The maps of the living neighborhoods – a study of Genoa through social media

Marna ParodiThe maps of the living neighborhoods – a study of

Genoa through social media

PechaKucha Night Genova Vol. 5April 19, 2013@ La Claque

The author

I am neither an urban studies scholar nor a social media expert, just a user of both.

One day, I was walking in my city and reading my Twitter feed when I found out about Livehoods.

Tonight I’m here at PechaKucha to show you why it caught my attention

Proposal

• To export to Genoa “Livehoods”, an urban computing research project started in 2012 by Carnegie Mellon University

• Livehoods analyses data generated by city residents through smartphones (via Foursquare) and creates thematic maps that not always coincide with the municipal boundaries, but often better match the perceptions people have about their environment

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The Livehoods project

“The character of an urban area is defined not just by the types of places found there, but also by the people who make the area part of their daily

routine” (*)(*) J. Cranshaw, R. Schwartz, J. Hong, N. Sadeh, “The Livehoods Project: Utilizing Social Media to Understand the Dynamics of a City”, in Proc. of the 6th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM-12), Dublin, Ireland, June 2012.

Livehoods and Foursquare

One of my daily routines, is to check-in with Foursquare, as I did tonight, right in this theatre

Foursquare allows users to do a mobile check-in to an existing

venue or to create a new venue chosen among several

categories


You usually let your friends know where you are and you might also like to meet other people who share your habits

And you can compete with yourself or others, in order to gain mayorships and badges

(gamification)


You can use Foursquare to enhance your

business

You can use and develop applications to do

analytics

Sometimes both purposes are interconnected

The Livehoods projectThese devices are “changing how we interact

with each other and the environment, the city. On the other hand, using these devices and their applications we’re creating data that helps us better understand the city” (Cranshaw, 2012)

Cities are densely populated and have a spatial sociocultural variability, they have neighborhoods


Cities are complex and neighborhoods provide a sort of order in the chaos of the city, they create

boundaries and bonds

They provide a sense of territory

They are centers of commerce and economic development

They give cultural identity to the people that live there


Neighborhoods develop naturally but are also shaped by political and community forces and

organizations.A structured and sometimes static approach is necessary for municipal governments to have a point of reference or future objective.

But neighborhoods can evolve fast:“moving elements in a city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts.” (Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City, 1960)


Neighborhoods are interiorly defined in

mental maps by their residents:

“we are constantly engaged in the

attempt to organize our surroundings, to

structure and identify them.” (Kevin Lynch,

The Image of the City, 1960).

Livehoods can help, “to find automated ways of discovering this local cultural knowledge and to actually be able to build these cognitive maps

from data.” (Cranshaw, 2012)


Livehoods reveal how the people and places of a city come together to form the dynamic and individual

character of local urban areas

The patterns of people check-ins determine the shapes of Livehoods.

If many of the same people check-in to two nearby locations, then these locations will likely

be part of the same livehood

Related livehoods

Once data are aggregated into clusters, you can also measure the relationships between each livehood

It is interesting to search the maps for related livehoods and find out the behaviors that generated this link

Livehoods - evaluation

3 outcomes, checked against the perceptions of the residents:- one municipal

neighborhood is split into several livehoods

- one livehood spills across the boundaries of more municipal neighborhoods

- municipal neighborhood and livehood match

Livehoods - evaluation

Split patterns often show the different demographics or different functions that operate in a certain areaSpilled patterns typically reveal areas that are in transition, or borders that are in fluxCorresponding patterns indicate the strong influence municipal borders and geography have over local social interactions

It would be interesting to see a Livehoods map of the Fiumara area and the surroundings, 15 years after the start of the urban requalification project

Livehoods in Genoa: Fiumara


This project is one of the most important urban renewal intervention in recent years:

administrative center, sports hall, public park, car parks, movie theatre and entertainment center,

residential use buildings

Some of the Fiumara Foursquare venues


Lower penetration rate of smartphones and fewer tech-savvy habits can be a severe limitation in this project

On the other hand, social mobilization can be obtained using incentives, giving a purpose to the game (monetary rewards, entertainment, social recognition)

Fiumara according to the designers

Fiumara as lived by the people (simulation)

• are they one and the same?

• why do people go there?• who hangs around there?• what are its actual

borders?


• Geographic boundaries?

• Demographic (age, census)?

• Development and resources (investments, businesses)?


What factors can shape the Livehood(s) found in the Fiumara area and its surroundings?

Genoa first European city on Livehoods?

Only 8 cities are currently (April 2013)

mapped on Livehoods, all of

which are in North America.

Let’s vote for Genoa on the

Livehoods Facebook question page (*) and let’s start a project!

(*) Livehoods poll on Facebook:http://www.facebook.com/questions/249090495209410/

Technology

The maps of the living neighborhoods – a study of Genoa through social media