Visualizing the Data City: Social Media as a Source of Knowledge for Urban Planning and Management PDF
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SPRINGER BRIEFS IN APPLIED SCIENCES AND TECHNOLOGY POLIMI SPRINGER BRIEFS Paolo Ciuccarelli Giorgia Lupi Luca Simeone Visualizing the Data City Social Media as a Source of Knowledge for Urban Planning and Management SpringerBriefs in Applied Sciences and Technology PoliMI SpringerBriefs Editorial Board Barbara Pernici, Milano, Italy Stefano Della Torre, Milano, Italy Bianca M. Colosimo, Milano, Italy Tiziano Faravelli, Milano, Italy Roberto Paolucci, Milano, Italy Silvia Piardi, Milano, Italy For furthervolumes: http://www.springer.com/series/11159 http://www.polimi.it Paolo Ciuccarelli Giorgia Lupi • Luca Simeone Visualizing the Data City Social Media as a Source of Knowledge for Urban Planning and Management 123 PaoloCiuccarelli Luca Simeone Design Malmö University Polytechnic Instituteof Milan Malmö Milan Sweden Italy Giorgia Lupi Polytechnic Instituteof Milan Milan Italy Additionalmaterialtothisbookcanbedownloadedfromhttp://extras.springer.com. ISSN 2282-2577 ISSN 2282-2585 (electronic) ISBN 978-3-319-02194-2 ISBN 978-3-319-02195-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-02195-9 Springer ChamHeidelberg New YorkDordrecht London LibraryofCongressControlNumber:2014930187 (cid:2)TheAuthor(s)2014 Thisworkissubjecttocopyright.AllrightsarereservedbythePublisher,whetherthewholeorpartof the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation,broadcasting,reproductiononmicrofilmsorinanyotherphysicalway,andtransmissionor informationstorageandretrieval,electronicadaptation,computersoftware,orbysimilarordissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. Exempted from this legal reservation are brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis or material supplied specifically for the purposeofbeingenteredandexecutedonacomputersystem,forexclusiveusebythepurchaserofthe work. 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Printedonacid-freepaper SpringerispartofSpringerScience+BusinessMedia(www.springer.com) Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank Dr. Pierpaolo Riva of Springer for his support and all the people working on the Telltale and Urban Sensing projects. Telltale project’s team at Politecnico di Milano: • Density Design Research Lab—Design Department: Paolo Ciuccarelli, Matteo Azzi, Giorgio Caviglia, Giorgia Lupi. • DASTU(DipartimentodiArchitetturaeStudiUrbani):FabioManfredini,Paolo Dilda, and Paolo Tagliolato. • DEIB (Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria): Davide Eynard, Fabio Marfia, Matteo Matteucci. The Urban Sensing project has been co-funded by the European Commission withintheSeventhFrameworkProgramme,GrantAgreement314887.Someofthe design experiments reviewed in the book have been conducted together with the partners of the project (T-Connect from Italy, IT4All from France, the Technical UniversityofKosicefromSlovakia,AccuratfromItaly,MobiveryfromSpain,and LUST from The Netherlands). The project has also greatly benefited from the initial support of Salvatore Iaconesi. We also wish to thank Maria Hellström Reimer and Per Linde for their insightful comments and suggestions. v Contents 1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1 Aims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.2 Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.3 The Layout of the Book. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 2 We Live in Informational Landscapes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.1 An Introduction to the Data City. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 2.2 People-Generated Landscapes: Potentialities of Social Media Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 2.3 Applications Targeting Urban Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 2.3.1 Characterizations of Geographic Areas . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 2.3.2 Temporal Dimension. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.3.3 Places Identities and Relationships Among Geographic Areas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.3.4 Emerging Behavior. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2.3.5 Political Attitudes: Acceptance/Feeling Toward Local Policies and Urban Interventions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.4 Existing Work. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 2.5 Specificities of the Research Trajectory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 3 Depicting the Data City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.1 Visualizing Geo-Referenced Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 3.2 A Taxonomy of Geo-Referenced Data Visualization . . . . . . . . . 18 3.3 Our Strategies to Visualize Geo-Located Social Media Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 4 Methodological Framework . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 4.1 A Framework for Interpreting Geo-Referenced Social Media Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 4.2 A Process to Investigate Topics of Urban Interest with Geo-Referenced Social Media Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 4.3 Evaluating and Assessing our Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 vii viii Contents 5 Working in the Field . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 5.1 Telltale and Urban Sensing: A Joint Research Trajectory. . . . . . 31 5.2 Technological Architecture. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 5.3 Telltale and Its Design Experiments: A Multidisciplinary Research Approach . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 5.3.1 Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 5.3.2 Instagram, Foursquare, and Twitter Compared . . . . . . . . 34 5.3.3 Urban Stories. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 5.4 Urban Sensing and Its Design Experiments: Toward an Open Technological Platform. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 5.4.1 Overview. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 5.4.2 Maps of Babel: The City of Languages. . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 5.4.3 Geographies of Time. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43 5.4.4 Geographies of Time, New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 5.4.5 Urban Sketching Tool, the Prototype in Use. . . . . . . . . . 51 6 Reflections on Potentialities and Shortcomings of Geo-Located Social Media Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 6.1 Potentialities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55 6.2 Shortcomings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58 6.3 Final Remarks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 Appendix 1: List of Case Studies Used for Building the Matrix in Chap. 3. