The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.

A traveler visiting Rio, Manila or Caracas does not need a report to learn that these cities are unequal; she can see it directly from the taxicab window. This is because in most cities inequality is conspicuous, but also, because cities express different forms of inequality that are evident to casu...

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Main Authors: Philip Salesses, Katja Schechtner, César A Hidalgo
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2013-01-01
Series:PLoS ONE
Online Access:http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3722224?pdf=render
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spelling doaj-ae0bf811ea17407695f8aac922b2fe4e2020-11-24T21:50:38ZengPublic Library of Science (PLoS)PLoS ONE1932-62032013-01-0187e6840010.1371/journal.pone.0068400The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.Philip SalessesKatja SchechtnerCésar A HidalgoA traveler visiting Rio, Manila or Caracas does not need a report to learn that these cities are unequal; she can see it directly from the taxicab window. This is because in most cities inequality is conspicuous, but also, because cities express different forms of inequality that are evident to casual observers. Cities are highly heterogeneous and often unequal with respect to the income of their residents, but also with respect to the cleanliness of their neighborhoods, the beauty of their architecture, and the liveliness of their streets, among many other evaluative dimensions. Until now, however, our ability to understand the effect of a city's built environment on social and economic outcomes has been limited by the lack of quantitative data on urban perception. Here, we build on the intuition that inequality is partly conspicuous to create quantitative measure of a city's contrasts. Using thousands of geo-tagged images, we measure the perception of safety, class and uniqueness; in the cities of Boston and New York in the United States, and Linz and Salzburg in Austria, finding that the range of perceptions elicited by the images of New York and Boston is larger than the range of perceptions elicited by images from Linz and Salzburg. We interpret this as evidence that the cityscapes of Boston and New York are more contrasting, or unequal, than those of Linz and Salzburg. Finally, we validate our measures by exploring the connection between them and homicides, finding a significant correlation between the perceptions of safety and class and the number of homicides in a NYC zip code, after controlling for the effects of income, population, area and age. Our results show that online images can be used to create reproducible quantitative measures of urban perception and characterize the inequality of different cities.http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3722224?pdf=render
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Philip Salesses
Katja Schechtner
César A Hidalgo
spellingShingle Philip Salesses
Katja Schechtner
César A Hidalgo
The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.
PLoS ONE
author_facet Philip Salesses
Katja Schechtner
César A Hidalgo
author_sort Philip Salesses
title The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.
title_short The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.
title_full The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.
title_fullStr The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.
title_full_unstemmed The collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.
title_sort collaborative image of the city: mapping the inequality of urban perception.
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
series PLoS ONE
issn 1932-6203
publishDate 2013-01-01
description A traveler visiting Rio, Manila or Caracas does not need a report to learn that these cities are unequal; she can see it directly from the taxicab window. This is because in most cities inequality is conspicuous, but also, because cities express different forms of inequality that are evident to casual observers. Cities are highly heterogeneous and often unequal with respect to the income of their residents, but also with respect to the cleanliness of their neighborhoods, the beauty of their architecture, and the liveliness of their streets, among many other evaluative dimensions. Until now, however, our ability to understand the effect of a city's built environment on social and economic outcomes has been limited by the lack of quantitative data on urban perception. Here, we build on the intuition that inequality is partly conspicuous to create quantitative measure of a city's contrasts. Using thousands of geo-tagged images, we measure the perception of safety, class and uniqueness; in the cities of Boston and New York in the United States, and Linz and Salzburg in Austria, finding that the range of perceptions elicited by the images of New York and Boston is larger than the range of perceptions elicited by images from Linz and Salzburg. We interpret this as evidence that the cityscapes of Boston and New York are more contrasting, or unequal, than those of Linz and Salzburg. Finally, we validate our measures by exploring the connection between them and homicides, finding a significant correlation between the perceptions of safety and class and the number of homicides in a NYC zip code, after controlling for the effects of income, population, area and age. Our results show that online images can be used to create reproducible quantitative measures of urban perception and characterize the inequality of different cities.
url http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC3722224?pdf=render
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