Human Geomatics in Urban Design - Two Case Studies

The mapping of different aspects of urban phenomena and their relation to the physical cityscape has been greatly extended by the use of geomatics. The tradition to base reasoning on ‘understanding the world’ dates from the time of Aristotle. The extension plan for Barcelona (Eixample), developed by Cerdà, which opened the era of modern urban planning, was preceded by analyses of rich data, describing both detailed demographic issues and physical structures. The contemporary, postmodernist city planning continues this tradition, although a shift towards analyses of more human-related issues can be observed, covering, inter alia, citizens’ perception, cultural differences and patterns of human activities with regard to distinct social groups. The change towards a more human-related perspective and the inclusion of urban morphology analyses are direct consequences of this trend. The required data may be gathered within a crowd-sourcing participation process. According to communicative planning theory, communication with the wider public is indispensable in order to achieve the best results, and can be realized with the use of sophisticated IT tools. Evidence-based reasoning may be supported by images of significant aesthetic values, which inspire immediate reactions.