PlaceCrafter: Curating Urban Functional Regions through Platial Clustering of OpenStreetMap Points of Interest

Williams, J. & Priestnall, G. (2025). PlaceCrafter: Curating Urban Functional Regions through Platial Clustering of OpenStreetMap Points of Interest. Proceedings of OSMScience 2025.

@inproceedings{Williams2025PlaceCrafter,
  author       = {Williams, James and Priestnall, Gary},
  title        = {PlaceCrafter: Curating Urban Functional Regions through Platial Clustering of OpenStreetMap Points of Interest},
  booktitle    = {Proceedings of OSMScience 2025},
  year         = {2025},
  address      = {Manila, Philippines},
  url          = {/assets/papers/Williams2025PlaceCrafter.pdf},
  abstract     = {The world is not just made of streets, buildings, and zones; it is shaped by how people engage and interact with places in their everyday lives. This manuscript presents a web-based geospatial tool that enables the mapping of these lived places and locales named PlaceCrafter. PlaceCrafter supports researchers in identifying platial regions: functional, human-centred areas that cross administrative and formal boundaries. The framework is built on OpenStreetMap, combining (near) real-time clustering, analysis, and statistical validation of these platial regions. PlaceCrafter is an initial demonstration for exploring the subjective experiences of place through existing datasets and city structures.},
  keywords     = {Platial Information; OpenStreetMap; Geographic Information Systems; Clustering; Urban Planning; Place-based Computing}
}