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 Appendix 2: Excerpts from Conversations with Accurat, Lust, and Mobivery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67 References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 Abstract There is growing interest across a wide range of subfields of urban studies in understandingtheroleplayedbylocation-basedsocialmediaandtheimpactofthe increasingavailabilityofurbandigitaldatafromdifferentsources.Thewaypeople experience the city is affected by a complex, dense, and reactive information landscape: the data city presents itself with an unprecedented quantity of information in the form of geo-located comments from Twitter, reviews from Pickles, and check-ins from Foursquare. This fragmented proliferation of information generated by urban inhabitants offers potential benefits both for the researchcommunityandurban decision makers, whocan use thedata togenerate broad and analytical visions of the uses of urban space. This book explores and presents methods and tools to collect, analyze, and represent time-based geo-located social media data at the urban scale. The aim is to investigate possible perspectives for the use of these data as a source of knowledge for urban planning, design, and management. We ask whether geo-located social media data can be useful in the creation of indicators of urban life as it is perceived and communicated by city users. In fact, although traditional data collection methods such as surveys, interviews, questionnaires, and, more recently, data harvesting and analysis techniques (e.g., using geographical location data from mobile devices) have provided interesting insightsintothesociallifeofurbanspaces,nowadays,theycanbecomplemented using geo-located social media data. On one side, the book reviews the existing literature, projects, and approaches related to data visualization and the geo-located social mining techniques used to investigatetopicsofurbaninterests.Ontheotherside,thebookpresentsthedesign experiments we conducted in collaboration with urban stakeholders at various levels and in various US and European cities. These case studies document our researchactivitywithgeo-locatedsocialminingtechniquesandoffersomeinsights distilled from our experience. As a conclusion, we propose recommendations for the exploitation of geo- located social media data in order to answer hitherto unsolved urban questions and—as such—to generate knowledge for urban planning and management. ix Chapter 1 Introduction Abstract In this chapter, we introduce the aims and the approach behind our research trajectory and present the layout of this book. 1.1 Aims There is growing interest across a wide range of subfields of urban studies in understanding the role played by new location-based media and the impact of the increasingavailabilityofurbandigitaldatafromdifferentsources.Thewaypeople experience the city is affected by this complex, dense, and reactive information landscape:theurbanenvironmentpresentsitselfwithanunprecedentedquantityof information in the form of items such as geo-located comments from Twitter, reviews from TripAdvisor, check-ins from Foursquare, and pictures from Insta- gramandFlickr.Thisfragmentedproliferationofinformationgeneratedbyurban inhabitants has potential benefits for the research community and urban decision makers,whocanusethedatatogeneratebroadandanalyticalvisionsoftheuseof urban space. This book explores and presents methods and tools to collect, analyze, and represent time-based geo-located social media data at the urban scale. The aim is to investigate possible perspectives for the use of these data as a source of knowledgeforurbanplanning,design,andmanagement.Weaskwhetherthiskind of geo-located social media data can be useful in the creation of novel and dynamic indicators of urban life, as it is perceived and communicated by urban inhabitants and social media users. Traditional data collection methods—such as surveys, interviews, question- naires, and more recently, data harvesting and analysis techniques (e.g., using geographical location data from mobile devices)—have provided interesting insightsintothesociallifeofurbanspaces;nowadays,traditionalmethodscanbe complemented using geo-located social mining techniques. P.Ciuccarellietal.,VisualizingtheDataCity,PoliMISpringerBriefs, 1 DOI:10.1007/978-3-319-02195-9_1,(cid:2)TheAuthor(s)2014 2 1 Introduction Severalscholarspoint outthatthe ideaofthedata cityis oftenseen inlight of its potential to offer dashboards or control panels to more or less seamlessly administrateandmanagecitylife(seeforexampleGreenfieldandShepard2007). Inthistop-downperspective,thesedashboardscanbeconsideredpanopticonsthat allowprivilegedobservationpointstocontrolcitylife(Singer2012).Thistechno- centricvisionofadigitallycontrolledcitycanbeproblematic,especiallyifmatters such as the active engagement of all the stakeholders involved in designing, operating, and controlling these dashboards are not properly addressed. Processes behind the collection, analysis, and visual representation of social media data let multiple voices and perspectives emerge at the urban level. This multiplicity can lead to a more objective representation of the city, according to Latour’s (2004) ‘‘second-degree objectivity’’ principle. In the words of Venturini (2010),‘‘Objectivitycanbepursuedonlybymultiplyingthepointsofobservation. Themorenumerous andpartialaretheperspectivesfromwhich aphenomenonis considered, the more objective and impartial will be its observation.’’ Potentially, social media conversations on the themes related to the city we inhabitandvisitcouldrepresentacomponentofmoreinformed(whilelessformal) urban design, planning, and management. It is important to notice that these processes are crucially affected by issues such as the digital divide (what per- centageofcitizensthatactuallyusegeo-taggedsocialmedia)andprivacy(howfar the geo-located social mining techniques can go in tracking users’ behavior). Also reflecting upon these delicate issues, the book tries to maintain a critical position, exploring if and how geo-located social mining techniques can still constitute a sustainable (in the wider sense, including societal sustainability) new perspective for urban design, planning, and management processes and practices. 1.2 Approach This bookpresentsseveraldesignexperimentsconducted within the scope oftwo researchprojects:TelltaleandUrbanSensing.Theauthorsofthebookwereactive members of the teams of these two projects. Telltale is a research project conducted by three departments of Politecnico di Milano (Design department, DAStU Department of Architecture and Urban Studies, DEIB Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering) aim- ing at disclosing and exposing emerging issues, conversations, and social media usage in the cities of Milan and New York. This was done by observing and visualizingthedigitaltracescomingfromthefirsthandexperiencesofpeoplewho livein,visit,orjustpassthroughthecityandthenewsthatnarratesitsstoriesand rumors.Theprojectintendstosupportandimprovepolicy-makingpracticesandto provide all the stakeholders with fresh insights about their cities.
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