Social Media Data Analysis in Urban e-Planning

Abstract

Computational social media data analysis (SMDA) is opening up new possibilities for participatory urban planning. The aim of this study is to analyse what kind of computational methods can be used to analyse social media data to inform urban planning. A descriptive literature review of recent case study articles reveal that in this context SMDA has been applied mainly to location based social media data, such as geo-tagged Tweets, photographs and check-in data. There were only a few studies concerning the use of non-place-based data. Based on this review SMDA can provide planners with local knowledge about people's opinions, experiences, feelings, behaviour, and about the city structure. However, integration of this knowledge in planning and decision-making has not been completely successful in any of the cases. By way of a conclusion, a planning-led categorization of the SMDA method's tools and analysis results is suggested.

A Statistical Approach for Studying the Spatio-Temporal Distribution of Geolocated Tweets in Urban Environments

“…However, the use of social networks and their data have not been explored in-depth in urban studies [23,24]. Currently, ubiquitous computing has permitted collecting a large amount of data shared by people about themselves [25] and their interaction with the physical world [26]. Those datasets are far from conventional in the sense of tabular or structured data, and data processing has not analyzed a significant amount of them because of the computational expense and the need for specific data analysis techniques [27].…”

The Future-Making Assessment Approach as a Tool for E-Planning and Community Development

“…Foth, 2009) data rapidly grew in a decade, and the possibilities to use it in the actual planning evolved. The practice of e-planning introduced fast and convenient methods to analyse GIS-based data and to visualize them for decision-makers and the media (Kahila, 2015;Nummi, 2017). The Helsinki city administration also launched new e-surveys with mapping tools (e.g.…”

“…Even if the civic engagement of everyday life is completely detached from the administration, urban planning is able to produce information on everyday life patterns by using tools of e-planning, especially spatial analysis of statistics and e-surveys. For example, PPGIS-tools 10 and other sophisticated e-planning instru-ments can introduce new data on everyday life (Kahila, 2015;Saad-Sulonen, 2013;Nummi, 2017). Nevertheless, as was described in the previous sector, the connection is single-handedly defined by administration.…”

“…Hamdi, 2010;Sarkissian & Hurford, 2010). The virtual and augmented space provided by ICTs and social media application make possible to reach people though means of e-planning (Nummi, 2017;Falco, 2016).…”

“…At the same time, there are important studies on urban complexity that have been able to address the problematic linearity of planning procedures and to disclose the urban dynamics and transformation through sophisticated spatial analyses (Partanen, 2018;Partanen & Joutsiniemi, 2015). The rapid methodological de-elopment has brought forth new forms of spatial analysis and graphic tools, which enable the use of new sources of data (Nummi, 2017;). Some of them are collected through survey-based mapping tools, which produce readyto-use planning data (e.g.…”