Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI): opportunities for spatial planning and governance

The dissertation concerns the opportunities arising from the use of social media platforms as an information resource for supporting design, analysis and decision-making in spatial planning. The widespread diffusion of Web 2.0 technologies and tools such as geobrowsers, Application Programming Interfaces (API), GPS-enabled mobile devices, and recently Location-Based Social Networks are fostering the production, collection and sharing of georeferenced information by the Internet users, namely Volunteered Geographic Information (VGI) and Social Media Geographic Information (SMGI), which are not only related to measures of the geographical component, but also to user perceptions and opinions on places, localities and daily-routine events. The wealth of VGI and SMGI freely available through the Internet may affect current practices in regional and urban planning, offering opportunities for real-time monitoring of needs, thoughts and trends of local communities. However, several hurdles related to data accessibility and management, as well as to knowledge extraction are limiting a wider use of SMGI in practice. In the light of the above premises, the research goal is to address the different aspects required for properly using VGI and SMGI within the urban and regional planning domains. The methodological approach is developed following two main directions. First, the approach builds on the design and development of ad-hoc tools able to deal with the issues regarding the access, management and analysis of SMGI. Second, the dissertation formalizes a novel analytical framework, called SMGI Analytics, which enables the proficient use of this information in different planning scenarios. Several case studies are discussed in order to evaluate the value of both the developed tools and the proposed framework. Then, the SMGI Analytics framework is applied on a case study concerning the municipality of Cagliari in Sardinia (Italy) investigating and characterizing a specific public space. Finally, the dissertation proposes a critical discussion about the developed tools and instruments’ effectiveness for eliciting knowledge from SMGI. The discussion ends identifying the potentialities of obtained findings to address diverse questions related to spatial planning.