Social location-based service Foursquare enables users to check in at so-called 'venues' everywhere in the world. This check-in behavior shows which places are trending at a certain moment among the users of Foursquare. As these users can be considered early adopters when it comes to both smartphone use and the preparedness to explore new parts of the city, we might observe or even predict the appreciation of certain parts of the city from their behavior. As a research project for the University of Amsterdam, we tried to come to a new definition of gentrification by taking into account geo-located activity of Foursquare users.
The mapping exploration proved that geo-located social media activity can be a valuable source of knowledge about a classic urban phenomenon like gentrification. A series of generated maps with visualized Foursquare check-ins at almost 1,400 venues in the district of North Amsterdam resulted in a couple of localized social patterns that are in accordance with the common state of knowledge about gentrification in this part of the city, as described by leading local sociologists and planning professionals.
