Tema. Journal of Land Use, Mobility and Environment (University of Naples)
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Social Media Geographic Information in Tourism Planning
No full textSocial media are playing an increasingly important role as information resource in tourism both for customers (i.e. the tourists), who gather trustworthy information supporting the choice of destinations and services from peers, and for businesses, which can use the same information for improving their marketing strategies. The use of social media data can also offer new opportunities for decision-support in tourism planning. With improved understanding of the motivations of tourists and tailoring tourism service supply, decision making can be facilitated by emphasizing the strengths of tourist destinations for past and potential visitors. However, this kind of information about tourists perceptions and opinions is not always properly analysed by planners. Understanding the user satisfaction, which depends on factors related to both the location and the services that the local industry proposes, may offer valuable information in tourism planning at regional and local level. In the light of the above premises, the goal of the study presented in this paper is to propose an integrated approach to investigate the relationships between tourists satisfaction, destination resources and tourism industry for supporting design and decision-making in regional tourism planning. The methodology developed in the study includes data collection from popular tourism social media platforms (i.e. Booking.com and TripAdvisor.com.com), and their integration with territorial and tourism data. Spatial and statistical analysis techniques are then applied to elicit insights from tourists perceptions on success factors which may be used in decision-making and planning support. The case study demonstrates the value of social media data and computational social science techniques in tourism planning. The paper concludes with a critical discussion on the potential of using such an approach in more general urban and regional planning setting
Spatial Analysis of Urban Squares
No full textUrban squares, despite their apparently self-evident consistency, actually represent one of the most uncertain issues of present urban planning. Denied and neglected by modern architecture, then sought after in the last decades, squares are commonly recognized as fundamental identity making elements in urban settlements as well as in their respective communities. Since their revival in the late ‘900, the design of urban squares has been a challenging task for generations of planners and urban designers, since, despite any effort, most of the squares worked out can hardly succeed in competing with the historic ones. What appears to explain the failure of most attempts is the actual uncertainty in the definition of what an urban square really is, or should be: not a mere open space, nor only a pedestrian path, nor necessarily a wide or regular space, nor always a junction of streets. Perhaps all these things together, but also something more, what makes the matter to overcome the limits of a strictly physical vision to approach social and cultural meanings. The purpose of this research is therefore to investigate around the link between spatial aspects and social issues, so as to identify the spatial features that allow an urban square to actually play a social and cultural role. As a testing ground of such effort a wide set of Italian squares was assumed as a case studies series, in order to catch the spatial code of their success as relation and public representation places; and some configurational parameters will then be proposed for reproducing such capability, so as to actually support the planning and design of urban squares
Energy And Environment in Urban Regeneration. Studies for a Method of Analysis of Urban Periphery
No full textDespite planning of urban regeneration has been theorized from several decades, today activating concrete programs encounters major difficulties. Moreover, the structural nature of economic crisis and the operators tendency to maintaining obsolete models of urban transformation certainly do not help to overcome the stalemate.The article argues, however, that this framework appears to evolve under the influence of some external factors that bring to the fore the importance of the energy - environmental components in the renewal of the existing city.This address, focused on the concept of urban environment, seems to identify new principles of economic environmental sustainability of the city that converge towards social models of smart community and urban models of smart city.The article then describes the research in progress regarding an operative method to define explicit and replicable bases of the urban environment concept to be considered in plans of urban renewal. Main fields of observation and measurement are “urban comfort” and “anthropogenic load (pollution)”. An experimental application of the analysis is developed on the eastern area of Rome. Finally, the paper offers specific lines for the research development
Social Media Geographic Information: Recent Findings and Opportunities for Smart Spatial Planning
No full textThis paper deals with the opportunities of Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI) as valuable support for analysis, design and decision-making in urban and regional planning. In the light of the recent advances in digital geographic information, such as Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDI) and Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) which are fostering innovation in urban and regional planning, the authors focus on the potentialities of Social Media as source of knowledge for the planning practices. The authors argue SMGI may play an important role to inform 'smart city' strategies extending authoritative and sensor data infrastructure with experiential and pluralist citizens knowledge. To support this thesis, an innovative methodology for the advance of Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI) Analytics is proposed. To this end, the authors present an original user-friendly tool able to extract information from popular Social Media such as Twitter.com and Youtube.com and to apply Spatial-Temporal Textual (STTx) analysis . Some examples are provided at the regional and at the local scale in order to demonstrate the potential of SMGI analytics in regional and urban planning. The results show how SMGI analytics can support design, analysis and decision making in planning, and add the value of pluralism to inform smart city initiatives. The paper ends with some brief conclusions on the opportunities of SMGI analytics for possibly affecting decision-making dynamics and urban and regional planning processes, through citizens’ dialogue and integration of experiential and professional knowledge
Smartness and Italian Cities. A Cluster Analysis
