Accessibility and Visibility Analysis of Moinhos de Vento Park in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil

This paper analyzes physical and visual accessibility at Moinhos de Vento Park in Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil, through Space Syntax methods. The Park presents a particularity in its configuration： it is crossed by an important avenue in the city that splits it in two portions linked by an elevated pedestrian path. The two portions of the park have different accessibility degrees and intensity of use due to -- we believed -- the way they are inserted in the urban pattern. Both the barrier caused by the avenue crossing the park and the differences of connectedness of each portion to its surrounding grid result in the level of integration occurring in different ways, turning the east portion less intensely used. The all-line and visibility integration maps showed that this was the case, and confirmed that spatial configuration plays an important role in rendering the east portion less integrated and in explaining the more intense use of the west portion. Integration maps showed that the most integrated areas are indeed the most used ones, although line and visibility integration differed slightly as to the exact location. This difference was probably due to the way barriers were modeled, since permeability took into account the paths while visibility considered all the ground as a whole, provided there were no barriers to sight. Another explanation for the difference is the lake located at the center of the west portion which contributed to this location＇s visual integration but, on the other hand, displaced line integration to the larger convex space to the north.