Abstract “The Image of the City” by Kevin Lynch is a landmark planning theory of lasting influence; its scientific rigor and relevance in the digital age were in dispute. The rise of social media and other digital technologies offers new opportunities to study the perception of urban environments. Questions remain as to whether social media analytics can provide a reliable measure of perceived city images? If yes, what implication does it hold for urban planners? This paper describes a study on the perception of city images using a combination of “big data” and “small data” methods in the Tri-City Region in Poland. The aims were to 1) test the hypothesis whether social media analytics can elicit Lynchian elements of city image in consistency with conventional methods, and 2) develop and evaluate social media-based indicators of Imageability for planning practice. Geo-tagged images and texts were collected from Instagram and Twitter, two popular social media platforms in Poland. Text-Mining, Image Processing, Clustering Analysis, Kernel Density Estimation, and Sentiment Analysis were used. Results were compared with benchmarks constructed from official GIS database, questionnaire responses and sketch maps. “District”, “landmark”, and “path” identified on social media were in good agreements with benchmarks, less so for “edge” and “node”. Two social media-based indicators have influenced the perception of a place: Instagramability, the frequency of a place captured on Instagram, was linked to its perception as an architectural landmark and tourist attraction, while Twitterability, the frequency of a place mentioned on Twitter by name, was linked to its perceived niceness and relevance to everyday life of communities. Methods developed in this study have theoretical and practical implications for urban planners.

中文翻译：

---

社交媒体上的城市形象：波兰三城地区使用“大数据”和“小数据”方法的比较研究

摘要 凯文林奇的“城市形象”是具有持久影响力的标志性规划理论；它在数字时代的科学严谨性和相关性存在争议。社交媒体和其他数字技术的兴起为研究城市环境感知提供了新的机会。关于社交媒体分析是否可以提供感知城市形象的可靠衡量标准的问题仍然存在？如果是，它对城市规划者有何意义？本文描述了在波兰三城地区使用“大数据”和“小数据”方法相结合的城市图像感知研究。目的是： 1) 检验社交媒体分析是否可以与传统方法一致地引出城市形象的林奇元素的假设，2) 为规划实践开发和评估基于社交媒体的可成像性指标。地理标记的图像和文本是从 Instagram 和 Twitter 这两个波兰流行的社交媒体平台收集的。使用了文本挖掘、图像处理、聚类分析、核密度估计和情感分析。结果与从官方 GIS 数据库、问卷答复和草图构建的基准进行了比较。社交媒体上确定的“地区”、“地标”和“路径”与基准非常吻合，“边缘”和“节点”的情况较差。两个基于社交媒体的指标影响了人们对一个地方的看法：Instagram 可访问性，即某个地点在 Instagram 上被捕获的频率，与其作为建筑地标和旅游景点的感知有关，而 Twitter 可访问性，在 Twitter 上按名称提及某个地点的频率与其感知的美好程度以及与社区日常生活的相关性有关。本研究中开发的方法对城市规划者具有理论和实践意义。