What role does social media have in creating urban form? We live in a uniquely interactive society. Social media makes it equally possible to connect with someone across the world or feel disconnected from one's own community. Some people expose themselves to other points of view while others use social media to find like-minded individuals. The effect is at once polarizing and blurry.
Social media is important for getting information out to a community and providing informal opportunities for discussion. Most of the time people talk about what they really love or really hate. This applies to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blogs, news articles, etc. It provides an opportunity for designers and policy makers to learn about the flavor of a community that they might not otherwise be exposed to. In a recent studio project, my group and I used geolocation data from social media posts to get insight into the society of Vauxhall, London compared to the surrounding areas. We looked at instagram photos and tweets to study what was casually important to those who lived there. We found people excited about their morning walk to work, others griping about delayed trains, someone taking their granddaughter to a park, different groups of students posting about a specific restaurant, someone taking a picture of a frightening homeless person. Looking at individual posts is a good way to get a snapshot of what people care about.
Information can be extracted from these posts and pooled to be informative at a different scale. Eric Fischer has done extensive mapping of social media usage of cities worldwide. The image below shows geo-located posts by tourists (red) and locals (blue). This kind of mapping shows a dynamic relationship between the city form and the kinds of social interaction within it. Traditional demographic information is static, showing only where people live, but this map shows where people spend their time. It can be an important indication of business development, population growth, and tourist destinations.
It is slightly unnerving how much information is collected and can be extracted from the internet.There is a delicate balance between using the information to serve the public interest and exploiting it. My hope is that in this day and age, we can appreciate the beauty of information.
Eric Fischer: Tourists vs Locals Austin
red=tourists
blue=locals
yellow=undetermined
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