Modelling the Road Network as an Expression of Historical Spatial System Change in the Klaipeda Region (Lithuania)

: Since the 20 th century, the Klaipėda region (Lithuania) has undergone significant political, economic, social, and cultural changes related to the disappearance of Prussia (1923), the Soviet occupation (1944) and the restoration of independence (1991). This has led to radical transformations in the spatial system, of which the road network is a key component. Networks could be analysed using space syntax methods by assimilating them to a mathematical graph model, for which quantitative indexes based on topology can be applied to assess their spatial configurations. The ‘Generic City’ approach, by simulating foreground and background urban networks, can be modified innovatively on a territorial scale. Based on historical cartographies and open geographic databases, indexes characterising both networks are derived to describe the length, angularity or accessibility of the pre-Soviet, Soviet and post-Soviet networks. The analysis identified four main spatial structures associated with the network by combining the indexes in a K-means machine learning algorithm. They highlight the spatial impacts of collectivisation, industrialisation, and tertiarisation of the economy, post-World Wars and post-Cold War geopolitical events, and their consequences as drivers of the territorial organisation and dynamics such as the metropolisation or peri-urbanisation.