Quantifying Memories: Mapping Urban Perception (original) (raw)

Urban Cognitive Maps: Computation and Structure

The Professional Geographer, 1991

15 sance: Examining the causes and effects. Economic Development Commentary 12:13-17. Wekerle, G., and B. Rutherford. 1989. The nobility of capital and the immobility of female labor: R~~~~~~~~ to economic restructuring, In The Power ' f Geographyr ed' J' Wolch and M. Dear, 139-72. London: and Unwin. Wheeler, J. 1967. Occupational status and worktrips: A minimum distance approach. Social Forces 45:508-15. Geographic research has not focused on the information we encode into our memories about the characteristics of locations. The accuracy of information encoded in urban cognitive maps, how information varies among individuals, and the structure of the information were studied. Experimental results indicated subjects were more accurate and consistent for socio-economic than for life-cycle characteristics. Some characteristics of the population in a neighborhood, such as race and income, may be more visible and easier to encode through direct contact than other less visible characteristics such as age. A theoretical argument is made that characteristics not encoded for locations can possibly be computed through their covariation with known Characteristics. Key Words: cognitive maps, tacit knowledge, urban structure.

A computational approach to ‘The Image of the City’

Cities

In The Image of the City Lynch describes how individuals perceive and recall features in urban spaces. The most distinctive elements in the urban landscape-categorised in paths, nodes, edges, districts and landmarks-give shape to individuals' mental representation of the city. Lynch's approach has stimulated research into spatial cognition, urban design and artificial intelligence, and still represents an essential pillar in the analysis of urban dynamics. Nevertheless, an explicit link between The Image of the City and GIScience has not been completely explored yet. In this paper, a computational approach to The Image of the City is proposed. Different perspectives in spatial cognition and GIS research are integrated, to obtain a complete Image of the City, in which the most salient elements are shared by a large part of citizens. Nodes, paths and districts were identified through network science techniques. Methods drawn from the information approach to The Image of the City are used to detect landmarks, integrating the complexity of points of reference in their visual, structural and semantic components, as conceptualised by Lynch and successive research. The methods were applied to the central area of Boston and built using freely available spatial datasets. Results were compared to Lynch's maps to evaluate the methodology: beside a considerable discrepancy with regard to landmarks, a good correspondence for paths, nodes, edges and districts was

Urban Memory in Space and Time

Handbook of Research on Technologies and Cultural Heritage

Cities are places where various aspects of past events are projected and expressed through personal memories and narrations; urban memory can be regarded as an expression of collective memory that has been shaped within a particular space as time goes by. This chapter considers urban memory as an important aspect of the cultural heritage of a cityto be captured and preserved for future generations. This chapter introduces the concept of urban memory and how it is related to space and time. It presents a survey of applications that aim to capture, preserve and exploit urban memory and proposes a system that allows citizens to interact with urban memory both by offering their memories and by viewing others’ memories. The proposed system aims to transform cities in a cultural environment where cultural heritage is both preserved and enhanced.

Drawing the city: differing perceptions of the urban environment

2012

Abstract In building location-based services, it is important to present information in ways that fit with how individuals view and navigate the city. We conducted an adaptation of the 1970s Mental Maps study by Stanley Milgram in order to better understand differences in people's views of the city based on their backgrounds and technology use. We correlated data from a demographic questionnaire with the map data from our participants to perform a first-of-its-kind statistical analysis on differences in hand-drawn city maps.

A Review of Mental Urbanscape* Using Map-Based Methods (Case study: Tehran Ferdowsi Square)

Iran University of Science & Technology, 2016

As a medium between people and the city, urbanscape makes a mental connection between individuals and their surroundings. It is usually difficult to conceive this mental relationship and its corresponding processes with usual methods. This study seeks to address the mental aspects of urbanscape and highlight its role and importance by using an innovative method. In this study, map-based methods have been examined as one of the most effective tools for studying citizens’ urbanscape. Indeed, using maps provides a tangible model of the city and its spatial imagination by mapping people’s perceptions. In order to achieve the hidden layers of people’s perceptions, a combination of map-based methods have been examined in the study of Ferdowsi Square in Tehran. First, 50 questionnaires in which interviewees were asked to draw remarkable element of the area were conducted (cognitive map). Second, people were asked to mark the places that are meaningful for them in a provided map of the area...

Experiencing the Urban Space - A Cognitive Mapping Approach

The dependence on cars for urban mobility and the exponential increase in traffic and urban infrastructure to sustain traffic have lead to an encapsulated way of life, where the connection with the natural environment is much more reduced and programmed. In a previous study, a process based on estimating distances showed that children who move around their city by automobile do not appreciate their environment as a spatial continuum, but rather as a series of independent spaces that are reached by automobile or bus, thereby evidencing a different way of conceptualizing urban space in the light of different cognitive structures (Goluboff, Garca-Mira, and Garca-Fontn, 2002). The present study is concerned with the process of understanding and knowledge of urban space, and contrasting the cognitive structure of different groups. The implications that this study may have for urban planning are discussed.

Is Collective Memory Impressed By Urban Elements

Management research and practice, 2017

Rapid changes in our cities destructs familiar elements and transforms accustomed environment into a strange one. Collective memory of citizens can prevent or at least slow down these destructions and helps strengthening links between citizens and their environment. Urban elements such as shrines, bridges, towers and even sculptures are symbols of urban identity and daily recognition of them rehabilitates collective memory constantly. This survey aims to investigate the role of urban elements in memorability of urban environment. Some of the urban elements of Babol city were surveyed through 150 questionnaires (by Cochran method) filled by citizens. Questionnaires were analyzed by correlation method with SPSS software. Results show that degree of memorability of urban elements for people are significant and can lead to identification of urban spaces.

Systematic Distortions in Urban Cognitive Maps

Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 1987

Aggregate cognitive maps of urban areas differ from cartographic maps for reasons other than differences in the mobility and idiosyncratic experiences of individuals. Systematic distortions in aggregate urban cognitive maps may be caused by the cognitive processes used to code spatial information into memory or to retrieve it from memory and by the way these processes relate to a particular urban area. A purpose of this study was to determine the extent to which systematic distortions are present in aggregate urban cognitive maps and to investigate the causes of such distortions. Subjects from three neighborhoods were asked to provide estimates of distances and directions between 105 pairs of landmarks. We analyzed differences between these estimates and true distances and directions to determine if the patterns of distortions were significantly different among the three neighborhoods. Differences for the three samples appeared to be related to the scale and orientation of the aggregate cognitive maps. Regressions with aggregate data for the three neighborhoods using cognitive distance as the dependent variable and actual distance as the independent variable indicated a tendency to overestimate shorter distances more than longer distances. Using multidimensional scaling and Euclidean regression, we mapped subjects' cognitive locations for landmarks and the actual locations in the same space. The aggregate cognitive maps appeared to be rotated to align major transportation axes with canonical direction axes. We argue that systematic distortions are related to a rotation heuristic and to key reference points used by the subjects to code and access spatial information.