Place Pulse : measuring the collaborative image of the city

This thesis presents Place Pulse, a tool capable of conducting large crowdsourced visual preference surveys. The data collected with Place Pulse was used to create quantitative measures of the perceptions people hold of urban environments. From this data, novel algorithms identified locations associated with positive and negative perceptions of safety, social class and uniqueness. The high throughput of the tool addressed two important methodological questions: the number of responses required to obtain robust results in a comparative study, and the number of images required to get a statistically significant evaluative map of a large city. In closing, the validated dataset was used to correlate perceptions of safety and social class to rates of both violent crime and high school graduation.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Salesses, Mark Philip

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• César A. Hidalgo.

• Architecture. Program in Media Arts and Sciences.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/76533

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/76533