No full textSmart cities have been recently recognized as the most pleasing and attractive places to live in; due to this, both scholars and policy-makers pay close attention to this topic. Specifically, urban “smartness” has been identified by plenty of characteristics that can be grouped into six dimensions (Giffinger et al. 2007): smart Economy (competitiveness), smart People (social and human capital), smart Governance (participation), smart Mobility (both ICTs and transport), smart Environment (natural resources), and smart Living (quality of life). According to this analytical framework, in the present paper the relation between urban attractiveness and the “smart” characteristics has been investigated in the 103 Italian NUTS3 province capitals in the year 2011. To this aim, a descriptive statistics has been followed by a regression analysis (OLS), where the dependent variable measuring the urban attractiveness has been proxied by housing market prices. Besides, a Cluster Analysis (CA) has been developed in order to find differences and commonalities among the province capitals.The OLS results indicate that living, people and economy are the key drivers for achieving a better urban attractiveness. Environment, instead, keeps on playing a minor role. Besides, the CA groups the province capitals
Revitalization and ITS Impact on Public. Space Organization A Case Study of Manchester in UK, Lyon in France and Łódź in Poland
No full textProcess of deindustrialization of downtowns in most of well-developed Western European countries has been undertaken since 1960’s while in post-socialist countries just from last 25 years, after political and economic transitions in Central and Eastern Europe. As far as urban structure is concerned, a new type of inner-city sites has appeared as a consequence of the collapse of industrial activities in second half of 20th century. In vast majority of cases newly developed morhological units (e.g. run-down post-industrial) have been unavailable to the public. As a reult, “classical” public space organization of European cities has been significantly changed. However, revitalization of post-industrial urban areas creates opportunities to reorganize public space according to current inhabitants and other urban space users’ needs. All transitions undertaken as a part of re-developement of brownfields sites are focused on impovements in physical and functional dimension of urban space quality to increase the standard of living condition. According to the concept of smat cities it is relaeted to “smart living” in sustainable urban environment. As a matter of fact, post-socialist cities in Central and Eastern Europe where interval of central planning was present in second half of 20th century and “classical” capitalist cites of Western Europe represent different patterns of public space transitions due to distinct historical development process of central space. In the paper a comparative study of Manchester, Lyon and Łódź is presented. The aim of the research is to indicate the reorganization of historically shaped public space structre in central space of analyzed cities after revitalization of post-industrial urban areas and new central space creation
Spatial Perception and Cognition Review. Considering Geotechnologies as Urban Planning Strategy
No full textThis article proposes a review of the spatial cognition and perception principles, referring to the definition proposed by Cullen and Lynch, through the geotechnology tools. It presents a case study to be analyzed through Geographical Information Systems (GIS), 3D Modeling, Spatial Analysis and Data Base Structure. This proposition presents reflections about the concepts and values of the early foundations of the spatial perception and cognition theories as a base to promote participative planning, investigating how geotechnologies can favor the registration and identification of landscape values to be considered in urban planning. The downtown of Belo Horizonte (Brazil) was defined as a case study to promote the exercise of these reflections, aiming to present a practical illustration of the methodological proposition. This work tried to reach its purpose inquiring how geotechnologies could enhance knowledge gain in the Urban Planning practice. It points out some research paths that could be followed, as well as new approaches to the development of academic understanding of the geotechnologies role in the urban planning scenario
Dealing with Resilience Conceptualisation. Formal Ontologies as a Tool for Implementation of Intelligent Geographic Information Systems
No full textThe paper addresses the issue of the representation of the concept of resilience (urban, environmental and landscape resilience) in the context of geographic information systems. In the current technical and scientific debate, resilience is configured as an intrinsic property of a system to switch from one equilibrium state to another without losing its basic internal structure, also definable in terms of "identity." The paths to success or stable growth as well as those of continuing and recursive crisis, although already explained in macroeconomic terms through the mechanisms of accumulation and multiplication (cumulative advantage), are also interpreted in terms of resilience. So, in the field of studies on spatial planning, the concept of resilience became particularly significant in an era characterized by great instability of social systems, deep economic and environmental crisis. In the process of urban and regional planning, conceive the development of an urban region in terms of resilience means using the logic of complex systems and then adapt in this way their methods of knowledge representation. The concept of resilience is multi-dimensional and vague, so its conceptualization is complex. The formal ontologies can be a useful tool to orient geographic information systems towards more complex forms of knowledge representation and to adapt them to the requirements of logic and formal complex systems, such as today's urban regions
Ontologies and Methods of Qualitative Research in Urban Planning
No full textQualitative research can produce vast amounts of data and uses analytical categories to describe and explain social phenomena; several software packages are designed for qualitative data analysis and enable a complex organization of data. The study tests the capacity of new technology to build a formal ontology from qualitative data, in urban planning
The Creative Side of the Reflective Planner. Updating the Schön’s Findings
No full textThe self-reflection on their own work has always been present in all designers, including architects and planners. In the mid 80-90 Donald Schön has made more explicit this aspect, which until then had not found a systematic scientific treatment. The results of Schön are the basis of practical planning of the 90s period. However, the Schön's analysis reveals a context of knowledge of mental functioning typical of the conceiving period. From the 90s until now numerous advances in knowledge of the mechanisms of rationality, reflection and creativity have been made, and in this context we are interested in the progress made in the field of creativity. We try to integrate and update the Schön's reflection with the new available theories such as the CK theory to offer planners a more innovated range of tools in order to understand and make better use of their creativity and self-reflection about their own creativity