Abstract
This paper presents an exploratory study on the potential for sharing urban data; one where citizens create their own data and use it to understand and influence urban planning decisions. The aim of the study is to explore new models of participation through the sharing of emotional data and focuses on the relationship between the physical space and emotions through identifying the links between stress levels and specific features of the urban environment. It addresses the problem in urban planning that, while people’s emotional connection with the physical urban setting is often valued, it is rarely recognised or used as a source of data to understand future decision making. The method involved participants using a (GSR) device linked to location data to measure participant’s emotional responses along a walking route in a city centre environment. Results show correlations between characteristics of the urban environment and stress levels, as well as how specific features of the city spaces create stress ‘peaks’. In the discussion we review how the data obtained could contribute to citizens creating their own information layer—an emotional layer—that could inform a shared approach to participation in urban planning decision-making. The future implications of the application of this method as an approach to public participation in urban planning are also considered.
Highlights
Sharing CitiesA sharing cities approach focuses on bring local people together through shared activities and cooperation for the benefit of the city and includes initiatives such as carsharing, community currencies, cohousing, hackerspaces, timebanks and tool or kitchen libraries
We focus on change detection in emotions using a galvanic skin response (GSR) device and through correlating with changes in the urban context aim to investigate whether this has potential for mapping correlating with changes in the urban context aim to investigate whether this has potential for emotional change to particular urban planning features and qualities
GPS data was recorded at 1‐min intervals during the walk, and the GSR data was read in conjunction with features and characteristics of the urban setting to identify how this correlated with emotional arousal levels
Summary
A sharing cities approach focuses on bring local people together through shared activities and cooperation for the benefit of the city and includes initiatives such as carsharing, community currencies, cohousing, hackerspaces, timebanks and tool or kitchen libraries These new forms of sharing, enabled by technological devices and platforms [1] work by enabling citizens to create, adapt and exploit data [2] and can create new ways in which citizens participate in the governance of the city. We see the increasingly blurred nexus between urban- and cyberspace enabling transformation–this time in the political domain These spaces are fundamentally important for forms of participation invented and controlled by the people” [4]. The challenge is how to enable citizens who are non-experts to gather, Urban Sci. 2018, 2, 98; doi:10.3390/urbansci2040098 www.mdpi.com/journal/urbansci
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