Cities Are Physical Too: Using Computer Vision to Measure the Quality and Impact of Urban Appearance
Name
Hidalgo_Cities are physical too.pdf
Size
520.85 KB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
55d987fb1b9afa13f7e13b069ef4879d
Author(s)
Naik, Nikhil Deepak
Raskar, Ramesh
Hidalgo Ramaciotti, Cesar A.
Date Issued
May 2016
Journal
American Economic Review
Publisher
American Economic Association
Citation
Naik, Nikhil, Ramesh Raskar and César A. Hidalgo. 2016. "Cities Are Physical Too: Using Computer Vision to Measure the Quality and Impact of Urban Appearance." American Economic Review, 106(5): 128-32.
Version
Final published version
Abstract
For social scientists, developing an empirical connection between the physical appearance of a city and the behavior and health of its inhabitants has proved challenging due to a lack of data on urban appearance. Can we use computers to quantify urban appearance from street-level imagery? We describe Streetscore: a computer vision algorithm that measures the perceived safety of streetscapes. Using Streetscore to evaluate 19 American cities, we find that the average perceived safety has a strong positive correlation with population density and household income; and the variation in perceived safety has a strong positive correlation with income inequality.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Media Laboratory
Terms of Use
Article is made available in accordance with the publisher's policy and may be subject to US copyright law. Please refer to the publisher's site for terms of use.
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.p20161030
