Creation and transformation of urban space induced by the composition of coordination orders in the hierarchical set of places

The postindustrial era with the human capital as a dominant factor of the economic growth is clearly visualizing the shift of the scientific locus from the business spatial concentrations and labor activity to the cities as the central locations of the social, consumer, and civic activities. This human-respective horizon of city organization logically shifts the academic focus to the functioning of the public space as the third place in the micro subject’s hierarchy of using the urban space. This dichotomy of the micro reasons for an individual spatial choice and institutional prerequisites which determine the macroeconomic framework for the analysis of the urbanized system defines the hierarchical methods of the study. The paper proposes the theoretical background for the hierarchical approach applied to the urban space organization: three measurement levels of the urban space are identified in a ternary coordinate system (space, time, interaction) in the context of the transitive changes of the production and employment institutes in different economic periods. The hierarchical approach determined by a need to include an additional mesoeconomic level of hierarchy into the analysis of the urban space has been methodologically justified. The novelty of the study is supported by the fact that our developed hierarchical approach is proposed to be applied to integrate an individual hierarchical set of places “home - work - public spaces” into the urban space at the design stage. This three-level taxonomic structure provides a symbiosis of the microeconomic reasons for an individual solution making as regards the choice in the hierarchical set of places and institutional analysis which determines the specific nature of the urban space organization under the impact of the institutional changes of the top levels. The paper examines the urban space organization at three levels of hierarchy - a microeconomic level as regards the individual spatial-time choice; a mesoeconomic level illustrating a mutual reflection of the urban space institutes and the order of places; macroeconomic level integrating an impact of the capitalism institutes on the individual location choice. Institutional and essential characteristics of hierarchical set of places “home - work - public spaces” are proposed as regards the types and purposes of interaction, disposition of the institutional individual roles, place arrangement institutes. The key characteristic of a place in a ternary location system “home - work - public spaces” is found to be a combination and a configuration of different individual behavior coordination orders, which determines alternative options for an individual spatial response to the stimuli caused by a place. A hypothesis that an individual set of places synthesizing different coordination orders will serve as a means to harmonize different ways for spatial behavior coordination and interaction of individuals in the urban space is proposed. The individual set of places has been found to be organized by a set of conflicting orders based on different values systems (domestic, market, industrial, civil) and relative values of the place assets. This paper develops a concept of relevancy of two types of orders: orders that coordinating spatial behavior and orders in hierarchical set of places. This concept determines individual location choice and the spatial-time behavior in urban space. A multi-step algorithm to analyze the hierarchical set of places is proposed to identify the peculiarities in its organization and its transformation trends. This proposed algorithm reveals the specific order of using the places “home - work - public spaces” in the urban space and finds the relevancy of this order to the economic regime and employment relationships in different economic periods. New capitalism institutes are shown to have caused the changes in orders proportions, which changes the individual spatial behavior defined by the macroeconomic and institutional prerequisites. This transforms the urban space at the meso-level by modifying the relation between the private and public space of the cities. The proposed approach to behavior coordination among the individuals acting within different hierarchies of values views the conflict of interests of the developers, citizens, government agencies with the derived possibilities for transformations of the urban space from the alternative methodological perspectives.