Title: Optional and necessary activities: operationalising Jan Gehl's analysis of urban space with Foursquare data

Authors: Damiano Cerrone; Jesús López Baeza; Panu Lehtovuori

Addresses: School of Architecture, Tampere University of Technology, Korkeakoulunkatu 10, 33720 Tampere, Finland ' CityScienceLab, HafenCity University Hamburg, Überseeallee 16, 20457 Hamburg, Germany ' School of Architecture, Tampere University of Technology, Korkeakoulunkatu 10, 33720 Tampere, Finland

Abstract: The paper presents a method to operationalise Jan Gehl's categorisation of dweller's activity patterns in public space using Foursquare data. The 'Urban Activity Wheel' method is instrumental in showing how location based social media data is beneficial to understand the distribution and variety of contemporary activity patterns. Re-organising both location-based social media data and statistical sources, unearths emerging activity patterns across scales from local to regional city making. Urban Activity Wheel shifts focus from the traditional functional analysis of urban space towards understanding activities and, thus, the human perspective of use, practices and new agencies. A specific analysis, the Shannon-Wiener Index of the complexity implemented on urban activities, gives further hints about the experiential qualities and development opportunities of urban spaces and neighbourhoods.

Keywords: activities; public space; social media; urban analytics; Jan Gehl; geographic information systems; stakeholder participation; Foursquare; Instagram; Shannon-Wiener.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKBD.2020.106836

International Journal of Knowledge-Based Development, 2020 Vol.11 No.1, pp.68 - 79

Received: 07 Feb 2019
Accepted: 20 Dec 2019
Published online: 22 Apr 2020 *

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