Urban Emotions

Urban Emotions development of methods for production of contextual emotion information in spatial planning with the help of human sensory assessment and crowdsourcing technologies in social networks Urban planning has previously taken place on sketch boards and behind desks. Consequently, citizens as a vital component of urban spaces with their feelings and emotions have only played a minor role in previous research approaches. The development of new technologies, such as mobile communication devices or wearables, enables fundamentally new methods for the creation of knowledge in urban planning. Furthermore, the consideration of the citizens as sensors (human sensory assessment) constitutes a research field which is not yet widely investigated. These sensor data are complemented by user-generated data (Volunteered Geographic Information - VGI) from social networks, and the mutual interactions, which are of high importance. This research proposal aims to capture citizens perceptions and feelings of their environment, and to enrich and correlate them with additional information gained from social networks. This particularly includes aspects like data collection, data analysis, and the potential use in planning processes, as well as the requirements concerning the critical reflection about privacy. This new approach shall allow for uncovering hidden urban patterns and for understanding the city as an organism. Living Labs and Virtual Reality environments, addressing the topics of accessibility, bike mobility and perception of space, help to integrate these efforts in a daily life set-up.

City components such as buildings, transport infrastructure or parks, but also human activities and interactions trigger different human emotions as a person's response to such urban context. The integration of such human urban emotions gives urban planners information about the emotional perceptions of city users promoting a human-centred urban planning process. The goal of the Urban Emotions project is the analysis of human sensor data and social network data to extract emotions and to further develop an innovative methodology in the domain of urban and regional planning. Human sensor data are coming from measurements of wearable physiological sensors that pedestrians or cyclists are carrying while they are moving around the city combined with smartphones and cameras. The extracted emotions are assigned to a specific point in the city through GPS enabling to identify stressful areas and areas of relaxation. Video analysis enables to find out the real-world events that trigger stress such as traffic congestion, construction areas and tourist attractions. Social media data are derived from users of social networks (Twitter, Instagram, Flickr, etc.) who share voluntarily details of their everyday lives and experiences. The methodology also includes the comparison of the extracted data from these sources and also considers data privacy. The results of the Urban Emotions project provide insights into the spatial and temporal properties of urban spaces and their influence on citizens. The analysis and the interpretation of emotions contribute to a better understanding of how people perceive and react to their environment (traffic volume, noise, safety and urban green areas). This is demonstrated through a showcase in the cities of Heidelberg, Kaiserslautern and Boston (USA). Thus, urban planners are able to validate the existing planning measures and receive recommendations for further amendments.