This investigation is part of the Digital methods initiative of the University of Amsterdam (UVA), a two week long summer school held in June 2014.

1. The City as Interface
Nataliya Tkachenko, Xinyang Xie (Yang), Peta Mitchell, Maarten Groen,
Adrian Bertoli, Khwezi Magwaza, Naomi Bueno de Mesquita, Joe Shaw,
Alexander van Someren, Tim Leunissen, Michele Mauri, Philip Schuette,
Donato Ricci, Sabine Niederer

2. The city as interface
Background
The “parochial realm [is] characterized by a sense of commonality among
acquaintances and neighbors who are involved in interpersonal networks
that are located within ‘communities’” Lofland, Lyn. The Public Realm: Exploring the City’s
Quintessential Social Territory. New York: de Gruyter, 1998, p 10.
“[Cities] are not like suburbs, only denser. They differ from towns and
suburbs in basic ways, and one of these is that cities are, by definition,
full of strangers.” Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. 1961.
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3. The city as interface
Background
Martijn de Waal on parochial realms and urban media
“This raises the following questions: how do urban media enable us to shape these different
domains in new ways? How does the emergence of a new technology shift the balance
between parochial and public domains? Does the emergence of new technologies reinforce
the parochial domain, and do new technologies make it easier for city dwellers to withdraw to
their own ‘turf ’? Or can they actually reinforce the public domain, which is dominated by
mutual interchange?” (City as Interface, pp. 16–17)
“Urban spaces are becoming hybridized, meaning they are composed through a combination
of physical and digital practices”. (Gordon, Eric, and Adriana de Souza e Silva. Net Locality: Why Location
Matters in a Networked World. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell, 2011, p. 14.)
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4. The city as interface
Research Question:
What kind of Amsterdam do geosocial media platforms (such as
Foursquare, Twitter, Pinterest, Flickr, Meet-up, and Geocaching) present?
… and can we identify the parochial and the public spaces of a city by looking at the places put
forward by these platforms?
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5. The city as interface
Methodology & Data
Retrieve Amsterdam-specific posts/meetups/pins on (secondary) social media and plot on a map.
Data:
Pinterest: Term ‘Amsterdam’ in “place” boards = list of 781 boards, pulling first 100 pins per board,
total of 31479 pins (8274 geolocated)
Meetup - 489 events in 258 locations from 172 community's over a 4 month period.
Twitter: keyword Amsterdam over a 10-day period (13–22 June), resulting in 4930
geotagged tweets in the Amsterdam area
Geocaching: 700 of geocaches in Amsterdam (geocaching.nl)
Analyze first the type of Amsterdam the platform presents, and secondly identify stacks of
parochial spaces (within and cross platform); the more overlapping parochial spaces, the more
public this space is.
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6. Layered map of Amsterdam
https://mmauri.cartodb.com/
link to interactive cartodb
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7. The city as interface
Meetup - Categories on map
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8. The city as interface
Meetup - Public and Parochial places
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12. ‘Local’ vs. ‘non-local’
http://cdb.io/1rsOo85

14. Keywords layers
http://cdb.io/1zcUKL7

15. Pinterest
Main Findings:
Pinterest produces the ‘Boutique view’ of Amsterdam
>where specialist interests like food, interior design, child-friendly & culture intersect
>Local pinners and boards described as ‘hidden gems’ in outskirts while travel and touristy hotspots in
city center
>Also an interesting view of retail culture in particular Haarlemmerstraat and Haarlemmerdijk which
feature concept stores plus smaller bars and restaurants, not the larger commercial predominate.
Proliferation of travel industry and local business and how they are leveraging the platform for
destination marketing and commercial promotion could provide for interesting extra study.

16. The city as interface
Twitter
● Used TCAT to find all geolocated Amsterdam-area tweets with keyword
Amsterdam over a 10-day period (13–22 June), resulting in 4930 tweets
● Analysed this data to identify what type of users were geo-tweeting (locals, out-
of-towners, tourists) and which sources/platforms the tweets were generated
from (e.g., Twitter apps, foursquare, instagram, flickr)
● Geovisualised tweets by user type (local/out-of-towner/tourist) to show different
user visions of the Amsterdam area
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17. The city as interface
Amsterdam geotweets: sources & users
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18. The city as interface
instagram & foursquare geotweets by user
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19. The city as interface
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http://cdb.io/1jPLxhM

20. Amsterdam: tourists vs locals

21. Amsterdam: tourists vs locals

22. The city as interface
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PLAY - Ingress (location-based AR)
and figure running
Through geosocial media platforms, narratives are created and played out in the city. In Ingress players must be physically
near objects (public art landmarks) on the map to interact with them. In figure running players compete with each other,
creating drawings on their city.

23. The city as interface
PLAY - geocaching
Inspired by psychogeography, geocaching (a treasure hunt game) could be seen as an encountering of new and authentic
ways of experiencing the city. The journey and the narrative around it seems to be of similar interest.
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24. The city as interface
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25. The city as interface
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26. The city as interface
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30. Geocaching findings
In comparison with other
geosocial platforms/networks,
geocaching is less of an urban
phenomenon, and geocachers
are more likely to engage with
places that are harder to get to
or on the periphery of the city.

31. The city as interface
Findings & future research
Comparing pinterest, meetup, geocaching and twitter: http://cdb.io/1jMz3aG
Flickr: http://cdb.io/VloTIA
Software filters:
Pinterest: Amsterdam Boutique City
Twitter: Amsterdam Leisurely City
Meetup: Amsterdam Parochial City
Geocaching: Amsterdam Playful City
Future research: Bottom-up approach,
ranking places from most public to most parochial
maps per category (cross-platform
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32. Layered map of Amsterdam
link to interactive cartodb
change background