2016 Theses Master's

Social Media Interface and the Next Generation Cognitive Mapping in New York City

Uguccioni, Laura

The social media revolution is producing a new generation of urban design and planning tools that can augment reading of urban public space and management of next generation distributed urban infrastructure. Deployment of social data analytics has the potential for real-time understanding of the occupation characteristics of public space; from real-time configurations of occupation densities to detailed understanding of diverse cognitive factors related to the users. While there is a long history of "mental mapping" relative to urban fabric, the present revolution on social media promises to significantly expand representative techniques, with new cognitive mapping tools that are more robust than any of the normative means now in common practice. In this research a crowd sourced platform is deployed for definition of public space usage through Twitter-based analytics. Several stages of analysis have been deployed with comparative application for three principal public parks in Manhattan.