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Computational Urban Science - Call for papers: Social Infrastructure: Use of Places, Spaces, and Points of Interest (POIs)

The following special issue in Computational Urban Science is open for submissions. The submission deadline is March 30, 2022. Please contact the editor to request a potential extension.

Call for papers: Social Infrastructure: Use of Places, Spaces, and Points of Interest (POIs) 

Guest Editors:

Dr. Clio Andris, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, clio@gatech.edu (this opens in a new tab)

Dr. Ross Purves, University of Zurich, Switzerland, ross.purves@geo.uzh.ch (this opens in a new tab)

Aims and Scope:

Points of interest (POIs) are important features in the built environment. These non-residential locations denote destinations that support activities like jobs, tourism, recreation and wayfinding. In the digital era, POI datasets (e.g. Google Places, Yelp, Foursquare, Open Street Map, etc.) and features serve as knowledge bases of commercial outlet and service locations for maintaining the accuracy and quality of digital maps and supporting wayfinding. GIScience research has also challenged who creates these datasets, how they are harvested and represented, and how semantics and taxonomies can challenge functionality.

A next step in this research is to use computational tools and large datasets to better understand how POIs are used, not just spatially or temporally, but culturally and socially. In this special issue we call for papers that focus on the utility of POIs, how they are used, and the value they add to (or challenges they create for) society. This special issue invites research that shows how individuals, social networks, and community members interact with places. The goal is to create better attributes for spatial data that reflect the social value of different types of POIs and urban design features, so we can ultimately make better decisions about what to build, maintain or change in the built environment. It also lets us assess how built environment changes impact residents and visitors. This special issue will contain research that engages with philosophical considerations of geographies of inclusion and exclusion, fulfilling human needs, supporting relationships, gender, race, youth, aging communities, health and recreation, and creation and use of public and private spaces.

This special issue follows a successful research symposium sponsored by the Georgia Tech College of Design in April 2021, where a discussion helped shape these ideas. We now invite participants and other interested researchers to translate the vision for POI research challenges and opportunities vis-à-vis social use and social ties, and exposure to cutting-edge research through this special issue. The submission can be full research paper or review paper (up to 6,500 words), opinion paper (up to 4,000 words), featured graphic (with up to 500 words accompanying the graphic), or technical note (up to 4,000 words). All submissions will go through a double-blind peer-review process.  

Submitted manuscripts could address but are not limited to the following themes:

  • POI temporality and usage 
  • POI usage based on mobility data
  • POIs and events POI attributes, dimensionality, classifications, indexes and metrics
  • POI resilience and closures, especially after COVID-19
  • POI datasets in the past, present, and future, and dataset fidelity, trustworthiness, and governance
  • Geolocation and representation
  • Semantics and POIs, including messaging and online reviews, social media, etc. and related textual analysis of POIs 
  • How POIs support interpersonal relationships, social networks and culture 
  • Geovisualization and geovisual analytics involving POIs
  • Ethical challenges in working with POIs 
  • POIs and diverse representations
  • Critiques and cautionary tales regarding POI research
  • Case studies
  • And other ideas as related to the topic

Interested? Please submit your article here:  https://www.editorialmanager.com/cusc/ (this opens in a new tab)

When submitting your article, please select the designated Thematic Series in the "additional information Questionnaire" (the fourth step).

Articles will undergo all of the journal's standard peer review and editorial processes outlined in its submission guidelines. (this opens in a new tab)

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