A Leaflet map showing georeferenced crowdsourced data, about vacant properties and public spaces. These reports are intended to document public spaces and the vacancy situation in various cities and to stimulate a discourse about vacancies, spaces and possible uses.
It is best to be clear about the criteria, measurements, and ontologies we intend to employ before we begin defining the spaces. A viable method for characterizing social public spaces is to combine user feedback, qualitative observations, and objective criteria.
Some fields, specifically those involving the propension of visitors to spend some time in a particular space, require user feedback, but it is up to those who implement the platform to choose between a questionnaire, interviews or indirect sources. Other fields, based on observations, can be filled by the person carrying out the survey/monitoring.
We tried to define an ontology by identifying common traits between spaces, spaces that are also very different in other respects. This criterion considers 8 different themes that involve aggregation: physical activity, community, creativity, education, care, contemplation, activism, nature.
For each theme, the propensity of citizens to take advantage of the possibilities offered by the individual space is estimated; the quantification measures the distance, in walking minutes, that citizens travel to reach the space. Such distance is aggregated as a value from 0 to 3 which summarizes the size of the area of influence of such space regarding the said theme on the urban territory. To support this analysis the platform calculates and represents concentric areas defined by isochronous curves based on 5 minute walking intervals.