Habitat, housing, social connectivity to promote social weel being

Social connectivity concepts and modelling techniques have informed built environmental design practices for centuries, even if tacitly so. Villages, cities and buildings are habitats housing social networks that configure social encounters. Questions on how the city and the building influence social and psychological behaviour and vice versa have been the focus of much theoretical discussion in recent years. Increasingly, social network analysis and space syntax analysis are used to explain how the city plan and the building plan configure social encounters. These techniques are empirical and can be used predictively for design research and development purposes. However, few have attempted to integrate these modelling techniques. The special focus of this paper is on integrating network modelling techniques to benefi t built environmental design research practices concerned with habitat housing social connectivity to promote social well-being. The positive results of a test comparing space syntax calculation methods and social network analysis calculation methods are presented. A brief discussion of recent habitat regeneration initiatives in Tirana, Albania suggests the vast potential for further research integrating social network analysis concepts and modelling techniques to measure design performance.