Table 3.

Interpretative pen portraits characterising each signature type based on its numerical profile (part 1).

Signature type	Pen Portait
Wild countryside	In “Wild countryside”, human influence is the least intensive. This signature covers large open spaces in the countryside where no urbanisation happens apart from occasional roads, cottages, and pastures. You can find it across the Scottish Highlands, numerous national parks such as Lake District, or in the majority of Wales.
Countryside agriculture	“Countryside agriculture” features much of the English countryside and displays a high degree of agriculture including both fields and pastures. There are a few buildings scattered across the area but, for the most part, it is green space.
Urban buffer	“Urban buffer” can be characterised as a green belt around cities. This signature includes mostly agricultural land in the immediate adjacency of towns and cities, often including edge development. It still feels more like countryside than urban, but these signatures are much smaller compared to other countryside types.
Open sprawl	“Open sprawl” represents the transition between countryside and urbanised land. It is located in the outskirts of cities or around smaller towns and is typically made up of large open space areas intertwined with different kinds of human development, from highways to smaller neighbourhoods.
Disconnected suburbia	“Disconnected suburbia” includes residential developments in the outskirts of cities or even towns and villages with convoluted, disconnected street networks, low built-up and population densities, and lack of jobs and services. This signature type is entirely car-dependent.
Accessible suburbia	“Accessible suburbia” covers residential development on the urban periphery with a relatively legible and connected street network, albeit less so than other more urban signature types. Areas in this signature feature low density, both in terms of population and built-up area, lack of jobs and services. For these reasons, “accessible suburbia” largely acts as dormitories.
Warehouse/Park land	“Warehouse/Park land” covers predominantly industrial areas and other work-related developments made of box-like buildings with large footprints. It contains many jobs of manual nature such as manufacturing or construction, and very little population live here compared to the rest of urban areas. Occasionally this type also covers areas of parks with large scale green open areas.
Gridded residential quarters	“Gridded residential quarters” are areas with street networks forming a well-connected grid-like (high density of 4-way intersections) pattern, resulting in places with smaller blocks and higher granularity. This signature is mostly residential but includes some services and jobs, and it tends to be located away from city centres.