Cities Are Physical Too: Using Computer Vision to Measure the Quality and Impact of Urban Appearance
American Economic Review
vol. 106,
no. 5, May 2016
(pp. 128-32)
Abstract
For social scientists, developing an empirical connection between the physical appearance of a city and the behavior and health of its inhabitants has proved challenging due to a lack of data on urban appearance. Can we use computers to quantify urban appearance from street-level imagery? We describe Streetscore: a computer vision algorithm that measures the perceived safety of streetscapes. Using Streetscore to evaluate 19 American cities, we find that the average perceived safety has a strong positive correlation with population density and household income; and the variation in perceived safety has a strong positive correlation with income inequality.Citation
Naik, Nikhil, Ramesh Raskar, and César A. Hidalgo. 2016. "Cities Are Physical Too: Using Computer Vision to Measure the Quality and Impact of Urban Appearance." American Economic Review, 106 (5): 128-32. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20161030Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- D31 Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions
- H75 State and Local Government: Health; Education; Welfare; Public Pensions
- I31 General Welfare; Well-Being
- R11 Regional Economic Activity: Growth, Development, Environmental Issues, and Changes
- R23 Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Regional Migration; Regional Labor Markets; Population; Neighborhood Characteristics
- R58 Regional Development Planning and Policy