Urban Narrative: Computational Linguistic Interpretation of Large Format Public Participation for Urban Infrastructure

Mark Dyer,Tomas García Ferrari,Min-Hsien Weng,Shaoqun Wu,Rachel Dyer

doi:10.17645/up.v5i4.3208

Abstract

Urban Narrative works at the interface between public participation and participatory design to support collaboration processes for urban planning and design. It applies computational linguistics to interpret large format public consultation by identifying shared interests and desired qualities for urban infrastructure services and utilities. As a proof of concept, data was used from the Christchurch public engagement initiative called ‘Share an Idea,’ where public thoughts, ideas, and opinions were expressed about the future redevelopment of Christchurch after the 2011 earthquakes. The data set was analysed to identify shared interests and desired connections between institutional, communal, or personal infrastructures with the physical urban infrastructures in terms of buildings, public places, and utilities. The data has been visualised using chord charts from the D3 JavaScript open source library to illustrate the existence of connections between soft and hard urban infrastructures along with individual contributions or stories. Lastly, the analysis was used to create an infographic design brief that compares and contrasts qualitative information from public consultation with quantitative municipal statistical data on well-being.

Highlights

As recognised by the UN SDG 11, cities are more than hard infrastructures of utilities, buildings and public spaces (United Nations, 2018a)
The hard infrastructure category of ‘Public Space’ attracted the greatest number of contributions as well as the highest number of connections with other infrastructure types. This preliminary result showed that participants in the public consultation exercise placed a great deal of emphasis on the physical infrastructure following the destruction caused by the major earthquake of 2011
These cases referred to hard infrastructure in terms of ‘dark,’ ‘seedy,’ ‘late,’ ‘low,’ etc., the collocated adjectives indicated a desire for increased personal safety

Summary

Introduction

As recognised by the UN SDG 11, cities are more than hard infrastructures of utilities, buildings and public spaces (United Nations, 2018a). It has been difficult to capture this information at a large scale due to the practicality of liaising with large groups without losing contextual information about people’s needs and aspirations (Certomà, Dyer, Pocatilu, & Rizzi, 2017; Dyer, Corsini, & Certomà, 2017). Working in partnership with the Christchurch City Council, this article outlines the development of such tools to facilitate evidence-

Methods

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Conclusion