Mapping the urban activity patterns: using social media data as a tool for data collection and design development Yang Song, North Dakota State University;
[email protected] Jessica Fernandez, Clemson University,
[email protected] Introduction In the last few decades, the size of data has been exponentially growing. Social media, smart phones, sensors, and the internet create, copy and transform data with unprecedented speed and scale (The Economist, 2010). ‘Big data’ has never been more accessible or more powerful. A variety of industries including finance, marketing, energy, telecommunications, agricul- ture, and real estate have been adopted big data technologies to make more informed decisions and to be able to predict trends. Many social media platforms such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, and Facebook provide a large scale of information regarding behavior and perceptions associated with places and communities all over the world. Analysis of societal needs and public opinions becomes key to building a more equitable urban environment that is beneficial to a broad spectrum of people (Dobbins, 2009). However, few studies have been published in the fields of urban design and the built environment to examine the application of ‘big data’. This paper presents a case study using the so- cial media website TripAdvisor to inform the concept development of an urban design project in Chicago, Illinois. A database of all the attributes on the attractions of the TripAdvisor “things to do” category was developed. By extracting, processing, and analyzing large amounts of geocoded information in TripAdvisor, the study identified the patterns of urban activities that were pre- viously inaccessible to designers using a parametric indexing method.