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

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.