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The city as text

Nature Cities volume 2, pages 794–800 (2025)Cite this article

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Preface

Urban researchers now have access to vast amounts of textual data—from social media and news to planning documents and property listings. These textual data provide important information about the activities of people and organizations in urban environments. Meanwhile, recent advancements in computational tools, including large language models, have expanded our ability to analyze textual data. Here we explore how these tools are reshaping the ways we analyze, understand and theorize the city through text. By outlining key developments, applications and challenges, it argues that text is no longer a ‘fringe resource’ but a central component in urban analytics with the potential to connect quantitative and qualitative researchers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA), UCL, London, UK

    Jonathan Reades

  2. Department of Geography, University at Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Yingjie Hu

  3. School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK

    Emmanouil Tranos

  4. Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    Elizabeth Delmelle

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  1. Jonathan Reades
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  4. Elizabeth Delmelle
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J.R. conceived and designed the experiments. All authors contributed materials and analysis tools and wrote the paper.

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Correspondence to Jonathan Reades.

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Reades, J., Hu, Y., Tranos, E. et al. The city as text. Nat Cities 2, 794–800 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44284-025-00314-x

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