One tool to spatialize all

Abstract

The spatialization of social concepts in to the city context is becoming a need. However, currently, there are few tools to directly spatialize environmental psychology concepts, such as sense of place, or social and participatory concepts, such as social capital and civic engagement. Furthermore, most existing tools are not taking full advantage of Geographical Information Science (GISc) capabilities mixed with online possibilities. This article presents a tool - an internet map-based application with an intuitive user interface - to deal with the pervasive lack of spatializing subjective citizens’ feeling, perceptions and experiences. Our approach successfully merges GISc framework and tools with questions and indicators from literature in social concepts. As such, the tool allows to identify and spatialize sense of place, social capital (discerning between bonding and bridging) and civic engagement of citizens, and attach meaningful information to them. It is a first step towards understanding and studying the social-spatial layer which undeniably ties a city and its citizens together.