An Animate City: An Argument for the Inclusion of Urban Activity in Visualizations of Urban Form

Abstract

My thesis examines different visualizations of urban form. I argue that there is a central tendency to characterize neighborhoods by the demographic qualities of their inhabitants (namely race and socio-economic status), and that urban planning can exacerbate this tendency by tying certain demographics of people to certain locations in the city. Consequently, I find that mapping in sociology is generally oriented towards capturing geographic segregation without sufficiently capturing the social interactions that compose a city. My hypothesis is that by taking an ecological approach to mapping using GIS cluster analysis, urban sociologists can capture the variant role that public activity plays in sculpting urban form. My results show that by looking more closely at activity patterns in New York City — in conjunction with its demographic characteristics — we can produce a more holistic and effective visualization of the city when it comes to evaluating its neighborhoods.