Data-driven sustainable cities in the UK: The case of public space and social cohesion

High quality public spaces are promoted in the UK on the ground that they facilitate social mix and contribute to cohesive communities. Although widely endorsed in both academic literature and policymaking, there is little evidence to critically evaluate how the relationship between public space and social cohesion is captured within UK policy contexts. In this work-in-progress paper, we address this gap by conducting a short review of UK policies and propose a methodology to understand the social outcomes of planning policies using crowdsourced information combining citizen science activities (participatory photo elicitation and collaborative field survey) and Volunteered Geographic Information (OpenStreetMap). The outcome of this ongoing study will fill the information gap in linking public space and social cohesion policies in the UK context and contribute to the data-driven solutions in understanding the social outcomes of planning policy.