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Research Archive

December 4, 2024

Shifting Patterns of Social Interaction: Exploring the Social Life of Urban Spaces Through A.I.

Abstract We analyze changes in pedestrian behavior over a 30-year period in four urban public spaces located in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Building on William Whyte’s observational work from 1980, where he manually recorded pedestrian behaviors, we employ computer vision and deep learning techniques to examine video footage from 1979-80 and 2008-10. Our analysis…