Urban multisensory laboratory, an approach to model urban space human perception

Abstract

An urban sensory lab (USL or LUS an acronym in Spanish) is a new and avant-garde approach for studying and analyzing a city. The construction of this approach allows the development of new methodologies to identify the emotional response of public space users. The laboratory combines qualitative analysis proposed by urbanists and quantitative measures managed by data analysis applications. USL is a new approach to go beyond the borders of urban knowledge. The design thinking strategy allows us to implement methods to understand the results provided by our technique. In this first approach, the interpretation is made by hand. However, our goal is to combine design thinking and machine learning in order to analyze the qualitative and quantitative data automatically. Now, the results are being used by students from the Urbanism and Architecture courses in order to get a better understanding of public spaces in Puebla, Mexico and its interaction with people.