Abstract
This thesis sets out to redefine the broadly perceived and highly integrated contemporary public spaces through the perspectives of their visitors. Contemporary urban spaces are increasingly hybridized in spatial forms, programs, and operations which poses significant challenges to define from a concise set of criteria based on a top-down understanding. This research focuses on the interrelationship of existing public spaces’ social and physical aspects, utilizing geo-referenced social media analysis as a bottomup strategy. Conceptually, public spaces’ spatial qualities are synonymous with their utilization performance, a measure of the significant physical qualities contributing to the utilization pattern. In this research, the use of urban spaces in Singapore is quantitatively assessed and subsequently contextualized. I illustrate that two seemingly correlated dimensions of urban space use – “density” and “diversity” – should be conceptualized independently and considered equally important. This deviates from conventional urban spaces analysis methodology that often focuses primarily on the “density” measure. Subsequently, density and diversity are then analyzed separately concerning the selected public spaces case study’s physical attributes through statistical modeling. The model identifies the potential significant physical attributes contributing to the “density” and “diversity” measure. The research methodology provides a systematic and flexible framework customized to different urban space typologies, context conditions, and geographic locations of other cities. The case studies of Singapore’s urban parks demonstrate how such social media data quantitative analysis approach can create an alternative understanding of our contemporary urban spaces. The research outcome shows the importance of the diversity measure in an urban space, in addition to the conventional measure of density. The distinctive sets of significant physical attract identified for density and diversity imply that to have a more comprehensive understanding of the overall performance, both measures should be considered equally. When relying on either one can result in a skewing view of how the urban space is performing. This research highlights no set recipe for a “successful” urban space; the significant qualities vary depending on the urban space’s program typology. The proposed methodology pushes the boundary of social media data use in urban research by illustrating its usefulness in providing a rich resources for evaluating the use of urban spaces. As such, it builds a foundation for informed decision making to plan and design for our future urban environments for all stakeholders.