Client: City of Turku, via the Turku Urban Research Programme, with the Estonian Academy of Arts
Location: Turku, Finland
Year: 2015
Sector: Origin Story · Social Media Data · Transport Planning · Space Syntax
SPIN Unit’s first city-commissioned social-media-data study — testing whether Twitter, Foursquare, and Instagram could stand in for mobile-positioning data Finnish law wouldn’t allow, to help Turku plan a new tram line.
Turku wanted to know whether a proposed new tram line would actually activate the streets it ran through — but Finnish privacy law ruled out using mobile-operator positioning data to study how people move through the centre. The team needed another way to see the city’s real rhythm.
Published as Research Report 1/2015 of the City of Turku’s own Turku Urban Research Programme, delivered in partnership with the Estonian Academy of Arts. The project received national press coverage from Yle, Finland’s public broadcaster, confirming both its public delivery and its resonance beyond the client.
A year of geolocated Instagram data (the only platform with a large enough Finnish user base — Twitter and Foursquare/Swarm proved too thin), analysed alongside space-syntax accessibility modelling, City of Turku traffic data, and the public transport network. Photo-content analysis of five specific public spaces gauged “sense of place” directly from what people chose to photograph, combined into composite “gravity map” visualisations by time of day and day of week.
A short, explorative pilot commission, delivered as an 83-page report with an accompanying public presentation and press engagement.
- Instagram alone was viable in Finland — Twitter (362 geolocated users) and Foursquare/Swarm (505 venues) were far too small a sample; Instagram yielded ~150,000 geolocated photos from ~18,800 users over a year.
- Kauppatori, Turku’s most central square, appeared as the actual subject in only 24 of 200 sampled photos despite its centrality — flagged as a space with major untapped potential.
- Humalistonkatu, the main route from the station to the centre, was photographed almost entirely indoors — a signal the street itself lacks street-life appeal.
- Vähätori, a newer riverside square, dominates its own photos with outdoor, social, food-and-drink content — direct evidence that Turku can successfully create popular new public space.
- The Aura river was identified as the city’s most-loved but most under-programmed asset — the report’s headline recommendation was to shift Turku’s identity from “a city by a river” to “the city by the river.”
Directly informed the City of Turku’s thinking on tram-line planning and public space investment, and became the foundation for a larger follow-on engagement — the Turku Open Platform tool delivered in 2018.