space as every ox cart attempts a right turn at the same time and any shanty-market-stall in the way gets ploughed under; town-planning by the One-Tonne-Bovine method. A few of the routes are rather contrived, like 1930’s Garden-City estates. The pattern of concentric main streets would appear to indicate that the city grew evenly on all sides or that there has been substantial large scale gentrification, .

Partial map of “attractors”; bridges, open spaces, main buildings, etc.

City walls, including wall remnants left behind as city expanded

River crossings, bridges and ferries; spread fairly evenly through city. With it’s position on the winding river the bridges are especially important, they are nodes/bottle necks /funnels in the flow of life across the city.

On the left, the Thames with the Isle of Dogs (rotated clockwise), on the right the Ankh with the Isle of goDs.

terry pratchett, graphic design, urban design, architecture, architect

Density of Development  67% approx. I have made a rough estimate of the density of development in the city by taking the figure ground, squaring it off and reducing the image gradually to 50×50 pixels and then separating the black “buildings” from the white “everything else”. If you want to use this method it’s important to reduce the image size gradually and increase the “contrast” each time to separate the two colours. Note; The figure ground divided what you could not access, including the palace grounds from what you could access, even visually, like the river. This means the effective density is actually higher than 67%.