Social media for landscape planning and design: a review and discussion

Abstract

This report systematically reviews the academic literature on social media’s applications in landscape planning and design. As an emerging data source, social media help overcome the limitations associated with traditional datasets that focus primarily on environmental information; they explicitly or implicitly reveal important information concerning human behaviours, landscape values, and landscape perceptions. Key findings include: (1) social media data can be valid proxies for data collected from traditional methods, while presenting advantages of cost and time savings, and capturing the intangible and subjective dimension of cultural ecosystem services; (2) geospatial location, text information, and photo content are the primary data parameters in use; and (3) most studies currently focus on large/regional-scale, nonurban areas. We further identified four themes that characterise the current stage of social media applications. Challenges and prospects of social media in landscape studies are also discussed.

Keywords:

• Cultural ecosystem services
• landscape architecture
• landscape perception
• crowdsourcing
• big data
• design process

Acknowledgments

The authors thank the anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments which greatly improved this paper. This research was supported by the Drachman Institute.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shujuan Li

Shujuan Li, Associate Professor, School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, University of Arizona. Dr. Li’s research interests include the integration of spatial analysis and modelling with GIS for urban and environmental studies, environmental consequences of rapid urbanisation, landscape ecology, and land-use and land-cover dynamics in China.

Bo Yang

Bo Yang, Professor, School of Landscape Architecture and Planning, University of Arizona. Dr. Yang’s areas of interest include urban green infrastructure and landscape performance assessment.