Public spaces represent essential elements of vibrant, inclusive, and smart
cities. Being attractive, safe, comfortable, active and sociable, open public spaces play the
main role in revitalizing communities, supporting their sense of identity and culture and
triggering their economic development. Considering the current trends and demands in
design and use of open public spaces, the role of ICT becomes more important. This paper
will present and analyze the connections which are established and intensified between
users and open spaces via online social networks. The emphasis will be on Twitter which
currently has around 300 million active users.
The case study is a network of several open public spaces placed in the historical urban
core of Belgrade. The analyzed network presents one of the most attractive and important
urban route for pedestrians with the squares as nodes. The method that was used in analysis
is the method of mapping users on the social maps (via social networks) and through the
other ICT tools. It was based on a new software application – Twitter search engine –
developed at the University of Nis, Faculty of Electronic engineering, during the PhD course
“Advanced topics in data and knowledge engineering”.
The aim was measuring the concentrations of users in open public spaces. The obtained
results have enabled the determination of the image of the open public spaces perceived
by the users, as well as the intensity of users and tweets through the social networks, with
the aim to measure the quality of open public spaces and concentration of users. This
research has indicated the potential of the analyzed area for the formation of transverse
and longitudinal pedestrian flows. On the one hand they could enable active use of a
selected segment of the network as one of the most important urban pedestrian route of
the city, as well as to improve the image of it.Funded by the Horizon 2020 Framework Programme of the European Union.peer-reviewe
