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

James Williams and Gary Priestnall • 2025

Publication Details

Authors:
James Williams and Gary Priestnall
Year:
2025
Conference:
Proceedings of OSMScience 2025

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

Citation

James Williams and Gary Priestnall. (2025). "PlaceCrafter: Curating Urban Functional Regions through Platial Clustering of OpenStreetMap Points of Interest". Proceedings of OSMScience 2025.