ABSTRACT
This chapter presents space syntax methodology to provide a configurational analysis of the relationship between Sheffield's street network and the spatial distribution of the city's cutlery industry from the late eighteenth century to provide a precise urban-scale description of what P. Hall refers to as an 'innovative milieu' of industrial production. It addresses this issue by developing B. Hillier's notion of urban 'spatial cultures' as a holistic conceptualisation of how the everyday spaces of urban life in Sheffield also became implicated in the long-term success of its cutlery industry. Yet the conservatism of Sheffield's cutlery manufacturers is implicated in the protracted, though relative, decline of the cutlery industry from the 1870s. The idea of manufacturing creativity as an emergent social phenomenon in urban spatial cultures is implied by A. Marshall's famous dictum that the mysteries of an industry are found 'as it were in the air' of a city, to the extent that they may be learnt 'unconsciously' by children.
